The Australian Senate just voted to disallow the Morrison Government’s charities governance regulation.

This draconian regulation allowed the charities commissioner to deregister charities for minor offences like blocking a public footpath at a demonstration, or for promoting an event at which such a minor offence occurred. It even introduced the Orwellian notion of a “thought crime” where the commissioner could deregister a charity because he ANTICIPATES an offence being committed!

Had the regulation taken effect, it would have cost the charities and not-for-profits sector millions of dollars in legal red tape and had a chilling effect on democracy and free speech. I delivered Labor’s argument in favour of the disallowance motion to the Senate remotely. The video below contains some brief excerpts from my speech.

The Liberals have spent eight years waging a war on charities. THE WAR MUST END. Charities and not-for-profits need an Albanese Labor government that is on their side.