Page 3298 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 October 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
So, applause to the Vikings group, and may the government acknowledge that the people who often know best what happens on the floor are in the clubs themselves, so please use them more.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Public Trustee and Guardian—Part 1.21.
MR CAIN (Ginninderra) (12.06): I have a question that I will continue to ask until I get a satisfactory answer. I have not received that answer thus far. Why was the Public Trustee and Guardian not asked to administer the Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund? As the Chief Minister would be aware, the Public Trustee and Guardian manages GreaterGood, Canberra’s public charitable foundation. It is a very sophisticated operation. It provides people with the facility to create their own tax-effective charitable funds. It requires some expertise in both tax and trusts, obviously with a focus on charitable purposes. According to the GreaterGood website, it can assist individuals and funds to produce perpetual income for a charitable cause. It is not a charity itself, but it links “good people with good causes”. That is very worthy. It assists individuals and organisations to establish their own charitable funds in a low cost, tax-effective manner under the umbrella of GreaterGood.
What we have instead is the Chief Minister establishing his own charitable fund, to provide additional help to the most vulnerable members of our community. As I said, given the complexity of GreaterGood’s scope of responsibilities, surely the Chief Minister’s worthy goal could have fitted under that umbrella—a charitable foundation already established under statute.
I have not had a good answer to the question: why set up an additional charitable function in the territory? It has been outsourced. It has been taken out of the hands of an organisation, the Public Trustee and Guardian, which has a public good role in legislation. The Public Trustee and Guardian was established for the good of the public, across a whole spectrum of activities. Why wouldn’t it be tasked with expanding its role? I have not yet received a satisfactory answer to that question. It requires an extra source of funding and ongoing funding for something that has operated for quite a while.
I leave the question open for an explanation: why doesn’t the Public Trustee and Guardian embrace the Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund operations? It would be appropriate. It is my opinion that it would also be desired, and I do not think the Chief Minister has provided a satisfactory answer to that.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission—Part 1.22.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Total appropriated to territory entities.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video