Last week I attended and spoke at the Charity Law Association of Australia and New Zealand annual conference in Melbourne.
I had two observations that I thought it was worth sharing as an encouragement to others:
First, I am so thankful that we do not have a State based system. In many of the sessions so much time was spent on just comparing the position in Tasmania vs New South Wales vs Victoria. For example, fundraising and what licenses you need in each place – it just adds a layer of complexity that we don’t have to deal with and I was grateful for that.
Second, there were about 100 people at the conference and it was really interesting to see the collegiality among the lawyers attending. While in theory they might be ‘competitors’ there was a lot of sharing of information and challenging positions others had taken and discussions about how to improve the sector, advocate for reform, etc. It made me think that it would be great if a similar culture could start to develop in New Zealand.
I think it was worth attending just to have gained those two insights. There was a mix of regulators, practitioners, in house counsel and others who attended – about 100 in total. Here are a few photos of the event.
