MICHAEL MULLINS’ TINY LETTER

In the 20 years before the Productivity Commission started its work on the not for profit (NFP) sector, there was a near unanimous call from sector leaders for a single national regulator. The Industry Commission took note of the sector's concerns, and its support led to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), which the current Federal Government is now moving to abolish.

Charities wanted more so-called red tape because it would help to establish themselves on a more professional and protected footing, even though many had operated successfully for more than a century. The changes would include increased transparency and better accounting, and would lead to greater public trust.

In the midst of the current government's move to repeal the ACNC legislation, it's worth remembering that the analysis and consultation carried out by the Productivity Commission between 2008 and 2010 was rigorous. The Commission's report distilled many of the findings of the previous 20 years. In particular, these highlighted that the impact of Australian NFPs was being systematically hampered by the lack of a single, national regulator.

This was followed by an extensive Treasury consultation with the sector and two parliamentary inquiries before the process of consultation linked to draft legislation was pursued by the former government.

The NFP sector is diverse, and it's not surprising that there are contrasting views on the value of the ACNC. Melbourne Catholic Education executive director Stephen Elder sees it as an extra layer of red tape that takes attention away from funding and delivery of services. But St Vincent de Paul CEO John Falzon believesit is a 'move towards a more supportive and less burdensome regulatory system'.

Catholic Health Australia CEO Martin Laverty and the Catholic Bishops' General Secretary Fr Brian Lucas favour compromise. Lucas recognises the necessary expertise in charity law offered by the ACNC but is worried that the construction of a 'league tables' style public portal containing financial data is open to simplistic and misleading interpretation, particularly by the media. He told Eureka Street: 'Transparency is mediated, which is the problem. The public doesn't get the full picture.'

While it is not surprising to see such a variety of views across such an exceptionally diverse sector, there has rarely been such an extensive period of consultation and legislative in Australian history. Caritas Australia CEO Paul O'Callaghan has had extensive experience with a number of NFPs. He told Eureka Streetthat three independent surveys conducted since the ACNC came into being also demonstrated the vast majority of sector leaders want to retain a single, national regulator which is independent from the Australian Tax Office.

'We all recognise that a new government has the power to act as it wishes. The question is why it would proceed on the path to repeal the ACNC in the absence of any evidence that it has failed and at a time when the vast majority of Australian charities remain very strong supporters of the existing legislation. For so many charities this will simply lead to a steady increase in their red tape costs over the coming decades.'

It is believed that 80 per cent of NFPs support the ACNC. But despite many requests, the Federal Government has yet to explain why it has decided to deny the overwhelming push for more than 20 years from the sector's leaders for a regulatory body. Vinnies' John Falzon describes it as 'ideological opposition'. We will never know whether he is right until the Government moves from its culture of secrecy and gives clear explanation of the policy imperatives that are driving it to dismantle such an extensively considered piece of legislation.

Fingers have been pointed from both sides of the arts sponsorship debate. There are the nine artists who boycotted the Sydney Biennale because it would be accepting money sourced from Transfield's morally repugnant contract to run the Manus Island detention centre. Meanwhile Federal Arts Minister George Brandis and other critics have described the artists as a 'lynch mob', suggesting the board of the Biennale had allowed itself to be 'bullied' by the artists when it decided to reject Transfield funding.

The fiasco has humiliated the much respected Belgiorno-Nettis family, who have been regarded as generous and principled supporters of the arts for many years. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull denounced the 'vicious ingratitude' of the boycotting artists and their supporters. Biennale board chair Luca Belgiorno-Nettis tended his resignation and said he and staff members had been 'vilified'.

Belgiorno-Nettis described the protests as 'naive'. Gabrielle de Vietri, the artist leading the Transfield campaign, said other companies profiting from the policy of offshore detention centres would also be scrutinised. Artists know that they need financial support but realise that accepting donor funds implies a certain acceptance in the public eye that common values exist between them and their sponsors. 

It is a fact that supporting the arts gives moral respectability to corporate entities such as banks and mining companies, which often have a reputation for greed and exploiting people and natural resources to improve their own bottom line. Most artists have a well developed sense of moral purpose that is integral to their work, and this can be compromised by their acceptance of funds from sponsors involved in morally dubious activities.

