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Everything has changed in Australian politics

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Everything has changed in Australian politics

The reality of this election outcome was far removed from the shallow, lazy Tweedledum Tweedledee version of politics. The results highlighted the previously untapped power of women, the impotence of mainstream media, and the fundamental importance of community and connectedness writes CCA CEO David Crosbie.

 

Everything has changed in Australian politics, Pro Bono News, 2 June 2022

There has been a major shift in Australian politics and the implications for charities are enormous.

We haven’t just seen a change of government, but a change in what it means to campaign, to win voter support, to represent a community. And yet, few commentators seem to be exploring what this may mean.

Most of the post-election analysis seems focused through the narrow lens of a two-party preferred world view in which we are all partisan. Politics is described like a football match, two competing teams, barrackers and supporters making lots of noise on the sidelines, the teams scoring points from the commentariat and attracting supporters with hyper-partisan barbs and slick marketing messages – victory and power being all that matters. 

The reality has proved to be far removed from the shallow and lazy Tweedledum Tweedledee version of politics.

The election results have clearly highlighted the previously untapped power of women, the impotence of mainstream media, and the fundamental importance of community and connectedness.

When it comes to actual policy, one of the strongest messages from the election is that climate matters to people. Despite both the major parties officially embracing a net zero climate target by 2050, disillusioned climate science deniers, freedom crusaders and Sky overnight fans did not swell the votes of One Nation or the United Australia Party. The absurdist right of politics spent close to $100 million to be outpolled by the informal vote in most electorates. 

The outcome of the election suggests that the campaigning insights from our environmentally-focused colleagues deserve much more attention than they are receiving.

Unlike previous election campaigns, there were less direct protests by climate activists during the election campaign. There was no Adani Convoy, no Extinction Rebellion blockade, the coal trains moved freely, and the fossil fuel ships came and went. This was no accident. As Dave Copeman from the Queensland Conservation Council told Annabel Crabb, “The climate movement learned the lessons of 2019 and realised we had to avoid whipping up people’s fear or allowing climate to become something that regional Queensland feared.” 

In the same Crabb article, Nic Seton of Parents for Climate Action described how they took a less confrontational approach, opting not to hand out a scorecard for major parties on climate, but holding many community events like climate walks and climate picnics. “We’re into building bridges, not walls,” he said.

Seeing how well this approach worked should change the way many charities campaign for their issues. There are two fundamental points of importance here. 

The first is that climate campaigners were very successful, and this was no accident. In the vast majority of the seats where they invested most of their door-knocking and community engagement time, they won. While we cannot and should not attribute their success in so many electorates solely to their efforts alone, there can be no doubt that what they set out to achieve, they achieved. 

A second important learning emerged in the electorates where sitting members of parliament lost their seats in this election. This key lesson was also reflected in the major themes that, along with concern about our climate, drove so many people to change how they voted in this election; political integrity, representation, and offering a voice for women. The new central principle in Australian elections is that good politics is about our communities, not just in the cynical short-term local council level pork barrelling that was so central in the Morrison miracle victory of 2019, but in the active engagement of communities in choosing and supporting their representative.

Thousands of volunteers supported local candidates, mostly women. In polling booths across Australia, when people turned up to vote they saw their neighbours, friends or friends of friends, often standing with a local candidate whose representative had already knocked on their door. There was an army mobilised to not only support the environment, but to support candidates who were not playing the combative games of political spin and confected fear.

At the heart of these successful campaigns was listening to people, bridge building, acknowledging the experiences and perspectives of others. Central to this process there is the most important aspect of community building that charities know is essential to most of their work, connection and belonging. 

Time and again the pollsters’ surveys highlighted that Australians recognised the need to do a lot more to protect our environment, that people wanted integrity in politics, and that we were prepared to accept some personal cost to improve our collective wellbeing.

This election was about us, not just as individual economic units, but as communities connected to each other. This election was about trying to make our country better, not for short-term self-interest, but for our collective future.

Community engagement is not all we need to do. Recent success in taking on big polluters through shareholder activity has again shown that there are different ways to campaign and be successful. But community engagement is something we can all be part of either directly or indirectly. It can be about on-line communities, or activity based, it doesn’t have to be about knocking on doors. It is something we can and should build into the way we govern and operate our charities.

As the post-election dust settles, and some seek a return to narratives they understand and feel comfortable with, we need to acknowledge that politics in Australia has changed. Now it is up to us to build on that change through our own organisations. 

There is so much we can all achieve if we choose to reach out beyond our insular approaches and practice the kind of engagement that has rewritten the rules of politics in Australia.

 

Read in Pro Bono News: everything-has-changed-in-australian-politics

 
 

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Charities welcome Dr Andrew Leigh as their Assistant Minister

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Media Release: Charities welcome Dr Andrew Leigh as their Assistant Minister

The charities sector is delighted to welcome Dr Andrew Leigh as the new Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury.

