Labor MP Andrew Leigh (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

Yesterday the Morrison government’s highly controversial voter ID laws were tossed into the bin where progressives and Labor said they always belonged.

In return, Labor helped the government pass a diluted version of a sweeping bill which will force charities to retrospectively declare donors and lower the threshold to declare political spending.

Critics say the bill, pushed through in the twilight of the parliamentary year with little scrutiny, will lead to a quiet assault on the charities sector, burying organisations under red tape through a raft of unworkable provisions. 

What the bill does

Key to the charity sector’s frustration is the threshold for political campaigners being lowered. Under the original bill introduced in August, charities spending more than $100,000 (rather than $500,000) would have to register as a political campaigner. It also redefined “electoral expenditure” incredibly broadly to include any money spent in relation to an election.

The amendments secured by Labor raised the spending threshold to $250,000, and changed the term “political campaigner” to “significant third party”. But opponents of the bill say they are relatively trivial and do little to ease fears in the sector. In effect, organisations spending over the threshold on matters relating to an election will be classed as “significant third parties” and subject to numerous disclosure requirements.

“The changes are minor, and were done with no consultation with the sector,” Australia Institute executive director Ben Oquist told Crikey. “The amendments didn’t face a Senate inquiry; instead they were rushed in and rammed through the House, and then the bill was guillotined through the Senate.”

Oquist is also concerned the bill retains recent additions which would require charities to retrospectively declare donors.

The Australia Institute plans to launch a campaign for the bill’s repeal. 

Who it targets

The effect of these changes could be that it buries a raft of new organisations under a mountain of red tape by placing additional disclosure requirements and creating a fuzzy line around the kind of political activities that could expose organisations to burdensome administrative requirements.

The breadth of the amendments means there are some fears it could affect groups like “Voices of” independent grassroots political campaigns working to unseat moderate Liberals, although Crikey understands the laws in their current form aren’t considered a substantial hurdle for them. Other organisations, such as the Australian Conservation Foundation, fear they could be drawn into an administrative quagmire.

Meanwhile, philanthropist Simon Holmes à Court, who is involved in a number of climate-related advocacy organisations including “Voices of”, is concerned about the impact the laws would have on donors, and believes the net result will be that fewer people will engage in the public sphere.

“The retrospective nature of the new laws will upset many donors who funded NGOs with the correct understanding under the law that these donations were private,” he said. “To change those laws retrospectively would put some charities and donors in a very awkward position.”

The bill is also not the only restriction the Morrison government has attempted to place on the not-for-profit sector recently. Last week the Senate voted up independent Rex Patrick’s disallowance motion on new regulations which could see charities deregistered for engaging in protests where a minor offence was committed.

The politics

Why did Labor support the bill? Its agreement yesterday appeared almost apologetic, with shadow assistant minister for charities Andrew Leigh telling Crikey that although the amendments were the best achievable outcome for the sector, a Labor government “would revisit this framework”.

Labor’s support appears to be the cost of getting rid of voter ID laws, which it has characterised as “Trumpian” and argued will lead to Indigenous voters being disenfranchised. But the crossbench looked unlikely to support that bill this year. Yesterday independent Senator Jacqui Lambie announced her opposition, and Stirling Griff wants it sent to an inquiry.

What’s less clear is whether the crossbench would have voted against the original charities bill. Independent Senator Rex Patrick, who said the government had sold out the charities sector, called the deal “dumb and harmful”. But Labor was less certain about the votes of his crossbench colleagues. Labor lost votes on this twice, and only agreed to the amendments as a compromise to avoid the original bill getting through.

“When it was clear that crossbench members were refusing to block the government’s attacks on our democracy, Labor managed to secure a number of changes, which will mean that fewer small charities and not-for-profits are caught up in disclosure requirements,” Leigh said.

But opponents of the bill worry about this opaque process of rushing it through Parliament, arguing the lack of scrutiny means we don’t really know who it will affect and how badly.

“You can’t get a worse and less transparent process all in the name of putting transparency on charities,” Oquist said.