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The ACNC Act sets out what are known as 'internally reviewable decisions'.

These decisions are ones that, if requested to, the ACNC must reconsider on the merits of the case. This action must occur before any other review or appeal action can be taken.

Internally reviewable decisions set out in the ACNC Act are:

  • registration decisions – decisions not to register a charity, or not to register it as the type of charity applied for
  • revocation decisions – decisions to revoke, or not revoke, a charity’s registration
  • ACNC direction decisions – decisions to give, vary or not change a formal ACNC direction. The ACNC can provide formal directions to charities to ensure they meet the requirements of the ACNC Act
  • decisions relating to Responsible People – decisions to suspend or remove a person from their position on a charity’s governing body. This includes the length of any suspension given
  • administrative penalties decisions – decisions to refuse to remit the whole or part of an administrative penalty of more than two penalty units that the ACNC has imposed on a charity, Responsible Person or third party.

You can ask for an internal review by:

  • making an application on Form 2A: Ask the ACNC to review a decision
  • submitting the completed form within 60 days of the ACNC giving you the original decision
  • explaining in detail the reasons you object to the decision and are seeking a review.

The ACNC will use your form as a basis for reviewing the decision, so it is important that it clearly states both the decision you are unhappy with and all the reasons why you believe the original decision was wrong.

The ACNC Act does not specifically define what the effect on the original decision will be in these circumstances.

The ACNC Act does state that where a decision is being appealed to the Administrative Review Tribunal or a court, the decision should stand in the meantime.

As outlined in the Commissioner's Policy Statement: Reviews and appeals, we will usually take the same approach to internal reviews.

Members of the public can still apply for a review beyond the 60-day threshold. In doing so, they must inform the ACNC of the reasons why they were unable to meet the deadline, and give us their completed Form 2A: Ask the ACNC to review a decision.

Once the ACNC receives such a request, we will decide whether or not to accept the late application for internal review. We will write to the applicant with our decision.

If we agree to accept the late application, we will treat it as if it had been lodged on time. If we do not agree to accept the late application, the applicant can ask the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) to review our decision not to accept the late application.

See our guidance about reviews by the Administrative Review Tribunal for more information.

If you lodge the Form 2A: Ask the ACNC to review a decision, and formally disagree with an internally reviewable decision, the ACNC must review the decision you are unhappy about and make a new decision.

We can:

  • make a new decision completely different from the one you were unhappy with
  • make a new decision partly different from the one you were unhappy with
  • agree with the original decision, or
  • agree with the original decision, but for different reasons.

A new decision made as a result of internal review under the ACNC Act is called an ‘objection decision’. We will inform you of our objection decision in writing, and give reasons for that decision.

The ACNC will always try to communicate with you about our review and give you our objection decision within a reasonable time.

If we do not, under the ACNC Act, you can apply to require the ACNC to make its objection decision. You can only request this if we have still not made our objection decision 60 days after:

  • the ACNC received your Form 2A: Ask the ACNC to review a decision, or
  • you have supplied any additional information we have requested about your form, whichever is later.

If we do not make an objection decision within 60 days of you submitting a request for us to make a decision, the ACNC is taken to have disallowed the objection, meaning we have decided not to change our original decision.

If you disagree with the objection decision, you can:

Going to court can be expensive and time consuming, but there might be times when you would prefer to appeal to a court instead of asking the ART to review the decision. It may be advisable to seek independent legal counsel about this.

You can also appeal to a court if the type of decision that the ACNC made is not an internally reviewable decision under the ACNC Act.

You can contact us if you would like to discuss these options.