David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer ) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am being absolutely relevant. This is about tax transparency. They have a new tax they want to slug people with, and it goes to the question of eligibility. You pay that paid parental leave tax if you have a taxable income of $5 million or more. Now we do not know who those companies are, and maybe that is why the opposition are opposed this measure because they do not want the hit list of companies that they are going to slug with their paid parental leave tax to be known.

I can tell you that on the question of $5 million taxable income there will be multinational companies that do not qualify to pay paid parental leave tax, and there will be lots of small- and medium-sized Australian companies that will get slugged with this $20 billion tax. It is no wonder they are going to great lengths to try to conceal the identity of the 3,000-plus companies that will be on their hit list for their paid parental leave scheme. I reiterate the point I made earlier: do not come into this place and say, 'We want evidence that we need new powers for the tax commissioner to crack down on corporate tax loopholes,' and when we try to come up with a means of demonstrating that there is base erosion and profit shifting going on then say, 'Oh no, we don't think we can support this amendment.' They are not fair dinkum when it comes to tackling these corporate loopholes. We have brought measures into the parliament, they have opposed them every time. I am not surprised that they come in here again to oppose these measures once more.

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