McGregor-Lowndes, Myles --- "Introduction" [2010] ELECD 670; in McGregor-Lowndes, Myles; O’Halloran, Kerry (eds), "Modernising Charity Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Modernising Charity Law

Editor(s): McGregor-Lowndes, Myles; O’Halloran, Kerry

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802505

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): McGregor-Lowndes, Myles

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

Introduction
Myles McGregor-Lowndes

This volume about modernising charity law results from a conference held
at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at the
Queensland University of Technology in April 2009. It came at a pivotal
moment in Australian charity law reform, as the first term federal Labor
government began a number of overlapping inquiries touching upon
charity reform. Many hoped that this government would eventually lay
down a blueprint for charity law reform in Australia and perhaps even
Third Sector reform, which had generated only glimmers of interest under
the previous 13 years of conservative administration.
A previous conference was held at the Centre in 2001 ­ the impetus
being the recommendations of the Charity Definition Inquiry,1 which held
much promise ­ and it resulted in a collection of papers being published in
a special issue of Third Sector Review.2 That conference brought together
scholars and regulators from across the globe, including United Kingdom
and Canadian policy makers who were at that time tasked with providing
options to reform charity law and regulation in their respective countries.
The Australian legislative outcome of the Charity Definition Inquiry
was meagre when compared with reform in the UK, New Zealand and
Singapore: a very short Act applying only to the federal jurisdiction and
addressing just three issues.3 The draft bill was much more ambitious, but
attracted significant opposition from the sector and legal practitioners as it
departed from the carefully crafted inquiry recommendations.
The 2009 conference again brought together ...