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To: Independent Charities Registration Board

Sensible Sentencing Trust should not have charitable status

This petition has been delivered to the Independent Charities Registration Board on 02/04/18. Updates will be made here and send via email to petition signers. You can still sign the petition to receive updates.

We, the undersigned, call on you to reassess the Sensible Sentencing Group Trust's charitable status and independently investigate the links it has with the Sensible Sentencing Trust in terms of funding and resource sharing for the purposes of non-charitable political lobbying.

Why is this important?

On March 31, Sensible Sentencing Trust (SST) founder Garth McVicar took to Facebook to congratulate police for fatally shooting a 29-year-old east Auckland man after a police chase. He said:

"One less to clog the prisons! Congratulations to the New Zealand Police, our thoughts are with the officer who was forced to take this action to protect the public."

McVicar founded SST in 2001 for the purpose of lobbying government for a more punitive justice system that is based more on his ideology than actual evidence. McVicar later stood as a candidate for the Conservative Party.

In 2010, SST were stripped of their charitable status because they had become a lobby group rather than a charity. The Charities Commission found that the trust "...had not provided any evidence of how ensuring stricter laws concerning violent crimes will protect human life."

To get around this, in 2015, the McVicar family set up the Sensible Sentencing Group Trust (SSGT) which is a seperate organisation that has been granted charitable trust status and all of the tax benefits that come with it. The SSGT Administrator is Anne McVicar.

Given the Independent Charities Registration Board's recent decision to deny Greenpeace charitable status because of their "independent purpose to promote its own particular views", it seems correct to independently reassess whether the activities of SSGT are in fact charitable.

Please sign and share so that we together we may force a review.

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REFERENCES:

https://www.charities.govt.nz/news-and-events/hot-topics/update-on-greenpeace-of-new-zealand-incorporated-from-the-independent-charities-registration-board/

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12024068&

https://www.charities.govt.nz/news-and-events/media-releases/sensible-sentencing-group-trust-registration/

Updates

2018-04-02 20:31:21 +1200

1,000 signatures reached

2018-04-01 22:30:58 +1200

500 signatures reached

2018-04-01 16:29:24 +1200

100 signatures reached

2018-04-01 15:20:15 +1200

50 signatures reached

2018-04-01 14:50:32 +1200

25 signatures reached

2018-04-01 14:22:02 +1200

10 signatures reached