Rev Tim Costello AO, Chair of CCA said; ‘Assistant Minister Leigh has been representing charities within the Labor Party and within the Australian Parliament for over a decade. Most people would not fully recognise what a big job this is. Dr Leigh brings extensive knowledge and experience making him an ideal Minister to help drive positive reform, improve productivity and strengthen the many communities we all serve.

We are hopeful that Assistant Minister Leigh will ensure charities have a legitimate seat at the table for major government policy discussions around the economy, employment, equity, the environment, foreign aid, disaster preparedness and recovery, arts and recreation, education and innovation, health and wellbeing.’

Charities employ over 1.3 million Australians, turn over more than $150 billion, engage over 3.5 million volunteers, and contribute over 8% of GDP. Both the ALP and Greens actively engaged with charities and not-for-profit organisations in pre-election policy forums and discussions.

David Crosbie, CEO of CCA said, ‘Representing the breadth of the charities and not-for-profit sectors is a massive role that has a very significant impact on our economy and our communities. We are keen to start working towards the full implementation of the ALP policies Assistant Minister Leigh helped frame. This includes developing a blueprint for the sector, increasing incentives for philanthropy, supporting digital transformation, developing our staff, increasing the length of government contracts, establishing two new high level advisory groups, and ending red tape impediments to charity fundraising and productivity.

A CCA pre-election survey of over 3,400 people across 20 marginal electorates found that over 90% of respondents were involved in local charities and believed the way governments worked with charities was very important to the future of their communities.

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Media Release: Charities welcome ALP government – time for change

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Media Release: Charities welcome ALP government – time for change

Charities across Australia are looking forward to working with the new Labor government to address the critical need for reform and stronger support of the charities and not-for-profit (NFP) sector.

David Crosbie, CEO of CCA said, ‘The Labor party has adopted a strong set of policies informed by a fundamental commitment to working with charities rather than against them. ALP policies include developing a blueprint for the sector, increasing incentives for philanthropy, supporting digital transformation, staff development, increasing the length of contracts, establishing two new high level advisory groups, and ending red tape impediments to charity fundraising and productivity.

Shadow Charities Minister Andrew Leigh has been in his current role for almost a decade and has a deep understanding of the sector. CCA hope Andrew Leigh continues in this role and becomes the Minister for Charities to ensure charity and NFP voices are integral to policy making in the new government.’

Rev Tim Costello AO, Chair of CCA said; ’One of the strongest messages of this election campaign is the effectiveness of community-based movements. The election result reinforces the message that local people coming together in shared endeavours can make a big difference, and that is exactly what charities are all about. Governments that are serious about change know they need to actively engage with charities in their policy development and implementation.’

A CCA pre-election survey of over 3,400 people across 20 marginal electorates found that over 90% of respondents were involved in local charities and believed the way governments worked with charities was very important to the future of their communities.

David Crosbie said that over the past three years charities had expressed growing concerns about government decision-making processes, ‘particularly in relation to government grants that seemed to be increasingly influenced by political factors rather than where programs were most needed and which organisations could be most effective. Charities sometimes have to represent views that may not be supportive of government policies and priorities, but that should not mean they are then excluded from participation in government decision making or funding opportunities.’

Charities employ over 1.3 million Australians, turn over more than $150 billion and contribute over 8% of GDP. Despite the critical role of charities in Australia, the Coalition government did not participate in pre- election forums with the charities sector. Both the ALP and Greens actively engaged with charities in pre- election policy forums and discussions.

File: 
PDF icon Media-Release-Charities-welcome-ALP-Govt-Time-for-change.PDF

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The more things change…

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The more things change…

Regardless of who wins the election this weekend, it is important to remember that government departments and agencies can be very resilient. If we expect them to change, we need to think about how we can reward the behaviours we want them to adopt, writes CCA CEO David Crosbie.

The more things change… Pro Bono News, 19 May 2022

It was the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who came up with the saying, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In a few days’ time, Australia will have a different government. No-one can predict the outcome of the election with any great certainty. The result, as always, will come down to a dozen individual seats and local candidates, but even if the Coalition wins another “miracle” victory, and Scott Morrison remains prime minister, we know there will be new faces in both Houses of Parliament. Some of these new faces will be independents. There will also be a new Senate and different senators will be holding the balance of power.

While many in the sector are hoping the Labor party will be able to form government either in majority or with the support of the Greens and some independents, it is important to acknowledge that a change of government on its own does not guarantee a major shift in the legislative and economic environment that charities deal with. 

The same applies to our public service organisations and statutory bodies. A new government does not, in itself, change the way the Health Department or NDIA or Social Services or PM&C or any other agency administers their programs and their contracts with the charities sector. 

What we do know is that if Labor form government, they will seek to re-establish the kind of policy consultation infrastructure that the Abbott government dismantled eight years ago. For the first time in many years, charities may be invited to sit at the table where policies are being framed in critical areas like health, childcare, the environment, the arts, disability, education and employment, housing, aged care, the digital economy, emergency response, etc.