By definition artists are compromising their principles whenever they accept funds from business. Those who believe they can accept sponsorship and remain pure are, as Belgiorno-Nettis says, naive. If we accept this, we can focus on cultivating the best possible relationship between the artists and the sponsors. Crucial to this is the quality of the conversation that takes place between the two parties. 

Sponsors can start out with a preoccupation on how their 'investment' in an artist or arts event can help to improve their bottom line. But conversation with the artists can lead them to consider that their financial 'investment' can contribute to a better world for all by making the moral vision of the artists more far-reaching and sustainable. For their part, the artists can learn from the sponsors how to bring home their message and their work to a wider public.

Joanna Mendelssohn of the University of New South Wales alludes to the opportunity there is for conversation between artists and sponsors: 'The great value of visual arts events is that it is easy to have conversations while looking at art — opera and theatre tend to demand silence except at interval.'

The threats and name-calling of recent weeks have been a conversation killer, a setback for both artists and business. The artists were correct when they declared that the mandatory detention of asylum seekers was 'ethically indefensible' and consequently it was not fitting for them to be associated with Transfield. But it would have been better to have brought it up in the form of person to person informal conversation between artists and representatives of the sponsor. Artists could then withdraw if the conversation did not bear fruit.

Aside from discussion of the fate of Section 18C, there is no question that news media are becoming more powerful as players in our democracy and that they will continue to act as staunch free speech advocates. That is not surprising because free speech principles enshrined in law give investigative reporters and shock jocks alike the legislative freedom they need to do their job.

However if media organisations are arguing for a change to the Racial Discrimination Act, they need to match their free speech demands with rock solid accountability in regard to accuracy in reporting. Currently it's largely traditions of professional practice such as journalists' fact checking that is holding them to account. These are mirrored in the codes of the government and industry regulators such as ACMA and the Press Council, which offending media often treat with derision.

In this context, it is regrettable that there are demands for less — rather than more — accountability for accuracy in reporting. During the week, the Australian Financial Review covered demands for a weakening of accuracy codes, by a lobby group representing the half Murdoch owned pay TV operator Foxtel. 

The Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association (ASTRA) made the demands in a submission to the Contemporary Community Safeguards Inquiry that is being undertaken by the government media regulator ACMA. ASTRA claimed that it is often difficult for 24 hour news channels such as Sky News Australia to assess the reliability of information in a fast-moving rolling news coverage. 

The old days of verifying information through several sources before publishing are gone. This calls for a new form of accuracy, including transparency about the state of knowledge, the nature of any source being relied on, as well as the capacity to clarify information as a story develops.

ASTRA is correct. Unverified YouTube video of atrocities in Syria may be all a news channel has to go on. However it only misleads viewers if an apparent atrocity is reported as fact, or even probable fact, when the video may have been planted on YouTube by one side of a conflict bent on manipulating international public perception in its favour. 

ASTRA's proposal is that unverified reporting can be done with qualifiers such as a statement that the video is from an unverified source. This is common practice already and it doesn't work because visuals — verified or not — speak more loudly than words. 

With regard to changing Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, there's a strong argument for the status quo, in order to protect the right of individuals and groups from vilification. But if the Federal Government insists upon changing the law to give preference to free speech, it must include robust legislation to penalise journalists and media organisations who get their facts wrong. 

orrect in its determination to be unsentimental in its attitude to financial assistance for Qantas. At the time of writing, it appears to have discarded earlier ideas of assisting the struggling airline by means of a debt guarantee. Instead it is pushing for Senate support to level the playing field through an amendment to the 1992 Qantas Sale Act to allow substantial foreign ownership.

The level playing field is certainly the only way to go if we cannot articulate and justify why we need a national carrier. So far Labor's attempt to do this has been quite fatuous, with shadow transport spokesperson Anthony Albanese focusing on the idea of Qantas planes in the sky being an advertisement for Australian tourism. His leader Bill Shorten has simply criticised the Government for the loss of 5000 jobs and made the facile suggestion that 'we would be the bunnies if we just waved goodbye to an Australian icon'.

