States and territories dragging on vital national fundraising principles: Justice Connect

All states and territories have now released implementation plans, but Justice Connect said progress remains “unacceptably slow and fragmented”, and no government has adopted the principles in full or switched off existing fundraising laws.

The national fundraising principles were designed to deliver nationally harmonised fundraising laws to Australia’s 60,000 charities, but Justice Connect’s head of not-for-profit law, Geraldine Menere, said governments were failing to follow through on both the spirit and the substance of their commitment.

“Three years on, charities are still stuck navigating a patchwork of outdated, duplicative and inconsistent fundraising laws,” Menere said.

“Having an implementation plan on paper is not success. Success means charities can fundraise nationally under one clear, consistent set of rules – and that has simply not been delivered yet.”

Menere said partial implementation and jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approaches among the states and territories were undermining the core purpose of the reforms, which were created to reduce red tape, simplify compliance and create a single, nationally consistent fundraising framework for charities operating across Australia.

She said governments had also failed to work in a coordinated and collaborative way to support the sector through the implementation and transition.

There had been a lack of consultation with the charity sector and a failure to develop uniform regulatory guidelines to help charities understand and comply with the national fundraising principles in practice, she said.

“The lack of coordination leaves charities in limbo,” Menere said. “Charities are being told there is a new national framework, but they are still having to interpret it through differing state-based lenses. That is the opposite of harmonisation.”

This lack of coordination posed significant dangers, she said, such as entrenching inconsistency, increasing compliance costs, and eroding trust in the reform process.

“If governments do not fully repeal existing fundraising rules and maintain alignment into the future, we will simply drift back to the same fragmented system charities have been trying to navigate for decades,” Menere said.

“The national fundraising principles can still deliver what was promised. But only if governments move beyond plans and deliver real, coordinated action now.

Menere said Justice Connect was calling on state and territory governments to urgently:

• fully implement the national fundraising principles without amendment
• repeal or switch off all overlapping and inconsistent local fundraising laws
• work together, and with the sector, to develop nationally consistent regulatory guidance
• recommit to maintaining harmonised fundraising laws into the future (if yet to do so).