The Department of Internal Affairs

Te Tari Taiwhenua | Department of Internal Affairs

Building a safe, prosperous and respected nation



 

Background to the work to modernise the Charities Act

The original Charities Bill was introduced to Parliament in 2004 and led to the establishment of a Charities Commission. The charities register (which provides the purposes, activities and annual returns for all registered charities) commenced in 2007.

In 2010, the former Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector announced a review of the Charities Act 2005, to assess both the effectiveness of the Charities Commission since its inception in 2005 and the “charitable purpose” definition.

However, in 2011, the Government disestablished the Charities Commission, transferring its functions to the Department of Internal Affairs and an independent Charities Registration Board. This was part of the Crown Entities Reform Bill: https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-digests/document/50PLLaw19581/crown-entities-reform-bill-2012-bills-digest-no-1958#RelatedAnchor

Cabinet decided in 2012 not to continue with a review, as the new regulatory regime was still bedding in, and considered the existing definition of charitable purpose to be generally working well. The following Cabinet papers and minutes related to that decision were proactively released by the Minister:

In 2018, the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector announced that a review of the Charities Act would be undertaken, noting that while the fundamentals of the Act are considered sound, there are a range of substantive issues that would be considered. The February 2018 edition of the Charities Services newsletter outlined that preparatory work to begin a review of the Charities Act was well underway.

The Department’s work on the Charities Act was paused in May 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to redeploy resources.