It's time that defenders of the need for a national carrier produced substantial arguments to counter the growing acceptance that its time has passed.

The idea of a national (or 'flag') carrier is a legacy of the time when governments took the lead in establishing airlines to serve their populations because the high capital cost of doing this was not attractive to business. Now we have large overseas carriers such as Emirates that are much better equipped to take the financial risk and provide affordable air travel because of their economies of scale. They can provide comfortable and efficient international flights to Australia, and offer extensive domestic services through their equity in Virgin Australia.

It is also important to disentangle talk of a national carrier serving the national interest from the often ugly phenomenon of nationalism. Underlying mention of Qantas as an 'Australian icon' could be the sentiment associated with the 1990s resurgence of nationalism and its racist undertones.

We had Pauline Hanson's warning that Australia was 'in danger of being swamped by Asians'. A few years later there was John Howard's 'Fortress Australia' response to refugee arrivals and his popular vow that 'we will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come'. Now both sides of politics talk about nationalism in terms of sovereignty and border protection.

We can possibly interpret the results of an Essential Media poll released last Monday as an indication that the large number of Australians who want the Government to 'stop the boats' would also like to see Qantas re-nationalised, at least in part. It is true that the timing and execution of the re-nationalisation strategy worked for Air New Zealand after it nearly went out of business in 2001. But times have changed, with the rise of the airlines from the Arab Emirates. An amendment to the Qantas Sale Act would be Qantas' best hope for survival.

If, on the other hand, a foreign owned Qantas is not palatable, we need to move beyond the current jingoistic (and arguably racist) arguments for proper government support. 

Health minister Peter Dutton hassaid he would like to ‘start a national conversation’ about how to meet Australia’s spiralling health costs. Many believe he is really saying that a $6 ‘co-payment’ fee for GP visits is on the table and likely to be announced in the Federal Budget in May.

Nobody denies that the government needs to do something to address rising costs. The $6 co-payment is a quick and easy temporary fix that would put off the day when the government has to tackle the vested interests that are arguably the major cause of the inefficiencies that have made our health care system prohibitively expensive.

Just one example of these vested interests is the pharmaceutical industry, which supplies 86% of the medicines that are available in Australia under the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme. (PBS). A Grattan Institute study has demonstrated how the industry body Medicines Australia has been able to manipulate compliant governments to inflate prices to the extent that Australia is paying sixteen times more than the UK and New Zealand for seven key drugs.

Supporters of the $6 co-payment argue that 80 per cent of patients are bulk billed and make unnecessary visits to their GP because there is no financial disincentive. The problem is that the co-payment would also act as a disincentive to necessary visits, especially for the poor. Co-payments already account for 18 per cent of Australia’s total health funding, and a 2012 Australian Bureau of Statistics survey found that one in 15 sick Australians has put off seeing a doctor because it cost too much.

More than $100 billion of public money goes to fund health services each year. Clearly a significant proportion of the amount is not going to where it’s needed most. It’s up to governments to ensure certain groups cannot legitimately derive excessive remuneration for their provision of health care services while ill taxpayers are denied value for money. 

Experts argue that the system needs to be better organised to give more priority to preventative health, and to rein in waste and duplication. Why subsidise private health insurance when insurers such as Medibank Private are making annual profits as large as $185 million? How can we justify the existence of nine separate government health care bureaucracies in a country of 23 million people? It’s not fair to the Australian people to overlook these questions while giving priority to dubious easy solutions like the $6 co-payment.

For their part, all those involved in the health care sector may look into their hearts and examine their motivation. What does the ‘care’ in health care mean to them? Are they more attracted by the substantial economic benefit (available to some but not all), or do they have a genuine vocation to care for their fellow human beings who have fallen ill? 

In his message for the World Day of the Sick earlier this month, Pope Francis seemed to propose the Good Samaritan as a role mode for health care providers. The Good Samaritan did not have personal financial gain on his mind when he opened his heart and bandaged the injured man on the road. Not even a co-payment.

