The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO MELBOURNE, DRIVE WITH CHARLIE PICKERING
TUESDAY, 23 JUNE 2026
SUBJECTS: Charity donations; banning card surcharges
CHARLIE PICKERING: Well as I said, we're going to take this right to the top. Dr Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and joins me now. Good afternoon Andrew.
ANDREW LEIGH: Good afternoon Charlie, great to be with you.
CHARLIE PICKERING: Great to have you. So Assistant Minister, can it be done? Can we get totally zero surcharges for charity donations?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, one of the sets of surcharges is going. From 1 October, MasterCard and Visa surcharges will be banned. That'll apply to both credit and debit transactions. So to the extent that this is a surcharge which is based on the credit card fee that goes from 1 October.
To the extent that it's a platform fee, it's fair to say that charities need donations and those payment systems cost money. So it's a business decision for the charity as to whether to use a third-party payment platform. But we've put in place some national fundraising principles, Charlie, and one of those says that charities must always ensure that remuneration to commercial fundraisers isn't excessive compared to how much they're raising.
CHARLIE PICKERING: Isn't excessive feels like it could be a bit of a rubbery term, though? It's kind of like the reasonable man test in a lot of our laws that really comes down to who's being reasonable on which day. It feels like, you know, we heard there the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the fees is more than 8 per cent there. Is that not excessive?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well this will be a decision for the charities. These are, of course, principles, and so we're not going to micromanage every single decision that charities make. Some charities choose to put that fee up-front. Others will fold it into their own administrative costs and won't necessarily show it to the donor. So, partly this is a question about how much the platforms cost. And of course, charities should always be using the most economical platforms that can maintain the privacy and security requirements they need. Partly, it's also a question of whether charities are being upfront with donors, saying this is how much it costs to process your donation or in other cases, just having that fee bundled in.
CHARLIE PICKERING: You know this sector better than I do. Does this actually just, at the end of the day, make it harder for charities to operate? If they have to absorb these fees, it means they get less of the donations at the end of the day.
ANDREW LEIGH: Well running a platform isn't free, and certainly we've seen in some contexts donors' details being hacked. So it is important that those platforms are secure and reliable, that they're not subject to cyber risk. It's reasonable for charities to be spending money on that in order to maintain the integrity of their donor records. But I think there ought to be a principle, and there is a principle that charities do that in the most economical way because when people are donating, they want the money to go to the causes that they really care about; helping the most vulnerable, looking after the environment. Charities do a power of good in our community and our government has a target to double charitable giving by 2030. Part of that is ensuring that more money goes where it's needed.
CHARLIE PICKERING: Speaking with Dr Andrew Leigh, who's the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury. Give me a call. 1300 222 774. Were you surprised the last time you went to make a donation at the amount that you had to spend just to make the transaction? I want to ask Andrew, like, could the federal government actually subsidise charities so these platform fees don't end up eating up donations? I mean, you know, donations end up being a tax deduction. Could these fees also become deductible, and the government says no, we support the sector enough that we'll absorb it?
ANDREW LEIGH: Yeah, so those fees are tax-deductible. In most cases, they'll be part of the donation. And if you look at support for the sector, it's pretty substantial. The latest report from the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission estimated that about half of the revenue that comes to charities comes from governments. And so we provide a significant amount of support. We've never provided more support than the federal government does now for charities. That could occur in areas like food banks and homeless support, in work that's being done by Landcare for the environment.
So we do a lot to back charities. We're strong champions of charitable advocacy after the former government's war on charitable advocacy. And we've been working a lot to get rid of unnecessary paperwork for charities through harmonising the fundraising principles and by making sure that charities are able to spend more time helping the vulnerable and less time on compliance.
CHARLIE PICKERING: Andrew, I'm going to have to let you go because the news is on the way but in 30 seconds. You mentioned that the merchant fees are going to be removed for EFTPOS on MasterCard and Visa cards in the upcoming changes in October. But if someone's paying with Amex, those fees are still going to be there. Couldn't we outlaw them on Amex and Diners Club, and other cards as well?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, that's been the decision that the Reserve Bank made after doing its consultation. So, they made the decision that they would stop the surcharging on the biggest networks; the EFTPOS network, the Visa Network and the Mastercard network. That catches the vast majority of transactions. Australians pay about $1.6 billion annually from these sorts of fees. The Reserve Bank manages the payments network, and so they took charge of that consultation and decided precisely what would work most effectively which is the announcement that takes effect from 1 October.
CHARLIE PICKERING: Very smart, Andrew. Now I have to take it up with the RBA. The Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury, Andrew Leigh. Thanks for your time.
ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks so much Charlie.
ENDS