Senate Committee recommends scrapping of ACNC
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The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) will continue to regulate the sector and perform its legislative functions until future arrangements are known, according to ACNC Commissioner Susan Pascoe.
“There is no doubt the Repeal Bill and the Senate inquiry has caused confusion and uncertainty for parts of Australia’s charity sector over the past few months,” said Ms Pascoe.
“What is certain, however, is that the ACNC remains Australia’s charity regulatory body until the Parliament votes otherwise.”
The Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission (Repeal) (No 1) Bill 2014 was referred to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee after it was introduced in the House of Representatives in March 2014. 155 submissions were received by the Committee, with more than 80 per cent opposing the proposed legislation to abolish the ACNC.
ACNC Advisory Board Chairman Robert Fitzgerald said it was credit to the ACNC that all three reports submitted to the Committee – each undertaken by the Coalition, Labor and the Greens – recognised how much work the Commission had achieved in areas such as regulatory harmonisation and defining what constitutes good charity regulation in a relative short space of time.
“Unfortunately, the majority report repeatedly refers to the proposed not-for-profit sector National Centre of Excellence as a successor component to the ACNC. However, the consultation on the NCE explicitly says the issues related to the abolition of the ACNC are out of scope. Further, the proposed NCE has not been promoted as a regulator,” Mr Fitzgerald said.
“The charity and not-for-profits sector is one of Australia’s fastest growing and important sectors. It has taken 17 years, at least six inquiries, 2,000 submissions and volumes of evidence to get an effective national regulatory model. And now the effect of the majority opinion is to undermine basic transparency, the tackling of duplicative reporting and proven and effective regulation.
“By moving to abolish the ACNC, the Government is going against the tide: England and Wales has had an independent charity regulator for more than 160 years; Scotland and Singapore established regulators and a public charity register following charity scandals; New Zealand has had a charity regulator since 2005. In the last 12 months Ireland, Jamaica and now Jersey have moved to establish independent charity regulatory bodies and public registers. Hong Kong has also recommended establishing a public charity register.”
“Since the ACNC’s inception, three separate surveys have each found an 80 per cent satisfaction rate with respondents supporting the ACNC.
“It is now a matter for the Parliament to determine if it wishes to have an efficient and effective regulator, or return to a regulatory regime that will ultimately increase compliance burdens on the sector and fail to deliver transparency to the Australian public.”
Menchie Khairuddin is a writer Deputy Content Manager at Akolade and content producer for Third Sector News. She is passionate about social affairs specifically in mixed, multicultural heritage and not-for-profit organisations.
