Gary Thomas Johns is a former Labor politician and current full-time Commissioner of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) since December 2017.
At the time of his appointment he was also Director of the Australian Institute for Progress and an Adjunct Professor at the Queensland University of Technology Business School.
Senator @jennymcallister asks the charities commissioner whether he's disavowed his comments that Aboriginal women on welfare are "cash cows".— Yarns (@BuzzFeedYarns) October 25, 2018
"Absolutely not". pic.twitter.com/nj6kBTeOqi
BuzzFeed
News, 25
October 2018:
The boss of Australia's
charity regulator has refused to back down from his earlier description of
Aboriginal women as "cash cows", while claiming that including an
acknowledgement of country in his email signature would make him seem biased.
Appearing before Senate
Estimates on Wednesday evening, the head of the Australian Charities and
Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), Gary Johns, was questioned about his recent
decision to remove the acknowledgement of country from the commission's email signatures.
Until a few months ago,
his own signature and that of some of his staff had included an acknowledgement
of country, beginning with "we acknowledge the elders". The practice
of acknowledging country is common across the public service.
Johns said he was trying
to avoid looking biased, as the commission oversees both Indigenous and
non-indigenous charities and he is a "commissioner for all
charities".
"It worried me, the
term 'we acknowledge', because it refers to the commission," he said.
"I took the view that ... using the words 'we acknowledge' imply that the
entire commission was, if you like, acknowledging one group of charities and
not others," he said.
"The words raise
the perception of bias that I'm not treating all charities the same," he
said. "I think that's plain on the face of it."
Johns raised the issue
with ACNC staff whose signatures contained an acknowledgement of country, but
left them the option of changing "we acknowledge" to "I
acknowledge". One staff member objected, and Johns says he took no
disciplinary action against her.
Labor senator Jenny
McAllister said to Johns that the acknowledgement "doesn't in any way
speak about charities ... Traditional owners are not charities". Johns
said that it "refers to Indigenous people", and McAllister replied
that Indigenous people were "people and citizens", not charities.
"To be an
Indigenous charity, you need a number of Indigenous people on the board, so to
all intents and purposes they are," Johns replied, pointing to the
charitable purposes of organisations such as Reconciliation Australia, which he
said only apply to Indigenous people.
Johns' appointment to
ACNC commissioner in December 2017 was controversial,
partly because of his public stance on Indigenous issues.
In a 2015 appearance
on The Bolt Report Johns said that
Aboriginal women were "used as cash cows. They are kept pregnant and
producing children for the cash". He has argued that women on welfare
should have to take contraception. He has also criticised Indigenous
not-for-profits, describing Recognise,
an organisation that campaigned to raise awareness and support for
constitutional recognition of Australia's First Peoples, as "the
officially sanctioned propaganda arm of the Australian Government" in his
2014 book The Charity Ball.
In his estimates
appearance Johns said he had "absolutely not" disavowed those views.
"I'm quite public," he said in response to questioning from
McAllister. "I've written for 30 years about a whole range of matters. Why
would I seek to disavow any of that?"
McAllister asked whether
he had done anything to "dispel any perception of bias" that his
previous comments might have created.
"No, and I don't
need to as the commissioner," he replied……
Shadow minister for
charities and not-for-profits Andrew Leigh, who previously started
a petition calling on Johns to resign, said it was
"disappointing" that Johns had "publicly confirmed during a
parliamentary hearing in his role as the charities commissioner that he still
holds these opinions". He described Johns as "drastically out of
touch with the Australian community".
"What remains to be
heard is [the government's] explanation of how he can possibly remain [at the
ACNC] given his comments," Leigh said.
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