Charities say FBT changes will harm them SOME of Australia's best-known charities have lined up against the government's recent fringe benefit tax (FBT) changes, saying they were never consulted and will be harmed. John Kelly, head of Aged Care Australia, says recruiting and retaining staff is always difficult but will be even harder if they can't offer car incentives for staff through the FBT arrangements, which were changed by the federal government two weeks ago. "Car vehicles are a significant part of that package that we offer," he said in Melbourne on Thursday. What we're going to see now is the potential diversion of money that actually goes to caring for people diverted to actually trying to continue to recruit and retain staff. Tracy Adams of BoysTown said the loss of funding was concerning, especially because changing the FBT was not recommended in the Henry tax review. "We were quite taken by surprise," she said. Both made the comments after a meeting about the FBT changes with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey and a dozen other charities from the Salvation Army to Head Space. Mr Abbott said he had no concerns that the tax benefit was being misused and charities had become the victims of unintended consequences in changing the rules without consultation. "It wasn't thought through, it was cooked up in secret and it ends up causing such chaos in the community that it raises no significant revenues at all," he said. He said the coalition would scrap the changes if it won the election. Mr Hockey said it was clear the government had "totally screwed it up." Finance Minister Penny Wong accused Mr Abbott of "crying crocodile tears" for the car industry. "The vision of Mr Abbott running around as if he is some great defender of the car industry is a joke," she told reporters in Canberra. Senator Wong said Mr Abbott planned to take away $500 million in car industry support over two years if the coalition won government and would not make any commitments to the sector beyond 2015. He might try to jump on the fringe benefits tax issue as much as he likes but the fact simply demonstrates the coalition are not supporters of the car industry.