E&OE..................
Thank you Anne, my colleague Senator Amanda Vanstone, my other parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. This gathering gets bigger each year . what I choose to call a social coalition. That is an approach to tackling some of Australia's challenges, particularly in the welfare area, a partnership, a coalition, between those who work at the coalface such as our great welfare organisations, philanthropic individuals, the government and very importantly the business community of Australia.
I was asked during a newspaper interview a few days ago to say what kind of Australian society I wanted in one sentence. You always get plenty of warning and plenty of notice to those sorts of questions. And I said I wanted a society that was prosperous and cohesive, generous to its vulnerable, which encouraged people to aspire and achieve. And the social coalition is part of the cohesion and part of the generosity to the vulnerable. I don't say that in any patronising sense because in many ways the social coalition and many of the changes to welfare policy that the government in cooperation with many have championed, overturned some of the more patronising welfare dependant notions of earlier years. We need a society where there's a decent social security safety net, where people can rely absolutely on the willingness of their fellow Australians to give them help in their hour of need or difficulty.
We also need a society that encourages people to leave welfare dependency and re-enter the active workforce. We need different ways of encouraging people to do that, we need role models, we need role models in individuals, we need role models in organisations and we need role models in the business community. And tonight's awards are all about recognising excellence in those areas. Tonight's awards are about saying thank you to the businesses that give of their resources, give of their time, and give of their other talents other than financial resources. I've often said as I say it again tonight I'm not asking businesses to give more, I'm asking more businesses to give because many Australian businesses, and they're represented here tonight and many Australian families and individuals have magnificent, wonderful philanthropic records and philanthropic traditions and it's often not recognised by the Australian community the depth of generosity of many of our citizens over long years.
Business and community partnership group that I will be meeting with Amanda Vanstone later this week brings together some of Australia's most successful and best business brains. It also brings together many of the leaders in the welfare sector. And it brings together people who are committed to the notion of community and business partnerships. And I welcome so many of the members of that body who are with tonight.
As you are aware several years ago I announced a number of changes to the taxation act that were designed to provide people with more incentive to give and to provide bequests and other charitable contributions. And they have already begun to make an impact on the pattern of giving that I've sought the advice of a number of people including David Gonski and others who are here tonight in giving the government advice regarding those taxation concessions. In May of last year the parliament passed a package of measures worth $51 million which provided a range of income tax and capital gains tax incentives for those who make donations to property, including gifts under the cultural gifts programme and donations to environmental and heritage organisations. In March of this year I announced two new tax initiatives to further encourage greater corporate and personal philanthropy. An averaging provision to allow income tax deductions for all donations of property to deductable gift recipients to be spread over five years and the release of guidelines for prescribed private funds to provide businesses, families and individuals with greater flexibility to start their own trust fund for philanthropic purposes.
To build on these initiatives I can tonight announce a further measure to encourage philanthropy, I'm announcing our intention to amened the income tax law, to allow income tax deductions to land holders who enter into perpetual conservation covenants for no consideration with deductable gift recipients. This measure was recommended by the partnerships taxation working group. Last year I asked the group to review the recommendations outlined in the CSIRO report Sustaining the Land. The conditions applying to the deduction will be consistent with the existing gift provisions in the tax law in relation to donations of land and other property. Deductions will be available for convents that are supported by state legislation and accredited by the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment.
This measure will provide an incentive for land holders and environmental philanthropic organisations to enter into conveyance to conserve land in perpetuity in order to maintain its environmental value for all Australians. The measure complements recently announced changes to the Capital Gains Tax rule which ensure that land holders who set aside part or all of their land for conservation in perpetuity considerations are not disadvantaged. I want to thank those on the partnership responsible for this recommendation.
Looking ahead, next year will be of course a year in which the major recommendations of the McClure report which have been adopted by the government regarding welfare reform will begin to be implemented. We're investing something in the order of $1.7 billion over a number of years to give affect to the programme of Australians working together. The notion that every Australian should be encouraged and supported to participate in Australian society was central to the recommendations of the report of the reference group chaired by Mission Australia's Patrick McClure, a partnership member, and was a guiding principle of our welfare reform package.
A key role of the community business partnership will be to work with business and the community to increase opportunity for people with disabilities, mature aged people, indigenous people and parents returning to work.
And also ladies and gentlemen you will be aware that at last year's awards presentation I announced an independent inquiry into definitional issues related to charities. It was high time in our view for a review because the current common law definition of a charity is based upon an English legal concept going back to 1601. And although it may have served us fairly well over the last 400 odd years, we thought it was reasonably timely even in the context of how the bureaucracy and government move rather slowly, we thought it was rather timely after 1601 that we should have another look at it.
I indicated that the partnership would play an important role in the review and later announced that David Gonski would a member of the review committee along retired justice Ian Shepherd as chairman and Robert Fitzgerald a former member of ACOSS and a former director of the Society of St Vincent de Paul. I'm pleased to say that the committee's report has been received by the Government and I expect to release for public comment and public scrutiny very shortly. I think in the main it's an excellent report, I think its contents will be reassuring to the charitable sector and I want to take the opportunity to again assure the welfare sector that the purpose of this inquiry was not to make it less attractive and to reduce the incentives for people to contribute to charities but rather to provide a long overdue overhaul of the law applying in this area.
Can I conclude my remarks for tonight by thanking all of you for the contribution that you have made to the spirit of the social coalition, the contribution you have made to the notion of Australians pulling together to solve our common problems. I don't think there is a society in the world that has the capacity to generate the cooperative spirit that we are able to generate in this country in getting people with different responsibilities, the government contributing its bit, the welfare sector its expertise and compassion, the business community its skill and its resources, and importantly philanthropic individuals who only want to make the life and the being of their fellow Australians a little easier and a little happier. And the partnership awards are a recognition of the excellence in this field and the fact that we have double the number of people here tonight and that the fact that it is now a permanent fixture on the annual political calender here in Canberra speaks volumes for the popularity of the concept and I think it says a great deal about the warm inner feelings of the Australian community and this kind of response says to me that there's nothing wrong with the heart of Australia, there are a lot of people out there who want to help their fellow Australians, they want to give something back, they want to say thank you to Australia for making life good for me, can I make life better for some of my fellow Australians.
Thank you.
[ends]