The ANZ Bank faces a huge payout after a class action by its customers secured a partial but significant victory in a multi-million dollar legal battle against its credit card late payment fees.

In a landmark legal decision in the Federal Court last Wednesday, it was determined that the bank had been illegally imposing penalties for late payments on credit cards.

The class action coincided with a campaign by consumer advocacy group Choice to have fees brought into line with the real costs to the banks. The bank might charge a late payment fee of $45 even if the late payment costs the bank as little as $5. 

Choice chief executive Alan Kirkland says charging excessive fees — otherwise known as price gouging — is 'a draconian measure that disproportionally impacts some of the most vulnerable consumers in our community'. He told the Financial Review: 'Fees should be an accurate reflection of the costs faced by businesses when customers are unable to make payments on time. It's not the role of a business to punish customers.'

A 45-year-old labourer who participated in the class action told AAP that a late payment of wages from an employer or a computer glitch that was the bank's fault would delay payment of his credit card bill for a couple of days. 'When you are struggling to get by each week with wages to pay your bills, another $40 to $50 out of payments puts you behind the next month.'

The class action sends a clear signal to banks — and other service providers such as Telstra and Optus — that they cannot exploit their relationship with customers without legal foundation. 

Such exploitation — whether it is illegal, or simply unethical — is closely related to the practice of usury, which refers to lending money at an exorbitant rate of interest. Usurers have been taking advantage of vulnerable people since ancient times. 

The most notorious contemporary example has been 'pay day loans', which can charge interest of 1000 per cent or more. They were partially banned in March last year but remain a problem. Many single parent families or people who have lost their jobs feel they have no choice but to go to these predatory lenders because they cannot pay rent or utilities and sometimes they cannot even afford sufficient food. 

Last month, Pope Francis described usury as a 'dramatic social evil'. 'When a family has nothing to eat, because it has to make payments to usurers, this is not Christian, it is not human! This dramatic scourge in our society harms the inviolable dignity of the human person.'

Australia is fortunate to have regulation in place to protect consumers from predatory business practices. But it's not all good news. The Federal Government came to office promising to lessen the burden of regulation to make it easier for businesses to function. That may help the economy, but it also assists unscrupulous corporations and individuals to exploit consumers.

An example is its likely imminent winding back of the hard won Future of Financial Advice reforms that were about to take effect. This will legalise deceptive conduct by financial planners and banks that provide clients with non-objective financial advice giving the best financial return to them rather than the client (e.g. commissions).

We've seen with the case against ANZ that laws can protect ordinary people against exploitation by unscrupulous corporations and individuals. We need to have them strengthened rather than weakened.

Those who understand the role of public service broadcasting in a democracy have dismissed as absurd Prime Minister Tony Abbott's accusation that the ABC is unpatriotic. 

Speaking to Ray Hadley on commercial radio station 2GB, Abbott criticised the ABC's coverage of news stories relating to Indonesian spying leaks and asylum seeker abuse claims. He said: 'A lot of people feel at the moment that the ABC instinctively takes everyone's side but Australia's.'

Even the Government's own Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the comment when speaking to Leigh Sales on 7.30. 

There is nothing in [the ABC Charter] that says that it should be nationalistic. The big issue, Leigh, is accuracy and balance and this is where you as a broadcaster and the ABC have got a very different role to, say, a talkback host on commercial radio 'cause you have to be — you are bound to be balanced and objective, accurate and fair.

Turnbull should make a fine Communications Minister if he is able to impress upon the Prime Minister this grasp of the essentials of public service broadcasting, which has nothing to do with patriotism or nationalism. 

Far from it in fact. Being patriotic is about selling a nation's positive self-image within and beyond its borders. Like selling in general, it gives priority to persuasion and good feeling over truth and a balanced perspective. 

But it can be electorally rewarding for a government to have voters deluded into knowing only what is good about their nation and their government's performance. They are shielded from knowledge of ugly realities such as the country's shameful treatment of asylum seekers. Media manipulation is a successful strategy of leaders of pariah states such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, who manages to remain relatively popular despite his appalling record of service to the people. 