The shadow charities minister Andrew Leigh has already committed to establishing two new committees to guide charity policy developmentand implementation of policies. The work of these committees will be framed around a new blueprint grounded partly in a review of the 2010 Productivity Commission report into the sector:

Under our blueprint, an Albanese Labor government will establish the Not-for-profit Sector Expert Reference Panel to chart out a more productive future for Australian charities. Working with Treasury, business, philanthropy, volunteering and other key stakeholders, experts from the charity sector will work to produce a Sector Development Plan. This plan, which will identify priorities for the sector, will be developed through extensive consultation and will include economic modelling of future scenarios. It will also incorporate strategies to capitalise on emerging opportunities, and consider what could influence the sector’s capacity to respond to emerging risks and limitations.

The panel would be supported by an ongoing Building Community – Building Capacity Working Group. This group will help implement the panel’s recommendations, and help steward the charity and community sector in its role as frontline responders in building a reconnected Australia.

The shadow minister told the Pre-Election Forum at the Connecting Up Conference in Melbourne last week that both these new committees would be based within the Treasury.

CCA is a strong supporter of this policy from the ALP and we look forward to participating in this important work if it comes to fruition.

Being invited to have a say, take a seat at the table, have input into policy is both important and worthwhile. But it is only ever part of the story. Having input and developing sets of words is the start of the process, not the end. 

Whether there is an ALP government that encourages engagement and input, or a Coalition government that is less willing to directly involve charities in shaping policy, the ongoing challenge is to drive real change, particularly in the government departments and agencies that define the regulatory and economic environments in which we all have to work.

Most organisational change is grounded in a simple principle – what gets rewarded gets done. Sustained change is about changing what gets rewarded. The current system is perfectly designed to deliver what it currently delivers. 

While having an agreed policy or a well-developed initiative is a good start, achieving implementation is often much more challenging than developing the sets of words. 

Many years ago I was part of a group that developed a rigorous proposal to provide drug treatment programs to minor offenders in a way that would reduce both the prison population and levels of crime in the community, as well as saving money for the government. The social and economic benefits were both clear and significant. It was a win-win proposal for individuals, their families, the government, drug treatment agencies and the whole community. The proposal took almost a year to develop across multiple agencies, academics, experts and drug users themselves, but it was never implemented.

The Health Department wasn’t interested, because it would mean they had to spend more on drug treatment for people who would otherwise be in prison, but they argued they would gain none of the savings. The reality is that there are no rewards on offer for health bureaucrats who can find new ways to add to the ballooning costs of healthcare in Australia.

Corrections were not interested because they didn’t want to pick up the tab for a health program in the community (where does that end) and having less prisoners did not translate into budget savings within their department. Corrections were partly funded per capita – that is, the more prisoners they had the more money they were allocated. A successful diversion program would reduce their budget.

I could give many of these examples of failure to achieve positive change because the current systems actively discouraged the adoption of better practices. Government departments and agencies can be very resilient and if we expect them to change, we need to think about how we can reward the behaviours we want them to adopt. 

When the election result is finalised, many of us may be celebrating, and some may be very excited by the prospect of a more engaged and caring government, but the work to drive sustainable change within the context of a new parliament will only just be beginning, regardless of who wins power.

It was the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who came up with the saying, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In a few days’ time, Australia will have a different government. No-one can predict the outcome of the election with any great certainty. The result, as always, will come down to a dozen individual seats and local candidates, but even if the Coalition wins another “miracle” victory, and Scott Morrison remains prime minister, we know there will be new faces in both Houses of Parliament. Some of these new faces will be independents. There will also be a new Senate and different senators will be holding the balance of power.

While many in the sector are hoping the Labor party will be able to form government either in majority or with the support of the Greens and some independents, it is important to acknowledge that a change of government on its own does not guarantee a major shift in the legislative and economic environment that charities deal with. 

The same applies to our public service organisations and statutory bodies. A new government does not, in itself, change the way the Health Department or NDIA or Social Services or PM&C or any other agency administers their programs and their contracts with the charities sector. 

What we do know is that if Labor form government, they will seek to re-establish the kind of policy consultation infrastructure that the Abbott government dismantled eight years ago. For the first time in many years, charities may be invited to sit at the table where policies are being framed in critical areas like health, childcare, the environment, the arts, disability, education and employment, housing, aged care, the digital economy, emergency response, etc.

The shadow charities minister Andrew Leigh has already committed to establishing two new committees to guide charity policy developmentand implementation of policies. The work of these committees will be framed around a new blueprint grounded partly in a review of the 2010 Productivity Commission report into the sector:

Under our blueprint, an Albanese Labor government will establish the Not-for-profit Sector Expert Reference Panel to chart out a more productive future for Australian charities. Working with Treasury, business, philanthropy, volunteering and other key stakeholders, experts from the charity sector will work to produce a Sector Development Plan. This plan, which will identify priorities for the sector, will be developed through extensive consultation and will include economic modelling of future scenarios. It will also incorporate strategies to capitalise on emerging opportunities, and consider what could influence the sector’s capacity to respond to emerging risks and limitations.

The panel would be supported by an ongoing Building Community – Building Capacity Working Group. This group will help implement the panel’s recommendations, and help steward the charity and community sector in its role as frontline responders in building a reconnected Australia.

