5 hours ago
3
April 21, 2026 — 4:03pm
Honestly, Andrew Leigh has always seemed like a sensible bloke to me. Calm, well-read, not a Labor Party factional warrior.
Now it turns out that he wants me to give my money away.
Not to my children, who are my absolute No.1 priority, slightly being jostled for top spot by my grandchildren. He wants me to give my money to charities. To complete strangers. And who knows what they’ll do with it? Also, I have a pretty clear picture of what children and grandchildren will do with any money that comes their way. Housing, anyone?
The good news is that the government will soon make it much easier to give your money to causes you think really matter. The Productivity Commission made excellent recommendations in 2024 when it was examining the charity sector. Those changes will be implemented as soon as the government lines up the dollars, says Leigh. Yippee! The current system, as the PC report pointed out, “creates inefficient, inconsistent and unfair outcomes”.
Leigh’s push comes in the middle of a cost-of-giving crisis. In the United States, there is a backlash led by billionaires. Members of the billionaire boys’ club in the US are backing away from the Giving Pledge, a brilliant and generous initiative dreamt up by Warren Buffett and friends Melinda French Gates and then husband Bill in 2010. They convinced rich people to sign up to giving away half their money to non-profits. Buffett said: “We’re talking trillions over time … we hope to establish a new norm.”
But that new norm is being de-normalised as people like Peter Thiel campaign against giving to non-profits. Who knows how those non-profits might spend their money, he asks. Maybe they’ll give it to leftie causes like anti-poverty, anti-racism and anti-rape culture. Thiel, you will remember, is a raging conservative and founder of several companies you’d want nothing to do with, unless your only interest was money; Palantir Technologies for example. Right now, according to Fortune, he’s telling Elon Musk to stay well away from the Giving Pledge. He warned the Tesla founder his wealth would go to “left-wing non-profits that will be chosen by Bill Gates”.
Yeah, left-wing non-profits such as those trying to eradicate malaria and cervical and anal cancers.
Leigh’s push for more bequests comes as giving in Australia is drying up. My generation, the generous Boomers, are now giving less than they did before – or at least less as those figures appear in the Australian Taxation Office’s records. That’s partly because our current giving is more immediate. It’s filled with love. That’s not traceable through tax.
We no longer earn income – or as much as we did. Instead, we’re giving time and money to our kids. Or, as QUT’s Myles McGregor-Lowndes says: “When older Australians no longer need to report working income, they have no incentive to declare a gift as a tax deduction on their tax return. So the statistics we have are no longer capturing all of their donations.”
Leigh told certified practising accountants at a conference on Tuesday morning: “A bequest says: I have lived in this community, I have benefited from this society, and I want some part of what I leave behind to keep doing useful work.”
Well, my kids all pay tax and are doing useful work. Doesn’t that count? I suggest a million ways to increase revenue, such as a mega-tax on the super rich, but Leigh’s not playing. And he outright rejects my idea of an inheritance tax.
All jokes at Leigh’s expense aside, turns out the government has a goal of doubling philanthropic giving by 2030 (with charity reform complete by that date). He wants you to step up just as we are in the midst of the biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth in our lifetimes. JBWere’s Bequest Report estimates around $150 billion was transferred through inheritances in Australia in 2024, and that the next 20 years will see $5.4 trillion change hands. Huge money. But only a teensy bit of that goes to non-profits, even though those donations are mostly tax-deductible.
Here comes the good news. It’s bloody difficult in this country to get tax-deductible status. I was involved with an attempt long ago to get what’s called Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status for a group advocating on the issue of fatal violence against women.
Nightmare. Every single hurdle seemed to be about proving we were not political. Folks, everything is political. Everything. Every ounce of advocacy is political.
But Leigh says that nightmare may well be over soon. Under proposed changes to the DGR regime, charities which focus on advocacy and prevention, animal welfare and those run entirely by volunteers could soon get a hand up. That’s maybe 20,000 charities which could soon get DGR status. Leigh gives me a few examples of things he thinks might tempt me, including public interest journalism. I want to ask him if I could register the grandkids, but I’d be met with one of his thoughtful silences. Sigh.
He knows the current system sucks. “The Deductible Gift Recipient system isn’t the way you’d do it if you were starting from scratch,” he says.
As soon as that reform happens, we can give our money to causes we think really matter. Still, I don’t think I’ll be able to claim a tax deduction for the grandkids.
