The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner
National Press Club,
Canberra
Wednesday, 10 June 2026
I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, and acknowledge the vital work that First Nations leaders do to build community.
Thank you to Maurice Reilly and the National Press Club board, my parliamentary colleague Alicia Payne, head of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Sue Woodward and my chief of staff and coauthor Nick Terrell. I’m especially chuffed to have with us today my wife Gweneth, with whom I’ve shared the happiest work of all: building a family and helping build community in our neighbourhood.
Let me start with a story.
In 1864, within the space of four months, two Australian ships were shipwrecked on Auckland Island, south of New Zealand.
The first, the Invercauld, was wrecked on the northwest of the island. Its captain, George Dalgarno, took the approach of ‘every man for himself’. The crew splintered. The strong abandoned the weak. One desperate sailor resorted to cannibalism. Within a year, only three of the original twenty-five had survived.
The second was the Grafton, wrecked on the southeast. Its captain, Thomas Musgrave, took a different approach. His five sailors worked together. They built a hut, shared food, cared for one another and even made a chess set to keep their minds alive. After eighteen months, they sailed hundreds of kilometres to seek rescue. Every sailor survived.
The setting was the same. The social bargain was different.
We economists spend plenty of time talking about capital. Physical capital is roads, bridges and machines. Human capital is education, skills and experience. Social capital is the invisible infrastructure of a country: whether people trust one another, join together, volunteer to help the needy and feel responsible for more than themselves.
When social capital is strong, communities solve problems sooner. Businesses transact with less friction. Governments of different stripes collaborate. People have someone to call when the diagnosis comes, when the house floods, when the job vanishes, when the neighbour needs a hand.
When social capital weakens, a country becomes lonelier, scratchier, less resilient and harder to govern. Everything takes more checking, more guarding, more legal drafting, more suspicion. The national mood gets brittle. Problems that could be solved around a table are left to fester.
That is why I want to speak today about rebuilding trust.
This is a speech about charities and community life. It is also a speech about democracy, wellbeing and productivity.
Trust is national infrastructure. Charities are among its best builders.
In our 2020 book Reconnected, Nick Terrell and I documented a long decline in Australian civic life. Over recent decades, the number of Australian associations per person has fallen by four-fifths, and the share of people involved in social, civic and political groups has declined. Across a dozen large organisations, the membership rate is down by three-quarters since the mid-1960s. The share of people attending a religious service at least once a month fell from half the population in the late-1940s to one in seven. Union membership is down from half the workforce in the early-1980s to one in eight. Compared with past decades, Australians are less satisfied with democracy, and less interested in elections.
On the playing field, three-fifths of sports, including tennis, golf, cricket and rugby, are on the wane. Australians are giving up organised sports in favour of unorganised activities such as walking and gym-going. Our survey research found that the typical Australian had half as many close friends as in the mid-1980s and knew only about half as many neighbours.
The latest General Social Survey suggests this pattern has continued. From 2019 to 2025, the share of Australians who agreed that most people can be trusted fell from 55 per cent to 50 per cent. Formal volunteering through an organisation fell from 30 per cent to 23 per cent. Involvement in social groups fell from 51 per cent to 45 per cent. Involvement in community support groups fell from 25 per cent to 21 per cent. Involvement in civic and political groups fell from 9 per cent to 7 per cent. That is a lot of decline for one survey. If civic life were a cricket team, our nation would be standing at long-on wondering why only seven people had turned up.
Australia remains, by global standards, a generous and cohesive country. Yet the broad pattern is plain. Civic life has thinned. Fewer volunteers. Fewer joiners. Less trust.
That should concern every Australian. A country with fewer volunteers, fewer joiners and less trust is a country with a thinner safety net beneath daily life.
After fires and floods, Australians are magnificent. We donate, cook, shovel and comfort. The question is how to carry some of that spirit into ordinary times. How to make generosity less episodic and more durable. How to turn helping into joining.
This is where charities come in.
A charity is often where an Australian first learns that citizenship is a verb.
It might be the local footy club that teaches a teenager to coach under-10s. The neighbourhood house where a new migrant finds her first job. The community legal centre that helps a tenant keep a roof overhead. The food relief charity that sees hardship before the statistics catch up. The arts organisation that gives a town a stage and a story. The environmental group that turns concern into planting and stewardship.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, citing EO Wilson, argues that humans aren’t just social creatures, we’re ultrasocial. We love to do things with others. In fact, I’m willing to bet that your happiest memories are of times spent with others: playing on a team, celebrating a wedding, holidaying with friends.