If patriotism took hold of our public service media, we'd need to resort to foreign media to discover unpalatable truths about our country such as the living conditions of Indigenous Australians. Already we sometimes learn from foreign media hard truths about our nation that are ignored or glossed over by our own media. 

Unfortunately the ABC has muddied its own waters with its pursuit of the non-core activity of running the Government's Australia Network international television service. The network's role is described as 'soft diplomacy' on Australia's behalf, and its mission is precisely patriotism. There is no mention of truth, accuracy and balance on the 'about us' page of its website, because that's not the essence of what it's about. What matters most is the 'uniquely Australian perspective'.

So the Government could be doing the ABC a favour if it axes the Australia Network in the May Budget in line with media speculation during the past week. The ABC would be left to pursue unambiguously its mission of truth, accuracy and impartiality in reporting good and bad news about our nation and its government.

In both the United States and Australia, General Motors has been portrayed by cynicalcommentators as a government-sponsored employment agency and not a proper business. They miss the point that subsidised companies and their government patrons are investors in human capital, and that it's human capital — rather than money — that makes a society work. 

Human capital is the combination of competencies and creativity that enable a person to perform a task that produces both personal fulfilment and economic value. The idea is that the subsidies will contribute to both the wellbeing of the workers and financial profits of the company in a manner that brings mutual benefit without exploitation on either side. In the case of car manufacturing around the world, the alternative is workers without jobs and companies without profits.

Pope Francis says that workers without jobs adds up to workers without dignity. 'Work means dignity, work means taking food home, work means loving!' A society where 'money is in command' inevitably lays waste its workers, and the young and old people who depend upon them. 'We must say: "We don't want this globalised economic system which does us so much harm!"'

A successful nation doesn't need a car industry, but it must have its working age citizens employed, or they and their families will suffer the depression and economic hardship that are characteristic of a society where money comes before love. If a government kills a car industry by withdrawing subsidies, it must have in place a secure plan that will ensure those who lose their jobs retain their dignity. The best way to do this is to make sure they have jobs to go to. The government is effectively an employment agency, with employment so fundamental to the wellbeing of the citizens that make up the nation.

Because a government must avoid taking its workers for granted, decisions that have consequences for employment are among the most serious it needs to take. The reporting of the current government's actions with regard to Holden suggest it may have been cavalier in the way it dealt with the parent company General Motors when so much human capital was at stake. Moreover it has no obvious plan for dealing with the total fallout for employment, including the likely flow on for Toyota workers. 

The loss of jobs in the automotive industry has occurred against a background of rising unemployment, according to figures announced on Thursday. But the trend is even bleaker, with NSW treasurer Mike Baird gloomily predicting an extra 20,000 unemployed workers in the next financial year. He says 'this is not the time to be complacent'. 

While it seems he might be playing the role of Scrooge at Christmas time, Baird has the right attitude and a lesson for his Federal Liberal colleagues. In the end, peace on earth and goodwill to all men and women will not be a reality for those out of work.

Discussion of government assistance to Qantas is inevitably clouded by emotion, despite increasing commentary on management blunders. No patriotic Australian wants to see the ‘flying kangaroo’ go out of business, as Australia’s other airline icon Ansett did a little more than a decade ago. But if Qantas is to properly serve the Australian people, it has to be on the basis of good business and not emotion.

There is a real possibility that the world’s oldest continuously operating airline could fail, in a fast changing aviation marketplace that requires companies to have the ability to attract vast amounts of capital in order to survive. The bad news for Qantas is that the credit rating agency Standard and Poors has downgraded Qantas to junk status, which means it will lose comparatively easy access to the funds it needs to survive. 

This follows the airline’s advice to the Australian Stock Exchange on Thursday that it is in big trouble. It cited an underlying  $250-300 million loss  before tax in the six months to 31 December. This is forcing the loss of another 1000 jobs, and the share price has plunged in recent days. 

There is consequent pressure for a massive government cash injection to help Qantas return to profitability and put the brakes on its successful competitor Virgin by halting a $350 million capital injection by its foreign shareholders.

