Deadline extended for Senate underpayment report

The Senate economics committee’s deadline to report on unlawful payments by employers has been extended to 10 February 2022.

Terms of reference for an inquiry into underpayments and non-payments were detailed in November 2019. They included measures to be taken to address the issue.

Among more than 120 submissions to the inquiry, the ACNC called ‘wage and […] superannuation theft’ a serious breach of governance standards.

‘The ACNC currently undertakes proactive analysis to identify charities that may be a higher risk for wage and superannuation theft,’ the commission said.

‘While the ACNC regards wages and superannuation theft as serious issues in their own right, occurrences of such theft may also indicate additional governance issues in a charity. When we investigate a charity, we assess its compliance with the governance standards broadly. This can include persons setting up a charity for fraudulent purposes, or fraudulently stripping assets from a charity for private benefit.’