Charities do more than deliver services. They create belonging. They carry memory. They build trust by giving people repeated opportunities to work alongside others.
In my own electorate, Stepping Stone Café is founded on the idea that hospitality can change lives. Over the past decade, it has helped more than 60 migrant and refugee women take part in meaningful work. Last year, its founders, Vanessa Brettell and Hannah Costello, were named Australian of the Year Local Heroes. Their model is engaging and effective: English classes, café jobs and partner employers, creating a pathway from language to work, and from work to belonging.
Such connections strengthen politics. Czech president and poet Václav Havel often spoke about how important it was for a democracy to have a strong social life. Havel gave the example of citizens who join together in a beer-brewing club. By taking pride in their beer making, and coming to know others who do it well, they are creating civil society.
A strong democracy needs institutions between the individual and the state. Families, unions, churches, schools, clubs, local media, cultural bodies, charities, neighbourhood organisations and beer-brewing clubs all do this work. They help people practise cooperation. They give citizens a place to speak, serve and belong.
One of the great errors in public debate is to treat charities as subcontractors for government. Many charities do deliver programs, often with public support. Yet their value runs deeper.
Charities can see where official systems are missing people. They can advocate. They can innovate. They can ask uncomfortable questions. A confident democracy lets charities speak.
That is why our government has tried to reset the relationship.
When we came to office, many charities were reeling from the former government’s war on charities, which had seen three open letters from the sector to successive Liberal Prime Ministers, asking them to back off their attacks on charities. Charitable advocacy was under fire, with environmental, legal and social welfare charities being told to keep quiet. The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission was led by a well-known charity critic.
Since coming to office, we have chosen a different path, engaging respectfully with Australia’s great charity sector. Perhaps nothing better illustrates this than the fact that the grouping known as ‘Hands Off Our Charities’ under the former government has rebranded as the ‘Stronger Charities Alliance’.
Our government has made clear that charitable advocacy belongs in Australian democracy. A homelessness charity should be able to talk about housing policy. An environmental charity should be able to talk about the environment. A community legal centre should be able to talk about law reform. A disability charity should be able to talk about inclusion and dignity.
Labor has backed a stronger charities commission. We appointed Sue Woodward, one of the sector’s most respected leaders, as commissioner. Under her leadership, the commission has become more open to the sector and more willing to test what works. Just one example: the commission recently partnered with the Australian Centre for Evaluation to conduct a randomised trial designed to boost on-time submissions of charity Annual Information Statements. (Did you really expect me to get through this speech without spruiking randomised trials?)
Our government has refreshed the charities commission advisory board, bringing First Nations, multicultural and youth perspectives to the table, alongside state and territory representatives. We changed the law to allow the charities commission to better protect public trust by speaking about harmful breaches of compliance.
Giving funds should do what their name promises: give. We have lifted the minimum distribution to 6 per cent of net assets, which is expected to see an extra $60 million a year flow to charities. At the same time, we are allowing funds to smooth distributions over three years. That means a fund can help a charity build something really substantial, rather than being forced into a pattern of small annual grants. Treasury analysis shows that a fund receiving market returns and distributing 6 per cent each year could keep supporting charities for decades, even without further contributions to its assets.
We have also worked with states and territories to establish national fundraising principles. We have created a new tax-deductible category for community foundations. We have streamlined tax-deductible charity processes for environmental organisations, harm prevention charities, cultural organisations and overseas aid organisations. We have removed the two-dollar minimum threshold for tax-deductible donations, helping make small gifts easier, including round-up giving at the checkout.
On top of this, today I can announce that our government will help remove a persistent paperwork problem for charities. For too long, mismatches between the corporate regulator’s register and the charities commission’s register have meant information entered in one place has not always flowed neatly to the other. At charity town halls across the country, I heard this frustration again and again. We are committing over $2 million to help the two regulators better align their registers, so charities can spend fewer hours filing duplicate forms and more time doing the work they were created to do.
Good regulation should protect trust while preserving purpose. The aim is regulation with a backbone, rather than regulation with a clipboard addiction.
Now, I want to set out the next stage of that work.
It begins with a simple proposition: Australia needs a trust agenda.
A trust agenda has four parts.
More places for Australians to give locally.
A stronger culture of bequest giving.
Better digital capability for charities.
Continued partnership with the sector on the reform blueprints now before us.
First, local giving.
One of the most promising movements in Australian philanthropy is the growth of community foundations.
Community foundations are wonderfully practical institutions. They pool local generosity, build endowments, fund grassroots organisations and keep resources close to local knowledge.