However lessening competition means only one thing for the Australian people, and that is higher fares. This would mean a reversal of one of the great economic miracles of recent times that has proved capitalism can promote social inclusion. That is the explosion of competition in the global aviation marketplace and the low fares revolution this has produced. 

As recently as two decades ago, low income citizens of western countries could not afford to fly. In the new age of competition and low fares, many people living close to the poverty line can fly interstate or even overseas to visit family or attend to their business and cultural needs. But if the Australian Government helped Qantas out of trouble by making it less attractive for foreign airline interests to invest in the Australian market, fares would rise significantly and flying would once again become the preserve of the wealthy.

The improvement in the access of ordinary people to the skies ranks alongside advances in health an education that have improved the lives of many. Pope Francis said as much in his recent apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium when he suggested ‘we can only praise the steps being taken to improve people’s welfare in areas such as health care, education and communications’. In the section headed ‘No to an economy of exclusion’, he insisted that ‘those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it’.

According to the pope’s critique, any government assistance to Qantas that thwarts competition will also thwart those on the margins of society who have been enabled to fly by the low fares that are the result of competition. If the flying kangaroo cannot compete, it should be put out of its misery, or at least change its management. 

Prime minister Tony Abbott chose his words carefully when he said in Parliament on Tuesday that he 'sincerely regret[s] any embarrassment that recent media reports have caused' Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. 

It is always good to express regret in these situations. But did he mean that the media was doing its job and that the embarrassment was collateral damage? Or was he regretting that the media was out of line when it published details of Australian spying on Indonesia?

Some conservative voices have made no secret of the fact that they blame the media for damaging Australia's relations with Indonesia, and they should be punished. Outspoken monarchist Professor David Flint tweeted that the Government should retaliate against the ABC by reviewing the ABC's overseas broadcasting contract. 

Significantly, Murdoch commentators Chris Kenny and Rita Panahi berated the ABC and The Guardian for what Panahi called their 'callous disregard for the consequences'. 

This utilitarian argument of Kenny and Panahi violates the fundamental principle of virtue ethics. Its ideal is that we should give priority to doing good and avoiding evil over consideration of the consequences of our actions. The same can be said for the campaign of vengeance and intimidation that Flint seems to propose, in that it targets the principle for the sake of achieving a particular political and diplomatic outcome for the nation at this time.

At stake we have freedom of the press, and the independence and integrity of the ABC. These should not be given nor taken away on the whim of political or diplomatic expediency. The same can be said for spying itself, which is a potentially justifiable offence against human dignity. As such, it is akin to the just war and cannot be sanctioned lightly.

ABC managing director Mark Scott made the distinction between the national interest and the public interest when he was before a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra on Tuesday. There's no doubt that publication of the Edward Snowden leaks damaged Australia's short-term national interest, but the more fundamental public interest is served by keeping intact the democratic principles embodied in the above mentioned principles.

As it happens, Scott had his resolve tested during the week when The Australian published a leaked document containing salary figures for key ABC staff members. This publication will cause untold inconvenience and embarrassment for management, and also damage ABC staff morale. But it will also strengthen respect for these principles if the ABC is dogged by them at the same time as the Government. If the ABC can avoid hypocrisy in its response to the salary leaks, the short-term pain will no doubt lead to long-term gain.

It's also important to note that adherence to these principles is not blind. The ABC's guidelines stipulate that its 'editorial decisions are not [to be] improperly influenced by political, sectional, commercial or personal interests'. 'Proper' influence might involve action to avoid endangering the lives of particular individuals. This was the case in 2010 when western newspapers blacked out the names mentioned in Wikileaks information where publication would have left the individuals vulnerable to retaliation in foreign countries. 

Guardian Australia editor Katharine Viner told Crikey that The Guardian acted responsibly in Australia this week, in the way it has overseas in the past: 'We liaised carefully with the relevant government agencies, in order to give them the opportunity to contextualise the document and to express any concerns that were genuinely about threats to national security rather than diplomatic embarrassment.'

An important early measure of Tony Abbott's statesmanship will be whether he manages to rise above the present embarrassment, and resists the temptation to punish the ABC, so that media practitioners can serve our democracy for the long term.