The shadow minister told the Pre-Election Forum at the Connecting Up Conference in Melbourne last week that both these new committees would be based within the Treasury.

CCA is a strong supporter of this policy from the ALP and we look forward to participating in this important work if it comes to fruition.

Being invited to have a say, take a seat at the table, have input into policy is both important and worthwhile. But it is only ever part of the story. Having input and developing sets of words is the start of the process, not the end. 

Whether there is an ALP government that encourages engagement and input, or a Coalition government that is less willing to directly involve charities in shaping policy, the ongoing challenge is to drive real change, particularly in the government departments and agencies that define the regulatory and economic environments in which we all have to work.

Most organisational change is grounded in a simple principle – what gets rewarded gets done. Sustained change is about changing what gets rewarded. The current system is perfectly designed to deliver what it currently delivers. 

While having an agreed policy or a well-developed initiative is a good start, achieving implementation is often much more challenging than developing the sets of words. 

Many years ago I was part of a group that developed a rigorous proposal to provide drug treatment programs to minor offenders in a way that would reduce both the prison population and levels of crime in the community, as well as saving money for the government. The social and economic benefits were both clear and significant. It was a win-win proposal for individuals, their families, the government, drug treatment agencies and the whole community. The proposal took almost a year to develop across multiple agencies, academics, experts and drug users themselves, but it was never implemented.

The Health Department wasn’t interested, because it would mean they had to spend more on drug treatment for people who would otherwise be in prison, but they argued they would gain none of the savings. The reality is that there are no rewards on offer for health bureaucrats who can find new ways to add to the ballooning costs of healthcare in Australia.

Corrections were not interested because they didn’t want to pick up the tab for a health program in the community (where does that end) and having less prisoners did not translate into budget savings within their department. Corrections were partly funded per capita – that is, the more prisoners they had the more money they were allocated. A successful diversion program would reduce their budget.

I could give many of these examples of failure to achieve positive change because the current systems actively discouraged the adoption of better practices. Government departments and agencies can be very resilient and if we expect them to change, we need to think about how we can reward the behaviours we want them to adopt. 

When the election result is finalised, many of us may be celebrating, and some may be very excited by the prospect of a more engaged and caring government, but the work to drive sustainable change within the context of a new parliament will only just be beginning, regardless of who wins power.

Read in Pro Bono News: the-more-things-change


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Media Release: Marginal seat survey – charities are a vote changer

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Media Release: Marginal seat survey – charities are a vote changer

Marginal seat survey – charities are a vote changer

A pre-election survey of over 3,400 voters across the 20 most marginal electorates in Australia conducted for the Community Council for Australia (CCA) by Piazza Research found that: 

  • 91% of voters are involved in charities
  • 91% say charities are important to their community and our future
  • 84% of voters want donations to all registered charities to be tax deductible
  • 57% of undecided electors are likely vote for candidates who want government to work better with charities
  • Over 75% of those surveyed want government to fix fundraising regulations across Australia.

Releasing the new survey findings, David Crosbie, CEO of the CCA said, ‘Voters are very clearly involved with charities and see charities as important to their communities and Australia’s future.  They also clearly expect their politicians to do more than pay lip service to supporting charities.

When asked what needs to change, Mr Crosbie said ‘Charities struggle with political favouritism in grant programs and the lack of longer-term planning.  Charities are constantly told they have to compete in artificial marketplaces.  Governments generally make charities wait quietly outside the back door for instructions while the important decisions are made inside the main house without them. Business and vested interests seem to have the ear of government, not charities.  Charities just want a fair go.’

Charities employ over 1.3 million staff or 11% of the Australian workforce, engage 3.5 million volunteers, turn over more than $160 billion each year (8.5% of GDP) and hold around $300 billion in assets.   

CCA has called for a dedicated Minister for Charities in the next government committed to working with charities in developing sector wide planning and support across critical areas like digital transformation, workforce and leadership, philanthropy and investment, volunteering and fundraising reform. 

Rev Tim Costello AO, Chair of CCA said; ‘If we want a prosperous country, we need to move beyond short-term political decision-making and involve charities and community groups in planning and implementing programs to build a better Australia.  Voters understand that charities matter.  Governments need to show they also understand the critical role of charities in our health and wellbeing, productivity, our environment, our creativity and spirituality, and the capacity to achieve the kind of Australia we all want to live in.’ 

NB. The full report on each electorate is here.

CCA is hosting a pre-election charities forum at 2.00pm on 12/5 at the Melbourne Convention Centre where all the major parties have been invited to present their vision for the charities sector.  The ALP and Greens will present to over 200 charities registered for the event as part of the Connecting Up Conference.

 

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Wasting our time – marginal seat voters have their say

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Wasting our time – marginal seat voters have their say

A new survey reveals voters in marginal seats strongly support fundraising reform for the charities sector, writes CCA CEO David Crosbie in Pro Bono News, 5 May 2022.  

