This month’s column is an abridged version of ACNC Commissioner Sue Woodward AM's opening statement at a Senate Estimates hearing on 26 February 2025 at Parliament House in Canberra. Read the full statement here.
Since our last appearance before this Committee, we announced action taken against one of the Hillsong group of entities – an enforceable undertaking for Hillsong College (20 December 2024).
The undertaking is legally enforceable and one of the most serious regulatory actions we can take. Hillsong College will have to report to us regularly for the next 18 months and demonstrate they have met the terms of the undertaking.
Hillsong College is required to improve their record keeping, ensure their directors act appropriately, adhere to the ACNC External Conduct Standards and meet their financial reporting obligations.
The ACNC accepted the enforceable undertaking from Hillsong College which sets out the terms that must be met and the actions it has already undertaken to improve governance. A summary of the undertaking can be found on the charity’s record on our Register.
This is not the end of our Hillsong compliance action. We are considering the use of compliance agreements for some investigations into other Hillsong Church charities.
As part of our regulatory approach, we work with a charity to bring it back into compliance if possible and appropriate. If a charity demonstrates remedial actions, we must consider these as part of our decision-making when using our powers.
In terms of our core registration work, we continue to work closely with peak bodies and not-for-profits affected by the self-assessing tax exempt reporting measure which requires not-for-profits that are charitable to register with the ACNC if they want to remain exempt from paying income tax.
We have provided guidance to their members about registration and streamlined the process where possible, to implement a bulk registration process.
We have acted on recommendations from the Senate’s Not-for-profit entities - Tax Assessments report (November 2024) by reviewing our guidance to highlight factors affecting the registration of not-for-profit entities as charities. We have shared our guidance with the ATO to ensure there is consistency in our guidance products.
We are managing the increase in registration applications. We have improved our allocation time. The majority of our cases were received less than four weeks ago, down from four months this time last year.
In anticipation of a federal election, we have updated our advocacy guidance, and we will be promoting that to charities to ensure they understand the rules.
Charities can advocate and run campaigns during elections, including evaluating and ranking policies, if it serves their charitable purpose.
Charities should be careful not to support or oppose a particular political party or candidate as this will run the risk of being found to have a disqualifying purpose. Likewise, donations to political candidates or parties will run the risk of being found to have a purpose of supporting a particular party or candidate. However, charities can spend money on campaigning if it supports their charitable purpose, which includes advocating for policy positions or relevant law changes.
We know charity political advocacy is an area of concern for the public as leading into the last election we received nearly 500 related concerns. Our goal is to help charities understand the rules and guide them back into compliance if an issue arises.