Our free, online resources span 20+ legal topics and consider: - Governance-related issues, including planning for a disaster, duties of directors and office holders, service continuity, and organisational liability and compliance
- Managing people, including managing worker safety in hazardous conditions, workforce availability, leave entitlements and workplace relations, managing spontaneous volunteers, remote work, and risk management
- Insurance, including limitations of insurance coverage, increasing costs, cancelling insurance, insurance cover for volunteers, and implications for remote work
- Funding, including grant funding and fundraising during a disaster
- Working with other organisations, including how organisations can prepare to work with other organisations in disasters and collaborate during and after disasters
Law and policy updates Privacy and cyber security reformsIn November, two key privacy and cyber security reforms passed through Parliament. On 29 November, the Cyber Security Act 2024 became law. The new law will require certain organisations to report ransom payments to extorting entities. On the same day, the Senate passed the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024. This Bill (still awaiting Royal Assent) implements 23 of the 116 proposals recommended to Government in the Attorney-General’s 2023 Privacy Act Review Report. These include: - the introduction of a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy
- the framework for a Children’s Online Privacy Code
- new penalties for less serious privacy breaches
- a new requirement for privacy policies to include information about use of automated decision-making
- introducing a ‘white list’ of countries with substantially similar privacy laws to facilitate cross-border disclosure under APP 8
We expect more changes to the Privacy Act to come in the new year, and will keep you updated on further changes. Not-for-profit Sector Development Blueprint The Not-for-profit Sector Development Blueprint has been released. The blueprint is a 10-year roadmap developed independently by the not-for-profit sector, as represented by the Blueprint Expert Reference Group. Read the Blueprint here. ATO publishes self-review return fact sheet, and a new good governance checklistThe Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has published new information, covering how organisations can prepare the self-review return to assess income tax exemption. Find out more here. The ATO has also published a new not-for-profit tax, super and registry checklist to help your organisation stay on track. Download the checklist here. ResourcesNew resourcesUpdated resourcesManaging people Fundraising and holding events Disputes and conflicts Background checks Update on Not-for-profit Law's funding in NSW Since the NSW Government stopped funding our work, we had no choice but to cut off our NSW advice services and remove our tailored legal resources for NSW-based community organisations from our website. Since then, tens of thousands of organisations that rely on us have had to go without critical legal and governance support. We’re grateful to have secured short-term support from another funder which means we can get our NSW-specific resources back on our website for the time being. However, this support is time limited, and it’s not enough to reopen our advice service in NSW. Email a letter now to the NSW Minister for Families and Communities in support of reinstating our funding. Each month in this email, we’ll let you know which resources we’ve put back on our website: |
