Since our last alert, there have been a number of announcements by the Federal Government focusing on the important objective of the reforms agenda to reduce red tape.

ACT joins South Australia on the Red tape reduction journey.

As we reported last year, South Australia was the first State Government to announce that it would be introducing legislation for compliance with ACNC Act to enable an Incorporated Association to meet its State based obligations.

Last week the ACT and Federal Governments announced that ACT Incorporated Associations registered with the ACNC will be carved out any regulatory requirements under relevant ACT legislation.

This most recent announcement is a welcome step toward reduction of red tape. However, in our view given the number of charities in other states and the Northern Territory, we await one of the larger states to make similar announcements before the collaboration between State and Federal Government can be seen as making significant steps towards this goal.

Commonwealth Grant Guidelines

The third main stream of reform as outlined by the Office for Not-for-profit relates to Funding Reform (government, fundraising etc).

As part of this stream of reform, the Government has recently announced the launch of the revised Commonwealth Grant Guidelines - click here to view.

It is anticipated that these guidelines will take effect in June 2013, in time for the new financial year.

The key changes to the Guidelines which are anticipated to reduce red tape include:

  • Agency staff should not seek information from grant applicants and recipients which is already available to them and in particular must not request any information provided to the ACNC by registered entities.
  • If an entity provides an annual audited financial statement, then financial acquittals are only required when the activity is considered high risk.
  • Grant Templates for low risk grants.

In addition to the red tape reduction, the guidelines specifically include a prohibition on suppression clauses from advocating on policy issues within grant agreements. This is consistent with the proposed introduction of federal legislation introduced in the latest sitting of parliament, to prevent similar suppression clauses at other tiers of government.

We welcome the announcement of the guidelines and we look towards further streamlining of the interaction between the ACNC and other Federal and State Governments in the journey towards red tape reduction and "one stop shop" reporting which are primary goals of the wider reform agenda.

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