The federal government has pushed the start date for its new not-for-profit regulatory body out by three months to enable the sector to come to grips with the wide-ranging reforms.
The Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission (ACNC) was due to start operations on July 1, but will now kick off October 1.
The move followed responses from the sector during a short consultation period that the proposed legislation and requirements were too complicated to be adopted comprehensively by the beginning of the new financial year.
The commission will take over regulation of the sector from the Australian Taxation Office and is set to redefine ‘charity’, introduce new standardised reporting requirements, provide the sector with support and education and maintain a public information portal.
Interim commissioner Susan Pascoe said the sector had struggled with the number of discussion papers opened for public comment in December.
It found it difficult to keep pace with the timeframe for digesting the drafted governance, legislation and implementation papers.
“If you think about all the matters the sector has to respond to, it is a pretty full agenda,” Ms Pascoe said.
“The two ministers (former assistant treasurer Mark Arbib and Social Inclusion Minister Mark Butler) agreed that it was perhaps a bit too much.”
Gordon Trewern, chief executive of disability support organisation Nulsen, said there had been some concerns raised by industry around the haste in putting the legislation together.
Mr Trewern said more detail was needed around multiple issues, including the new grounds for an organisation having its licence revoked and whether all organisations, large and small, would have the same reporting requirements.
Doubling up on reporting to state and federal governments was also a worry, but Mr Trewern said the spotlight on the sector, thanks to state and federal reforms in recent years, had been a positive.
“The ACNC really is the federal government saying the not-for-profit sector is a big part of the business landscape of our nation and it deserves some consideration in its own right,” he said.
Recently appointed St Vincent de Paul Society (WA) chief executive, Mark Fitzpatrick, said he was supportive of the new start date for the commission and that it was important for a number of outstanding issues within the commission’s legislation to be resolved.