Wasting our time – marginal seat voters have their say, Pro Bono News, 5 May 2022

Pre-election surveys of over 3,400 voters across the 20 most marginal electorates in Australia conducted for the Community Council for Australia by Piazza Research found that: Across all surveyed electorates, high proportions (74 per cent to 92 per cent) of electors wanted to see their local MP make greater efforts to get the Australian government to improve fundraising rules to make it easier for charities to raise money.

CCA will be releasing the full results of the marginal seat survey next week, but what we can now safely say is that voters in marginal seats strongly support fundraising reform for the charities sector. 

This finding is one of many that support the idea that charities should spend their limited time and resources serving communities, not government officials. 

There has already been over a decade of high-level inquiries and reports including royal commissions, Productivity Commission and Parliamentary Inquiries, thousands of submissions, and an endless stream of recommendations. All of them have highlighted the waste of charity resources as a consequence of the current regulations. Every single inquiry and report has called for change. 

What has been delivered in response to all these reports and recommendations are numerous hollow commitments followed by recurring government committees who have wasted countless hours playing word salad footsies as they endlessly debate in-principle agreements and regulations. The years of meetings and discussions have served only to perpetuate the irrelevance of these groups. 

Meanwhile, charities continue to face an ongoing dog’s breakfast of outdated dysfunctional regulation that is strangling charitable fundraising in Australia. 

You cannot help but wonder why this mess exists? Why is it so hard to get rid of these regulations when it is acknowledged they represent the duplicated excesses of bureaucratic overreach? 

The answer is an unfortunate combination of Federation, bureaucracy, the digital world, condescension and political will.

Having sat through countless state and territory officials telling me why harmonisation cannot be done, why their state/territory sovereignty is so important, and how they need to have their own legislation to protect their interests, it seems states and territories are often reluctant to let go of their powers. They want to be able to coerce charities into compliant administrative behaviour.

And so, some jurisdictions continue to insist that Australian charities engaged in fundraising provide their office with a whole lot of meaningless information. To suggest the information they require is not needed, that it makes no difference, and that their work is being duplicated, is to challenge their status as guardians of public concern. To any overzealous self-important state bureaucrat, the work of other jurisdictions is inadequate, so why harmonise, unless of course, the others are adopting your more informed approach?

Most states and territories actively involved in fundraising regulation have yet to move into the digital world, let alone embrace cryptocurrency. They treat online charitable fundraisers as though they are physically raising funds in their jurisdiction. What most fail to acknowledge is that the world, and especially the fundraising world, has moved on from the days when the length of the pole attached to collection boxes had to be regulated because fundraisers were poking their donation boxes into public bars without getting off their horses.

The small local church charity that puts a “donate here” button on their website is still being forced to comply with regulations in most states and territories because the internet has opened up the potential for every small local church to be raising funds from people across Australia.

As I sit at my desk today, however, I can go to any number of well-known websites and make a donation to one of thousands of causes in Australia. The vast majority of these thousands of active fundraisers are outside of any state or territory oversight. There are many more fundraisers I can donate to internationally.

I have shown these sites to state officials and asked what they are doing to regulate them. The response has been to suggest they would be too hard to regulate, that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or even police can be called in for more extreme cases of deception, and so the regulators will continue to focus their efforts on Australian charities.

When I use the word condescension, I mean a gentle form of official disdain, a kind of patronisation grounded in a belief that charities and the people who work in them mean well, but lack the policy skills of seasoned government officials. Furthermore, the work of government officials is self-evidently complex and important, while the work of charities obviously contributes to society, but requires a lower level of skills and has less importance.

If the charities sector was an industry group – like mining, or tourism or agriculture – it would not only be much bigger than any other industry group, it would also be much less powerful than most industry groups. I cannot think of any industry group that would put up with a dysfunctional regulatory system imposing inter-state roadblocks that reduce the capacity of organisations to go about their business. Of course – when it is only charities – not a for-profit industry group – there is little real pressure on government officials to address their concerns.

Finally let us talk about political will. There are incredibly simple solutions available to fix the fundraising regulations in Australia, but they would require that a federal government stand up for charities against myopic state interests. Up until now, no such political will has existed, despite all the fine words.

The ALP has indicated to CCA and the broader sector that if they are elected, they will fix the fundraising mess. Our experience is that this is easily said, but the wait for reform has been long and pointless. In fact, it has been so pointless that less than 20 per cent of Australian charities even pretend to be compliant with all the required regulations – it is just too much work and the regulations are only rarely enforced anyway. 

The Northern Territory government allows all registered charities to fundraise with the simple proviso that they do not engage in misleading or deceptive conduct. That’s it. The regulations covering misleading and deceptive conduct are administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, not the jurisdictions. They already have that role, they already do that work so there is no requirement on the NT government to do anything more than make a referral to the ACCC if an issue arises.

Voters in marginal electorates, charities, experts, parliaments, royal commissions have all supported urgent reform of fundraising regulations. 