At their best, they are a community’s long memory and long horizon.
In Benalla, Tomorrow Today responded to evidence of early school leaving and low literacy by building a twenty-year effort to lift education completion rates. It brought together 124 local groups, organisations and agencies. It mobilised mentors, work experience placements and Reading Buddy volunteers. It helped a community move from diagnosis to action.
In Alice Springs, the closure of the Centralian Advocate during the pandemic left a civic gap. Local leaders responded by establishing a community foundation, with the newspaper as an early flagship project. Nine weeks after the foundation’s first successful fundraiser, Centralian Today was launched. A local newspaper gives a town part of its voice. It reports the school wins, the council arguments, the small business openings and the letters to the editor written in the grand Australian tradition of civic indignation.
In Queensland’s Burnett Inland, Red Earth Community Foundation has worked across North Burnett, South Burnett and Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire. The region covers 28,000 square kilometres. It faces pressures familiar to many regions: young people leaving, population change, energy transition and the difficulty of planning for the long term when funding cycles often reward the immediate. Red Earth helped the region ask a larger question: what future does this community want for itself?
A community foundation can create a table around which others gather. It can keep memory when personnel change. It can hold a long horizon when institutions are tempted by the next quarter, the next grant round or the next headline.
For years, Australian community foundations operated with a structural handicap. They were trusted locally, but the national tax framework did too little to recognise their model.
That has begun to change. The new tax-deductible community charity category gives community foundations a more suitable home in the tax system. Earlier this year, I was pleased to declare dozens of additional community foundations as community charities, allowing them to seek tax-deductible endorsement from the tax office. Our government is also moving to remove the ministerial declaration requirement as the gateway for that endorsement. As an assistant minister, I try to be useful. Occasionally that means getting out of the way.
Good governance and public accountability remain central. But community foundations that satisfy the law should be able to move through the regulatory system quickly and simply.
My goal is for community foundations to become part of the ordinary architecture of Australian life.
Over the coming decade, I want many more Australians to have a trusted local foundation where they can give, bequeath, volunteer or help decide what their community needs.
Canada has more than 200 community foundations. Australia can learn from that experience while building our own model: warm, local, generous and suited to our regions, suburbs, First Nations communities and identity-based groups.
Imagine an Australia in which every major town and region has a trusted vehicle for local generosity. An organisation to which a family can give to honour someone’s memory. A place where a small business can back the town that backed it. A place where a bequest can keep working in the community that shaped the donor’s life.
Community foundations make philanthropy feel close. They help people see that giving is within reach. They turn care into structure.
Second, bequest giving.
Australia is about to experience one of the largest transfers of wealth in our history.
The JBWere Bequest Report estimates that at present around $150 billion a year is transferred through estates in Australia, and that the next twenty years will see $5.4 trillion change hands.
That is a family story. It is also a national story.
At present, only about 1 per cent of bequests go to for-purpose organisations. In the United States, the figure is 4 per cent. In the United Kingdom, it is 4 per cent. JBWere estimates that 7 per cent of Australian wills include a charity, compared with 10 per cent in the United States and 14 per cent in the United Kingdom.
A very large river of wealth is flowing across generations. Only a thin stream reaches the community sector.
That thin stream is still significant. Annual charitable bequests in Australia are estimated at around $1.3 billion. Bequests often arrive unrestricted, giving organisations freedom to strengthen capability, systems, reserves and talent. They allow boards to think in decades rather than months.
A grant often comes with a purpose and a clock. A bequest often comes with confidence and discretion.
To give you a flavour of what this means, a bequest from Jenny and Bruce Pryor helped fund research at the Australian National University into dermatomyositis, a rare autoimmune disease. An $18 million bequest from historian Alan Shaw strengthened the National Gallery of Victoria. A bequest from former Play School director Jennie Mackenzie supported early-career researchers at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre. A bequest from Joy Christensen to the Lost Dogs’ Home is helping build a new veterinary clinic and animal adoption centre.
The common act is simple: I have lived in this community. I have benefited from this society. I want part of what I leave behind to keep doing useful work.
Growing bequests requires culture, systems and trust.
The cultural part begins with more Australians feeling able to talk about death, wills and legacy. Families do better when hard conversations happen early. Communities do better when planning replaces confusion. Charities do better when a donor’s wishes are clear, shared and written down.
The systems part means making the path easier. Many Australians still never write a will, regarding it as a life admin task somewhere between cleaning the gutters and seeing the dentist. Others write one and never consider a charitable gift. Others include a gift that becomes vulnerable to challenge. A good bequest strategy meets each barrier: make will-writing easier, make the giving option visible, make the wording clear and durable.
