Volunteers at the Early Morning Centre like Nicole Wiggins and Helping ACT’s Mohammed Ali now face an $11 charge for Working With Vulnerable People cards. Photo: Genevieve Jacobs.
It’s a mark of pride that Canberrans are more likely to volunteer than anyone else in Australia.
While volunteering rates decreased across the country post COVID, ours rose, sitting well above the national average, according to the Community Council for Australia’s national benchmarking.
So why would the ACT Government make an 11th hour 2025 Budget decision to impose a charge on Working With Vulnerable People (WWVP) cards?
The cards are required for anyone in a “regulated activity”, which can include working with children or refugees, people with disabilities or those at risk of homelessness and many other categories.
There are tens, even hundreds of thousands of WWVP cards in the ACT, many of them required by employers but a sizeable portion also used by the not for profit sector and volunteers.
Until now these cards and checks have been free, but in a particularly cash-strapped ACT budget, Treasurer Chris Steel imposed an $11 charge.
It’s true WWVP cards cost much more than $11 to administer. Some are, undoubtedly, used by organisations seeking free character checks.
But if the $11 charge doesn’t approach the true cost of the checks – closer to $150 in addition to administration time – then why bother implementing the charges at all when the cost of disincentivising volunteering is considerably higher?
The measure won’t make much money – apparently about $9 million, a drop in the bucket when stacked up against the size of our financial issues in the ACT. The government says there needs to be some form of cost recovery, but that reasoning doesn’t stack up either.
Volunteers already spend $12.76 out of their own pocket for every hour they volunteer and nearly two-thirds of all volunteering costs are absorbed by the volunteers themselves, according to Volunteering ACT.
And the biggest impediment to volunteering when people are retired or on fixed incomes? Costs. $11 may seem insignificant but volunteers come from all walks of life and local charities mostly operate on razor thin margins.
Here’s the rub, though: in a cash-strapped economy the government has been trying to encourage volunteering. That was the intention of its Volunteering Strategy, announced last year with much hoopla.
It’s worth government’s while, too: 63 million volunteer hours annually across health, education, aged care, disability, sport, the arts and community services generate more than $14.1 billion in economic and social value for the ACT. The investment literally pays dividends five times over.
Calling the plan to charge for the WWVP card baffling is an understatement. It smacks of a hasty trawl through directorates to pick up any possible savings, anywhere, the epitome of Treasury bean counting without applying a lens of common sense.
It’s not even new. I’m reliably informed the idea floated around government for more than a decade but was firmly sat upon by former ministers and bureaucrats who realised the potential damage was not worth the modest returns.
This is Treasurer Chris Steel’s first budget and he’s spoken widely about getting to grips with a savage balance sheet. The health care levy was hastily halved after the Greens played hard ball.
The not for profit sector is gathering support from across the community, asking Minister Steel and the government to reconsider the WWVP charges too.
Otherwise, perhaps it’s a case of cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Genevieve Jacobs is the CEO of Hands Across Canberra, the ACT’s community foundation.