Time is up. Regardless of who is in government following the election, if the reform of fundraising regulations is not addressed, CCA will be supporting a call for all Australian charities to adopt the fundraising regulations that currently apply in the Northern Territory. Anything less would be wasting the invaluable support of our donors, our volunteers, and our communities.

Read on Pro Bono News: wasting-our-time-marginal-seat-voters-have-their-say

 

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Media Release: Voters want government to remove interstate roadblocks on charitable fundraising

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Media Release: Voters want government to remove interstate roadblocks on charitable fundraising

A pre-election survey of over 3,400 voters across the 20 most marginal electorates in Australia conducted for the Community Council for Australia by Piazza Research found that: Across all surveyed electorates, high proportions (74% to 92%) of electors wanted to see their local MP make greater efforts to get the Australian Government to improve fundraising rules to make it easier for charities to raise money.

This finding is one of many that support the idea that charities should spend their limited resources serving communities, not filling in duplicate fundraising forms for government officials. There has been over a decade of high-level inquiries and reports including Royal Commissions, Productivity Commission and Parliamentary Inquiries, thousands of submissions, and an endless stream of recommendations. All of them have highlighted the waste of charity resources because of the current outdated regulations. Every single inquiry and report has called for change. But little real change has come.

According to David Crosbie, CEO of the CCA, ‘what has been delivered in response to all these reports and recommendations are numerous hollow commitments followed by recurring government committees who have wasted countless hours playing word salad footsies as they endlessly debate in-principle agreements and regulations. Meanwhile, charities continue to face an ongoing dog’s breakfast of outdated dysfunctional regulation that is strangling charitable fundraising in Australia.’

Rev Tim Costello AO, Chair of CCA said; ‘If any government in Australia is concerned about getting increased value from the donations and funding charities receive, and supporting the 1.3 million workers employed in charities, they could greatly improve productivity by removing the interstate road blocks on fundraising. We should encourage charities to do what they do best, serve their communities.’

Under current fundraising regulations, a small local church charity that puts a ‘donate here’ button on their website is officially required to go through the complex process of registering as a fundraising organisation in most States and Territories. At the same time, thousands of individuals and groups in Australia and internationally run online fundraising through various websites where they do not have to satisfy any requirements other than those imposed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to not engage in misleading or deceptive conduct. Charities not only have to meet all ACCC requirements, but additional separate registration and administration requirements from most States.

CCA is calling on all political parties to commit to reforming fundraising regulations as a priority in their first year of government. The current regulations are unenforceable, unfair and broken.

NB. CCA will release the full results of the marginal seat survey next week prior to a pre-election charities forum on 12/5 at the Melbourne Convention Centre where all the major parties have been invited to present their vision for the charities sector. So far the ALP and Greens have indicated they will present at the forum and over 200 charities have registered for the event as part of the Connecting Up conference.

File: 
PDF icon Media – Fundraising pre election 0522.pdf

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Disaster resilience – what does it mean for charities?

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Disaster resilience – what does it mean for charities?

It is time for charities and community groups to claim their role in the most important challenge facing Australia – the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change, writes CCA CEO David Crosbie in Pro Bono News.

Disaster resilience – what does it mean for charities? Pro Bono News, 21 April 2022

One of the many election announcements over the past fortnight is that the ALP will back Disaster Relief Australia (DRA), a fully-Veteran led organisation which has been working since 2016 to provide relief to communities in the wake of natural disasters, deploying hundreds of veteran volunteers across Australia and the world. 

Under an Albanese Labor government, Disaster Relief Australia will receive $38.1 million over three years to expand this program. The funding will allow DRA to add another 5,200 volunteer veterans to its ranks – a total of 6,700 veteran volunteers able to provide over 13,600 volunteer days per annum. The funding covers costs relating to deployment, recruitment, equipment, and training. No sooner had this been announced than the Coalition agreed to back the same program.

Most people will welcome this commitment. There is no doubt that having additional organised and trained volunteers on hand to help out after a disaster can only be a good thing. And yet, it seems to many of us who have worked at a community level that there is so much more we could be doing to build resilience in the thousands of at-risk communities across Australia.

Even the most ideologically driven ignorant climate change denying groups seem to now concede that Australia is becoming a more difficult place to live with climate change increasing the severity of disasters.

As I have previously highlighted, most of Australia’s emergency response organisations promote the idea of community resilience; this includes groups like Emergency Management Australia and the National Recovery and Resilience Agency. Most have mission statements incorporating their intention to invest in ensuring communities are better prepared for more extreme weather and disasters.

In practice these same groups invest less than 5 per cent of their expenditure on resilience – they typically spend more on running their own organisations.

It is not only the lack of expenditure on resilience within our emergency management organisations, but where the expenditure is directed that poses a challenge for charities. Almost all resilience expenditure is focused on physical infrastructure.

There should be more investment in important physical infrastructure to make mobile phone coverage, power supplies, roads and bridges, water and sanitation, food and fuel, healthcare, housing and emergency shelter all more stable and resilient within communities at risk of floods, fires, drought and other disasters. There is also more that should be done to streamline the provision of emergency payments to those in need.