The trust part belongs to all of us. People leave bequests to institutions they trust. Trust grows from sound governance, clean accounts, clear purpose and visible impact.
Building trust in the community through giving also involves a major role for trusted professional advisers. Lawyers, accountants, financial planners and wealth advisers are already part of conversations about tax, family provision, the family home, superannuation, executors and enduring powers. One additional question can open a generous door: after looking after those closest to you, would you like part of your estate to support a cause, institution or community you care about?
That question treats legacy as more than asset division. It invites people to think about values.
People trust advisers because they have the knowledge and expertise to help them make good decisions, including about giving, and there is an opportunity to build that capability up further. Accountants would be expected to know what a self-managed super fund is. Shouldn’t they also know what a giving fund is, and how to establish one?
Today I want to encourage professional bodies, philanthropy organisations, community foundations and charities to work together to build these professional skills, so advisers can play their part in strengthening a culture of generosity.
Bequest giving should feel less like a niche practice for grand donors and more like a normal part of Australian estate planning.
The great wealth transfer should become a great trust transfer.
Third, digital capability.
Charities have heart. They also need systems.
A purpose-driven organisation needs volunteers and donors. It also needs cyber security, data capability, donor stewardship, evaluation tools, accessible websites and the confidence to use new technology well.
The digital divide in the charity sector is real. Large organisations may have data teams, cyber systems and customer relationship management platforms. Smaller charities may have a laptop, a spreadsheet and a website that badly needs updating.
That gap has consequences. It shapes whether a charity can protect donor data, match volunteers, measure impact, reach isolated people, apply for grants, manage risk and make the most of artificial intelligence.
Infoxchange, led by David Spriggs, has been the sector’s strongest voice on this challenge. Its annual Digital Technology in the Not-for-Profit Sector report shows where charities are making progress, where risks are growing, and where support is needed.
Digital tools can also help rebuild participation.
Digital volunteering can widen the doorway into service. Platforms such as Vollie allow skilled Australians to help charities remotely, making volunteering more accessible for people in regional communities, people with disability, carers and those whose work hours make rostered volunteering hard. DigiVol turns spare moments at home into scientific and cultural infrastructure: in its first decade, volunteers completed nearly 9 million transcriptions of museum labels, archival documents and camera-trap projects. Trove’s Voluntroves have gone further still, correcting more than 500 million lines of text, making Australia’s historic newspapers easier for everyone to search.
We should build on that.
Australia should aim for a charity sector with stronger digital capacity by 2030.
That can begin with a national compact between charities, business, universities, philanthropy and skilled volunteers.
Technology companies can contribute cyber expertise. Consultancies can help charities improve data systems. Universities can connect students with projects that build real-world skills. Philanthropists can fund capability as well as programs. Larger charities can share tools with smaller ones. Skilled Australians can volunteer from wherever they live.
Think of it as a digital working bee.
The old working bee painted the hall and fixed the fence. The modern version can secure the website, clean the database, build the volunteer roster and persuade people that ‘password123’ has had its day. Less paint on the overalls, more two-factor authentication.
This is one of the best ways corporate Australia can support civil society. Many companies already donate money. More can donate capability.
A charity digital compact would have a simple aim: by the end of this decade, more charities should have the tools, skills and confidence to use technology safely and well.
Fourth, partnership on reform.
Two major reports now give Australia a strong reform agenda for philanthropy and the not-for-profit sector.
The Productivity Commission’s Future Foundations for Giving report makes the case for stronger foundations for Australian philanthropy. Its recommendations include major reform of the tax-deductible gift system, better access to philanthropy for First Nations people, rules that give donors confidence their gifts will be well used, improvements to structured giving vehicles, and better public information on charities and giving.
The Not-for-profit Sector Development Blueprint is a ten-year plan developed through consultation with the sector. It identifies areas where charities and not-for-profit organisations say reform is needed, including funding, philanthropy, regulation and data. It also emphasises shared decision-making, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination, community control, workforce issues and volunteering. Looking ahead, it points to the need for better digital capability, more use of evidence and outcomes measurement, and support for innovation across the sector.
The government will continue to work with the charity sector, philanthropy, business, professional advisers, First Nations organisations, regulators, states and territories on the recommendations of both reports.
Some reforms can happen quickly. Others will take detailed design. Some will require legislation. Others will depend on sector leadership, professional norms and institutional culture.
Our aim is clear: more joining, connecting, giving and volunteering, backed by institutions people can trust.
