The Charities Amendment Bill 169-3 received its third reading in Parliament on Thursday 29 June 2023.

Despite every MP in Parliament (outside of Labour) opposing the Bill, and despite the vast majority of submitters calling for the Bill to be withdrawn, the Government has pressed ahead with the Bill, putting Parliament into extended sitting hours in order to push the Bill through before Parliament goes into recess for 2 weeks.

“This is a sad day for New Zealand’s charities,” said Sue Barker, specialist charities lawyer and member of the Core Reference Group for the review of the Charities Act. “The Bill is an example of what happens when you put the fox in charge of designing the henhouse: the Bill will grant new powers for the Department of Internal Affairs to reach into charities and undertake over-reaching exercises of regulatory power in the name of enhancing public trust and confidence. The Bill does nothing to improve transparency and fairness of Charities Services’ decision-making, and will instead undermine charities’ independence, and impose new levels of unnecessary restriction and compliance obligation on charities that will force them to have to try to comply with two conflicting and inconsistent bodies of law”, said Sue.

Charities will not feel the pain immediately: most of the problematic provisions of the Bill come into force 3 months after Royal assent, with the removal of charities’ appeal rights occurring 12 months after Royal assent.

The Charity Law Association of Australia and New Zealand, with the kind support of Grant Thornton, is holding a roundtable meeting on Tuesday 4 July from 5-6pm to discuss the reforms proposed (or missed) by the Charities Amendment Bill. For more information or to register, please click here: https://claanz.org.au/events

About Sue Barker:

Sue Barker is the director of Sue Barker Charities Law, a boutique law firm, based in Wellington, specialising in charities law and public tax law. Since its founding in 2012, the firm has won a number of awards, including Boutique Law Firm of the Year at the New Zealand Law Awards. In 2019, Sue was awarded the New Zealand Law Foundation International Research Fellowship Te Karahipi Rangahau ā Taiao, New Zealand’s premier legal research award, to undertake research into the question “What does a world-leading framework of charities law look like?”. The final report from the Fellowship, entitled Focus on purpose, was released in April 2022 making 70 recommendations for charities law reform in Aotearoa New Zealand. The report can be accessed here: https://www.lawfoundation.org.nz/?p=47523. For more information, please visit: www.charitieslaw.co or www.charitieslawreform.nz.

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