What is invariably not factored into the limited resilience expenditure is community connectedness. This is despite what we already know from many inquiries into natural disasters, community resilience and recovery. It is community connectedness that drives real resilience when confronting dangerous and difficult conditions. It is community connectedness that drives recovery. Where there is stronger community connectedness, the community responds better to disasters and recovery happens faster. 

The recent floods were yet another demonstration that community connectedness saves lives.

Politicians from all the major parties are often effusive in their praise for communities in their response to disaster, usually highlighting how brave people put aside their own interests and wellbeing to offer support to others in difficult times. But it is hard to find any evidence that politicians or governments positively support the critical community connections that enable the lifesaving rescues to happen. 

Imagine if we invested the time and energy needed to map community connectedness in areas where disasters are likely to occur? Imagine if we then offered to strengthen and expand existing connectedness through investing in the people and the organisations that are already part of the social web of information and support? What if we were to offer organisations that are already facilitating community connectedness additional funding to provide free information, training, and increased resources to strengthen their capacity to support each other and respond in an emergency? Imagine if there were resilience grants directed solely at improving social infrastructure? 

What is much more likely than investment in social infrastructure is that governments will continue to apply old models of bureaucratic resilience building focused on physical infrastructure and telling communities what they need to do. Worse still, governments tend to make it complex and often competitive to do what the government is insisting needs to be done.

The inability of key government emergency response organisations to focus on and support local community driven initiatives is despite all the lessons we have learned during the COVID pandemic, the bushfires, and the floods. It seems government agencies in the disaster management spaces are still wedded to the top-down command and control centralised government responses that we know are likely to miss the mark in responding to what is really needed within local communities.

Most charities have a strong focus on connecting people to create stronger communities. Charities create hope and opportunity by bringing people together. This kind of connectedness is also at the heart of disaster resilience and recovery.

Australia is becoming a more difficult place to live, and it will only get more difficult, even if we are globally successful at slowing the rate of climate change. Many communities will need to become more resilient in the face of extreme weather. So, what are we doing about it? And why are we not offering more support for all those organisations who are already demonstrating they can and do create resilience within communities?

It is time for charities and community groups to claim their role in the most important challenge facing Australia – the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change. 

As the last two years have demonstrated, leaving community resilience to governments who continue to adopt a business-as-usual approach is no longer an option. There must be change, within governments and beyond.

Read on Pro Bono News: disaster-resilience-what-does-it-mean-for-charities

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Media Release: Smile – it’s time for a picture with a politician!

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Media Release: Smile – it’s time for a picture with a politician!

Election time is selfie time for almost every political candidate.  And what better selfie to have circulating on social media than a cut through photo of a political candidate visiting a local do-good charity or community group? 

Even better when you know that charities and community groups want to encourage these visits from politicians almost as much as political candidates want to be part of them. 

And even better still when you know a charity or community group involved in these visits can win up to $4000 in a new competition for the best picture of a political candidate visiting a local charity during this campaign.

Famous news photographer Mike Bowers has agreed to judge a special weekly award of $2000 for the best ‘poli-pix’ in a competition to encourage more engagement between politicians and their local charities and community groups.  A further $2000 will be available to the best of the best pictures during the campaign.  The Poli-pix competition is jointly run by the Community Council for Australia (CCA) and Our Community: https://www.communitycouncil.com.au/poli-pix  All entries will be considered.

Tim Costello, Chair of CCA, said; “We think it is important for all politicians and all governments to better understand the invaluable work of charities and community groups in their electorates and beyond.  Even if we are just looking at the economic impact of these groups, charities employ over 1.3 million Australians and contribute around 12% of GDP with a total annual turnover above $150 billion.  When we include all the not-for-profits you are talking about at least one in five Australian workers employed in this sector, and even more volunteering.  This is one of the reasons the research shows voters are more likely to back politicians that support their local charities and community groups.”

Denis Moriarty, Group Managing Director of Our Community said; “Community groups are the heartbeat of Australian life, and yet a lot of people down-play their role, not just in our economy, but in all our lives. Our sector is rarely seen as important enough to be in the room when major national policy decisions are being taken by governments.  We want to change that, increase understanding, and have charities and community groups more involved in government decision making to build stronger and more productive communities across Australia.”  

David Crosbie, CEO of CCA said he was looking forward to seeing some outstanding photos.  “I am not sure if Mike Bowers and the judging panel prefer animals or people, ribbons or medals, portraits or action shots, but I am looking forward to finding out.  I hope to see more than a thousand photos from a thousand visits during the election campaign.” 

Charities and not-for-profit community groups are encouraged to invite their local candidates to visit and take a photo – it could win them a prize.  

File: 
PDF icon Media-Poli-pix-competition-120422.pdf

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Wrecking government – the challenge for us all

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Wrecking government - the challenge for us all

Some governments seek to undermine their own role; they deliberately reduce confidence and trust in the government. As the US has shown us, this is very damaging. We need to respond, writes CEO David Crosbie in Pro Bono News.