This is also why the relationship between government and charities must be mature.
Government has responsibilities that charities cannot replace. Charity should never become an alibi for inadequate public services. Medicare, public schools, income support, aged care, disability services, housing, disaster response and the justice system are core public responsibilities.
But government cannot replace civil society either.
A government program can deliver a service. A charity can also create a relationship. A government agency can process a payment. A community organisation can notice that someone has stopped turning up. A regulator can protect minimum standards. A local group can create the trust that makes people seek help before the crisis deepens.
Australia needs strong public institutions and strong civic institutions.
The best societies have both.
So what should we ask of each other?
Government should keep improving the operating environment: simpler rules, smarter regulation, support for advocacy and strong charity oversight.
Business should treat civil society as more than a sponsorship opportunity. A firm can lend its tech team, buy its catering from a social enterprise, or make pro bono contribution one of the things that counts in promotion decisions.
Professional advisers should help generosity enter ordinary financial conversations. Accountants, lawyers and planners have a special place of trust. Used well, that trust can widen the social base of giving.
Philanthropy should fund capability as well as programs. A charity with weak systems, poor data and no reserves is being asked to fly through turbulence with a thin wing.
Charities should keep earning trust through governance, transparency and impact. The sector’s independence is precious. So is public confidence.
Citizens should give, volunteer, join and bequeath. Ideally not all in the same afternoon – though the community foundations in the room would be delighted to discuss your availability.
At heart, this is about recovering the habit of acting together. Civil society is a contact sport.
In an age of outrage, that habit is harder to sustain. Social media trains us to react. Community life asks us to commit. A feed gives us the illusion of participation. A committee gives us minutes, rosters, awkward conversations and the miraculous discovery that people who disagree on politics can still organise a sausage sizzle.
That may sound humble. It is how democratic muscle is built.
Every community group is a small school of democracy. People learn to chair meetings, keep accounts, resolve disputes, welcome newcomers, share credit, absorb disappointment and try again. These are democratic skills. A country loses them at its peril.
The decline in volunteering and group membership is therefore more than a social trend. It is a warning about civic capacity.
The good news is that social capital can be rebuilt.
We rebuild it when a young person joins a surf lifesaving club. When a retired teacher becomes a reading buddy. When a local business backs a community foundation. When a donor leaves a bequest to a cause that shaped their life. When a charity upgrades its systems and reaches more people. When a neighbourhood house becomes the place where newcomers and locals meet over lunch.
We rebuild it when Australians move from spectators to participants.
The next decade gives us a chance to do something substantial.
By 2030, Australia has set a goal of doubling philanthropy.
By 2036, we should aim for community foundations to be an ordinary feature of Australian civic life.
Over the same period, we should lift bequest giving from a modest flow into a strong current.
And we should make digital capability a normal part of charity strength.
These are goals for government, the sector, business, professions and citizens.
Because trust cannot be delivered like a parcel. It is built through repeated acts, reliable institutions and shared work.
In Middlemarch, George Eliot wrote that ‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts’. Most charitable work is like that. The mentor whose name never appears in a headline. The treasurer who balances the books after dinner. The volunteer driver. The board member. The donor who gives without fanfare. The person who writes a bequest into a will, then tells no-one beyond family and solicitor.
Unhistoric acts make a country habitable.
They are also the answer to one of the anxieties of our time. Many Australians feel that life is becoming more transactional, more hurried, more fragmented. They sense that algorithms know them better than their neighbours do. They want belonging, but the old joining pathways have frayed.
Our task is to build new pathways.
More local giving. More bequest giving. Better digital capability. Stronger institutions. Deeper partnership.
That is a trust agenda for Australia.
Let me end where I began, on Auckland Island.
The Grafton survivors lived because they acted like a community before anyone came to rescue them. They built shelter, shared labour, kept morale alive and trusted one another enough to attempt a 450-kilometre rescue voyage in a dinghy.
Modern day Australia is a long way from nineteenth century Auckland Island. But the lesson echoes down the centuries.
A country’s future depends partly on what its people can do together.
Charities help Australians do things together. They turn sympathy into action. They turn strangers into neighbours.
Australia has never lacked helpers. We see them after fires, floods and hard diagnoses.
The challenge now is to become a country of joiners again.
A country where more people volunteer through organisations. Where more people take part in local groups. Where more people trust their neighbours. Where more people leave something behind for the community that helped shape them.
Trust will be rebuilt by making it easier for Australians to act together.
That is the work of charities.
That is the work of government.
That is the work of all of us.
And it is work worth doing.
ENDS