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Opposition Declares No Vote for ACNC


12 September 2012 at 1:59 pm
Staff Reporter
The Federal Opposition has formally announced that it will oppose the Legislation to establish Australia’s first charity regulator, the Australian Charities and Not for profits Commission.

Staff Reporter | 12 September 2012 at 1:59 pm


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Opposition Declares No Vote for ACNC
12 September 2012 at 1:59 pm

The Federal Opposition has formally announced that it will oppose the Legislation to establish Australia’s first charity regulator, the Australian Charities and Not for profits Commission.

The Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services, Kevin Andrews says the Federal Government is trying to impose upon the Not for Profit sector and charitable organisations a new unnecessary and uncalled for level of regulation and red tape.

“Under the guise of simplifying the processes and the reporting requirements for the Not for Profits and charities in Australia, they’re actually adding a new level of regulation and red tape,” he said.

“This will significantly add to the burden on the Not for Profit sector in Australia, and there’s been no mischief made out that requires this new burden.

“Indeed, if you look at the many submissions that have been made to the inquiries that have looked at this, there are dozens of Not for Profits and civil society organisations complaining and criticising this proposal,” he said.

“Australian Baptist Ministries, for example, have said this is going to add somewhere in the order of a million dollars of extra administrative burden for them. That’s a million dollars that one service organisation itself could have been actually devoting to the people it’s helping in the community.

“David Gonski, who’s a favourite in some quarters of the government at the moment, has warned that Australia risks placing a more onerous burden on the directors and office bearers of Not for Profit organisations than Australia does on the directors and office bearers of for-profit organisations.

“The states will continue to apply all the regulations that they had, and even other Commonwealth departments will continue to apply all regulations.

“For example, for non-government schools, there’s currently a series of regulations at the Commonwealth and the State level, and yet we’re going to have further reporting requirements by the new Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission,” he concluded.

However, the Assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury has described the Coalition’s stance on the Legislation as ‘reckless negativity’ that is threatening to impact on hard-working Australian charities and Not for Profits.

“The Coalition wants to stand in the way of an important reform that has broad support across the Not for Profit sector. The establishment of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) is a reform that the sector has long been calling for and the Government has been proud to work closely with them on this legislation,” Bradbury said.

“For the Coalition to ignore the wishes of the sector and proclaim that they know best is the height of arrogance.

“It is also reprehensible for Kevin Andrews to misrepresent the views of the sector and to try and use Australian charities for his own political purposes.”

He said there had in fact been strong support for the ACNC from across the sector include peak bodies such as ACCOS, the Community Council of Australia, National Roundtable of Nonprofit Organisations, Philanthropy Australia and many major NFPs.

The passage of the ACNC legislation is now expected to rest with the Australian Greens in the Senate with some amendments the the original Bills.
 





One comment

  • Andrew Batt-Rawden says:

    … one of the core KPIs advertised on the ACNC website is increase in efficiency through a consolidation of compliance procedures… things like “one stop shop” and “report once” key words really excite me as a director on 3 not for profit organisations, 2 incorporated associations (NSW) and one company ltd (within which I’m the CEO).

    Can the opposition cite real first hand references of published resources/articles written by the sources they are claiming are against the ACNC reformation of Australian NFP governance and compliance procedures? Linking to the organisations’ websites where such statements may be published would be EVEN BETTER. I want to see statements backed up by interview or research with primary sources – show me a budget, a cost benefit analysis, a milestone and implementation plan.

    Or is this more hot bullshit air – like the arguments against same-sex marriage that refer to fundamentalist websites promoting their easily debunked “research”… such as homosexuality being more dangerous to ones health than smoking…. is ACNC NFP sector reform being treated in the same idiotic manner by the opposition, simply for the sake of being “opposed”?

    I just want to get on with my business, why can’t they just make it easier for me to help composition artists throughout Australia now… if they are so opposed to it, why couldn’t they consult together at some point in the planning stages… it seems to me that the core team on the ACNC are pretty awesome, are they not to be trusted? why? Is the opposition saying that Susan Pascoe, Peng-Yew Lim, Stephanie Isaacson, Mark Ferguson, Bernadette Smith, Mark Jennings and Erin Flynn are incompetent imbeciles who couldn’t devise and implement a better system despite their collective centuries of experience and expertise in various relevant fields? If they are, then are they also going to start slagging the ATO on their HR procedures and policies?

    Let the ACNC go through, and if the opposition come into power later on they can change it with industry consultation and build on ideas that were developed in this regime. :S it seems to me our country’s NFP’s have more long term thinking than its actual government at times. On top of this, the opposition offer destructive criticism, rather than constructive, have little to offer other than “they’re Wrong, therefore we should be in power”.

    XXOO


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