According to Tuesday’s front page, powerful advocacy group Equality Australia is hoping to join trans woman Roxanne Tickle in her Federal Court fight against the women’s app known as Giggle, from which Tickle was barred as a user on the basis of her sex. It’s 1-0 to Tickle so far; she won the first round in court and the case is now headed for appeal, the very foundations of human biology appearing to be at stake.
Consequential as that would seem, our interest in this is really at the margins, away from all the nitpicking over sex and gender: we want to know how Equality Australia magically received DGR status in Labor’s most-recent budget after being knocked back thrice by the charity regulator and the courts. It obviously, clearly, had nothing to do with Governor-General Sam Mostyn joining the organisation as a patron, one month before the announcement was made.
For those unfamiliar with this initialism, DGR status is a perk yearned for by charities because it allows donations to be deemed tax deductible and often results in more money being donated by more people. The pathway to receiving DGR status usually starts with applying for registration as a Public Benevolent Institution through the regulator, the ACNC.
Equality Australia did this and failed at the first hurdle. The ACNC rejected its application because of all the pseudo-activism, noting that Equality Australia had a “non-benevolent purpose of engaging in advocacy to agitate for law reform and social change, and this purpose did not amount to benevolent relief to people in need”. Given that Equality Australia is currently spending donor money on barging its way into the private matter of Giggle v Tickle, to side with Tickle, the ACNC’s point would seem to have been made.
Not content with that rejection, Equality Australia then applied for a review of that decision to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which backed the finding of the ACNC. Then, it appealed to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia, which returned with a verdict of its own in September, backing the decisions of both.
Case seemingly closed, Equality Australia then did what any respectable organisation would do next: it asked the charities minister to bypass all those annoying court findings and just give them DGR status with the stroke of a pen. Which Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Charities Minister, dutifully agreed to, as though due process and fair practice were irrelevant in this country and we all just lived in cronyist Russia or something. Maybe it didn’t hurt either that Equality Australia’s CEO, Anna Brown, is located on the right side of politics, having spent more than a year working for former Victorian Labor deputy premier Rob Hulls.
“With our focus on a positive and constructive pathway forward, we have since decided not to apply for special leave to the High Court of Australia and instead write to you to seek specific listing,” wrote Brown, in November, offering to Leigh what sounded like an offer he could hardly refuse. Can you also hear the smatterings of Tony Soprano? As in, all due respect, we got no need for no baseball bats yet, but in the interests of a positive and constructive pathway forward, you should just give us what we want.
Well, it worked. By late January, Leigh had costed and rushed to cabinet a document signing off Equality Australia’s nomination for DGR status. Who knew it was so easy to override the scrutiny and reinforcing determinations of three institutions devoted to public accountability – the regulator, the tribunal and the Federal Court. Some, as they say, are more equal than others.
And perhaps it’s just coincidence, but the timing: Mostyn was announced as an Equality Australia patron just a couple of weeks later, in February, right before the DGR status was printed for real in the March federal budget, placing Mostyn in the company of Virginia Bell, Michael Kirby and Kylie Kwong.
Or as the Russians say: An old friend is better than two new ones.
On the town
And look, no one is saying the guy can’t have a drink. But barely a week since NAB’s Andrew Irvine came in for scrutiny over his fondness for a tipple with his customers, we now learn that he was brazenly out with, yes, more NAB customers in Townsville on Monday night where, shockingly, yet more booze was served.
And by “we now learn”, what we really mean is that a photograph of the event was posted on LinkedIn by NAB customer Hari Boppudi, managing director of RRETS, a civil engineering consultancy. Boppudi spoke of his privilege at joining Irvine and NAB’s Townsville-based senior business manager Nathaniel King “for an evening of drinks, dinner, and meaningful conversation”. Unlike NAB’s insto investors, we think it’s cool that Irvine is chill enough to enjoy a frothy with his customers (unlike CBA’s Matt Comyn, who insists on being tucked up in bed by 9:05pm every night). Especially when Irvine happened to be on a visit up to Townsville, a city that he thoroughly embraced, judging by the comment he left on Boppudi’s post. If anything were to offend us about Irvine’s conduct it’s his wanton use of exclamation marks – and maybe the spelling mistakes. “Such a vibrant economy up here,” Irvine wrote. “The biggest obstscle (sic) is lack of staff – so much opportunity for people in Nrithern (sic) Queensland!!”
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