ACNC, Homelessness Funding, Welfare Review
E&OE
David Speers:
More than 50 charities and not-for-profits have complained about your move to scrap the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, they say it’s going to put the tax office in charge of regulating charities, deciding which organisations are charities, they say it’s going to increase their red tape. Explain why you are doing this?
Minister:
Well first of all the context, 50 out of what 600,000 charities and not-for-profits in Australia so this doesn’t represent the vast majority of them. I’ve spent about two years consulting in this field and my clear evidence is that the vast majority want to get rid of it.
This was a model imported from the UK, where just recently the National Audit Office in the UK criticised it, where it was implemented in NZ and has now been abandoned by the NZ Government. It’s added more regulation and red tape, not less and we made a commitment to get rid of it and we will get rid of it.
David Speers:
So what happens now, who will regulate the charities sector?
Minister:
This was the first phase, the bill introduced today. There will be another bill in the winter sittings of Parliament and that will deal with the establishment of a Centre for Excellence for civil society and will deal with the transition provisions back to other regulatory bodies, such as the tax office.
David Speers:
And that is an independent agency?
Minister:
The Centre for Excellence will be a carrot approach rather than stick. We believe that we should encourage the sector to raise governance standards and we want to do that by education and training and the like. We will set it up and within a period, I hope within 3 years, we will hand the ownership and control of that centre to the sector itself, so it will be at arm’s length from the Government.
David Speers:
Essentially why though, I mean is this about reducing the red tape burden on the charities?
Minister:
Yes it is. I mean this is added red tape, added duplication, added regulation.
David Speers:
And they won’t face this with the new body?
Minister:
No because we can achieve some of the objectives of transparency and accountability in a much more simple, light touch way than this. I’ve been asking for two years, what’s the mischief that required this great, big new body with more regulatory powers over the directors of not-for-profits then say ASIC has over directors of full profit organisations in Australia, why do we need it? And nobody has pointed to any great mischief here. We start from the perspective that we trust the charitable sector, yes there should be some light touch regulation to it, but if we trust them let’s get on and let them do their job.
David Speers:
Well a number of the big charities involved in homelessness, HomeGround, Red Cross etc. are worried about Government funding running out on June 30. The National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness which does expire you have signalled they shouldn’t worry, what more can you say to them?
Minister:
Well firstly this was a decision by the previous government just to roll over funding for one year to the end of June this year. We are looking at homelessness and housing broadly but as the Prime Minister indicated about a week ago in Perth they shouldn’t be overly concerned at this stage. Now we’re not going to foreshadow every announcement in the budget prior to the budget but I think that’s a fairly good indication to the sector that they should not have concerns.
David Speers:
Because you’re talking here about victims of domestic violence, children, you know a lot of people brought up in this.
Minister:
And we are concerned about that. Domestic violence, people for whatever reason who find themselves without a home, they are people that society should look after but we were left in a situation where the previous Government just didn’t provide the funding on an ongoing basis.
David Speers:
One final question in your portfolio. When you announced the welfare review earlier this year you left out the age pension from that review, but we’ve seen Joe Hockey talk about considering increasing the access age to the pension. So what is the Government’s position here on when the pension should kick in?
Minister:
Well you’re correct; the welfare review is looking at working age payments so the age pension is not part of the working age payment so it’s not part of my review. Now what the Treasurer is doing, what the Commission of Audit is doing that’s a separate process and obviously the Commission of Audit has reported to the Treasurer. I haven’t seen the report or the interim report of the Commission of Audit so I really can’t comment at this stage.
David Speers:
But are you as Minister openly looking at that, the access age to the pension, because we’re talking about big bucks that can be saved.
Minister:
Well I’ll wait and see what the Commission of Audit says if anything about this and then obviously we’ll make a decision as a Government.
David Speers:
Kevin Andrews thank you.
Minister:
Thank you David.