Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support my colleague the member for Casey and, indeed, Senator Cormann in the other chamber on the Tax Laws Amendment (Confidentiality of Taxpayer Information) Bill 2010. As I understand it, this bill—and I appreciate that I have not been in this parliament very long—has gone out for consultation. One thing that we have been instructed on very clearly over the last few weeks is that this is the House, this is the chamber, which takes on board input from the community, input from inquiries, and this is the place to make amendments and to make them now before they go out into the public when it is too late and becomes too difficult. It strikes me that this is a very clear case where, once again, the Labor government has not listened to the recommendations, has not listened to the response and has not listened to the inputs.

These are fairly basic safeguards which it is imperative that we put in place at this time. Indeed, they are the recommendations of not just coalition senators but Labor senators as well. This is the opportunity and this is the time that we should act. In this legislation I am advised that we are looking at amalgamating several tax laws—up to 18 different ones—that are often unclear and inconsistent. In principle, we support these initiatives which seek to consolidate taxation secrecy and disclosure provisions that are currently found in numerous taxation laws into one identifiable and accessible framework. This process started when we were in government in 2006 and we began to address this issue. In fact, it was the then Treasurer, Peter Costello, who announced a review and released a discussion paper entitled Review of taxation secrecy and disclosure provisions for public consultation. Following that review in 2009, the Assistant Treasurer announced a draft bill to implement a consolidated framework calling extensively upon the work of the then Treasurer to govern the protection and disclosure of taxpayer information received from the Australian Taxation Office. In March 2010, the Senate Economics Legislation Committee handed down its report into this bill. The coalition supports the intent of this bill. However, this side of the chamber is extremely concerned that the Gillard Labor government has failed to recognise the appropriate safeguards as decided after extensive consultation by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee.

I appreciate that the member for Blair suggests that the AAP is the only media outlet interested in this bill, but I can assure this chamber that if these safeguard provisions are not acted upon it will be on the front page of every newspaper when something goes wrong later down the track; it will not just be AAP who are interested in making sure that the appropriate safeguards are in place. In his second reading speech the then minister declared it was not the intention of this bill to broaden the circumstances in which information could be disclosed. While this rhetoric may suffice, what remains clear is that the bill is silent on how safeguards relating to the release of information should be strengthened.

I am very proud to say that the Howard government believed in reform and did not just talk about it. Like so many of the former coalition government achievements, our policy work and initiative in the area of tax reform came about through the determination, strength and leadership of John Howard and Peter Costello. Unfortunately, and regrettably, the Labor way is to stall, talk, re-evaluate, send the problem to a committee, leave it in the too hard basket and then talk about it some more, perhaps get a community committee in place, bring them all to Canberra, talk about it and delay it. This is in stark contrast to the Liberal-National path which is about solutions, action and results, not just Labor spin. We believe in actual outcomes for hardworking Australians.

This bill also proposes a new framework to ‘protect the confidentiality of taxpayer information’. It places a general prohibition on the disclosure of taxpayer information—something that is long overdue and needed. As I said before, the coalition supports the intent of this bill. We support effective attempts to provide taxpayers, the ATO and stakeholders with clarity and certainty about the tax laws. The bill does not permit disclosure of taxpayer information among government agencies, whether or not the public benefit associated with the disclosure outweighs the need for taxpayer privacy. Such a determination is to be made with regard to the purpose for which the information is to be used, the potential impact on the individual from the disclosure and subsequent use of the information and whether the new disclosure would represent a significant departure from existing disclosure provisions.

The coalition agrees that effective enforcement of the law might warrant transfer of such information on occasion. However, it must be subject to appropriate safeguards. We are concerned that the Gillard Labor government has ignored the findings of a Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry into this bill on how these safeguards should be appropriately strengthened.

See this speech in context