Charities appeal to Tony Abbott to drop plan to scrap regulator
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Version 0 of 1. Some of Australia’s best-known charities have signed an open letter urging Tony Abbott to abandon plans to scrap the national regulator. Lifeline, Save the Children, Wesley Mission Victoria, the RSPCA and the YMCA are among 54 organisations, experts and advocates calling on the prime minister to save the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). Other signatories include St John Ambulance, Volunteering Australia, Youth Off the Streets, Drug Arm, Sane Australia, the Myer Family Company, Hillsong Church, and the Australian Council of Social Service. Despite government assertions that the regulator was too “heavy handed”, the groups have said they want to make it “very clear” to the commonwealth that the commission should be allowed to “continue its impressive work”. Arguing that charities and the broader not-for-profit sector are at the heart of Australian communities, they said the launch of the commission in 2012 was a “major step forward in creating a regulatory environment that works for the not-for-profit sector rather than against it”. “In little over one year of operation, the ACNC has built a strong, positive reputation by establishing the first public national register of charities, registering more than 2,600 new charities, responding to over 70,000 requests for information from charities and the broader community, investigating and resolving over 200 complaints against charities, and monitoring the extent of red tape and level of public trust and confidence in our charities,” the letter said. The groups warned the government’s plan to shut down the ACNC could backfire. They said a return to the old practice of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) having key role of determining charitable status would re-create “a conflict of interest”. “This approach is, at best, an unfortunate policy for charities across Australia and our community. Red tape will continue to grow, the size of the bureaucracy will grow, and services to the sector and the public will be reduced,” the letter said. The ACNC registers organisations as charities, maintains a public register so people can access information about organisations, and works with state, territory and federal agencies to develop a “report once, use often” approach for charities. But the Coalition has vowed to abolish the commission on the basis that it imposed an excessive compliance burden on the sector. Legislation is expected to be introduced to parliament on Wednesday as part of Coalition’s “repeal day” initiative to cut red tape. Abbott said the commission would be axed “because people serving our community don’t deserve a new level of scrutiny”. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said the government had managed to unite 54 leaders from the sector against the proposed abolition. He urged the government not to punish the charities that had signed the open letter. “We know what a vindictive, punishing mob they [the government] are,” Shorten told parliament. The social services minister, Kevin Andrews, has previously argued the commission employed about 100 people and was an expensive and unnecessary case of “heavy-handed regulation”. “I’ve met hundreds of people from different charitable and community organisations right across Australia and whilst I acknowledge that there’s some out there who think that the ACNC is a good idea, my feedback is that overwhelmingly people think that this is over the top and it’s a very heavy-handed approach from the commonwealth when we could have a much more light system of regulation,” Andrews told the ABC in December. But David Crosbie, the chief executive of the Community Council for Australia, said it was “an absurd proposition to suggest the sector does not want to keep the ACNC”. Crosbie, who published the open letter to Abbott on Wednesday, said the government’s plan appeared “to be all about satisfying a small minority that clearly opposes transparency across charities”. He said it was unclear what would replace the ACNC. Charities previously had to obtain letters from the ATO when seeking to establish their bona fides, so the ACNC actually cut red tape, Crosbie said. |