Portfolio — 23 March 2026

Senator Anthony Chisholm — serving as Assistant Minister for Regional Development, Assistant Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Assistant Minister for Resources, and Deputy Manager of Government Business in the Senate — was the dominant government actor in the Senate chamber on 23 March 2026, managing both procedural logistics and substantive bill defence.

The procedural workload was considerable. Senator Chisholm moved to suspend standing orders to accelerate consideration of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Supporting Choice in Superannuation and Other Measures) Bill 2025, scheduling all remaining stages for a vote after 60 minutes of debate [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s006]. The Senate also agreed to altered sitting hours for 24 March to allow senators to attend the House of Representatives address by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s076].

Senator Chisholm also tabled all documents suitable for release in response to Senator Smith's order for production of documents, completing the government's compliance with a motion from the prior sitting week [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s081].

The substantive legislative work centred on the bill itself, which spans three distinct policy domains. On superannuation, the government defended Schedules 1 and 2: Schedule 1 allows employers to request employees' existing stapled fund details from the ATO earlier in onboarding, and Schedule 2 bans advertising of superannuation products to employees during onboarding (with specified exemptions) [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s009].

The government grounded both measures in findings from its review of the Your Future, Your Super laws, which identified instances of software providers directing employees toward products associated with the provider itself — framing the reforms as protecting employees from uninformed decisions and duplicate accounts.

On charitable deductible gift recipient (DGR) provisions, the government opposed amendments and defended its approach on two fronts. It confirmed that Equality Australia has held charity registration with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission since 4 January 2016 under the subtype 'advancing public debate', and argued that public advocacy constitutes a valid charitable purpose [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s017].

More broadly, the government defended the DGR system's architecture by pointing to a power exercised by governments since 1948 to grant specific DGR listings to entities that fall outside defined categories but deliver community benefit — characterising this as routine practice [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s015] [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s019].

On animal welfare, the government noted that organisations such as the Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service and Wildlife Recovery Australia already qualify under existing principal-purpose criteria, and that the RSPCA and its affiliates are specifically listed in tax law as DGRs [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s021]. The government tied the broader DGR reforms to the Productivity Commission's 2023 philanthropy review — including removal of the $2 minimum gift threshold, alignment of ancillary fund redistribution rates, and three-year distribution smoothing — and to the sector-led Not-for-profit Sector Development Blueprint, framing the package against an ambition to double philanthropic giving in Australia [TA-260323-senate-573d70b7987f:s021].

The procedural and substantive streams were directly linked on this day: Senator Chisholm used the procedural motions to compress debate time on the very bill he then managed on the floor, combining chamber management and policy defence in a single sitting.