Wrecking government – the challenge for us all, Pro Bono News, 6 April 2022

There are those who argue that leaders like US President Donald Trump had one driving ambition in seeking political office – to undermine and destroy the existing role of government. Ego and power may also have been driving forces, but there is no doubt that deliberately wrecking the government was considered a positive strategy by many Trump supporters. The idea of effective government runs counter to their ideology.

There are elements of this Trumpian approach to government in what we’ve seen play out in Australia in recent times.

The federal government has consistently been characterised as slow to react and accept responsibility in addressing many critical issues. We first saw this on a major scale in the federal government’s response to the horrific bushfires of 2020. Then during the pandemic – after initially showing what becomes possible when government chooses to support people in need, the government was less than effective. There were inadequate quarantine facilities; inadequate procurement of PPE, vaccines, and rapid antigen tests; and failure to protect the most vulnerable, including those in aged care. Similarly in the latest flood disasters, the federal government failed to call an emergency until it was too late, failed to get the defence force on the ground in a timely way, and has failed to offer co-ordinated support.

These failures at crucial times are underpinned by messaging about a need to limit the role of government. The deputy prime minister famously lamented that he wanted government out of his life. Similar sentiments, about some state governments having over-reached their responsibilities, have been an ongoing theme in Coalition government messaging. In recent media appearances, the prime minister himself has even suggested that some think he’s allocated government resources excessively, to support flood victims.

The reluctance of government to effectively fulfil its role when most needed undermines trust, as does the entrenched cronyism and the blatant application of political favouritism in the allocation of tax-payer funds. We see this behaviour in the initial flood response, in government appointments to high-paying positions including the appointment of unqualified people to head up organisations they oppose (eg the ACNC), and in allocation of money through government grant programs. The recent allocation of $18 million to a newly registered charity – that has no staff, no office, has not provided any services to anyone, and is working directly with the PM’s office to gain endorsement for tax deductibility – is a good example. Clearly it is who you know, not what you do, that matters.

A survey conducted in late March this year found that Australians say Scott Morrison is the nation’s least trustworthy politician, as new figures show he is presiding over a nation losing trust in the prime minister but also government more broadly. 

The PwC Citizen Survey 2022 found that only 22 per cent of the population believe the government exceeds expectations for service delivery.

More powerful than the research reports have been the telling of stories over the past two months. As one Lismore business owner lamented: “People are lost and missing. Cars destroyed by floods are leaking fuel into sewerage all over the streets. We need help. We are running out of drinking water. Army, defence force, police, where are you? We are on the ground deploying and organising it ourselves … we can only cover so much and everyone is brave, but also exhausted.”

Thomas Frank argued in his book The Wrecking Crew that the goal of this new form of right-wing politics was to: “govern so badly, per the interests of those governed, that the very machinery of such government is so damaged that it cannot be restored, even if the voters make it pretty clear they want it back.”

The arguments we used to have about the role government were always grounded in what was best for the people; even the advocates for smaller government made their case by arguing that smaller government allowed for more economic wealth to be shared around, and create real sustainable opportunities across all levels of society. 

Nowadays the arguments people make for smaller government are increasingly linked to failing belief in government, a lack of trust for it to deliver services we need – so we might as well take the benefits of lower taxes and fend for ourselves. 

The government itself has outsourced much of government, deregulated many areas, and 
as Frank argues “turned public policy into a private sector bidding war”. 

The sub-contracting of government policy to private sector interests is another entrenched trait of the current government. In government entities like the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena), staffing has been cut from 70 to 20 under Coalition governments, while payments to private sector consultants and labour hire firms from the ARENA operating budget are now over $100 million.

If we accept that government is, at least to a degree, undermining its own role and betraying the trust that some still hold in its capacity to meet people’s basic service needs, what is the role of charities?

For me, the answer is that we have three core responsibilities. These are to rebuild trust so we can strengthen our communities, to fill the growing gaps left by governments, and to hold governments to account.

Charities play a central role in encouraging the whole idea of us, of collective interest, of the fulfilment that can come from helping others, connecting to others, sharing our pain and our success. We build more resilient communities through the power of us, together, for each other.

The power of us is shown in the resourcefulness of flooded communities left to fend for themselves, but rising to the challenges and banding together to rescue thousands, provide hundreds of thousands of meals, blankets, shelter, and comfort. Individuals, community groups both formal and informal, charities and NFPs all contributed to a response that saved lives and let people know they were not alone.

Charities filled many of the gaps left by government, but they also did something even more important by facilitating the resilience of people collectively supporting each other. This connection-building role, adopted by so many community groups, applies not just in disaster zones, but in much of the work undertaken by charities and NFPs.

The other fundamental role of charities is one I often write about – holding governments to account. In all our community engagements and advocacy for our charitable purpose, charities should be bold and strong about the needs and expectations of the communities we serve. When any government is failing our communities, it is incumbent on all of us to raise our voices and call them out.

The bottom line is that if we allow a self-interested internal wrecking crew to tear down the role and effectiveness of government, we will all pay a heavy price.

 

Read on Pro Bono News: wrecking-government-the-challenge-for-us-all

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