Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, it is. We are always happy to provide support when you acknowledge your error. I call on the minister and the Treasurer and the Assistant Treasurer, whoever he or she may be, to acknowledge that error. I think that if the government had a full-time Assistant Treasurer maybe these errors would not occur. I am a former Assistant Treasurer. It is an important role. If we had an Assistant Treasurer maybe these errors would not occur, because somebody would be looking at these issues full-time. It would not be an add-on. I do not like the member for Herbert's chances of being the next Assistant Treasurer. I do not have any money on him.

Let me turn to the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No. 4) Bill 2014. As I said earlier, we are more than happy to provide support for sensible measures, when we see them, and we will provide our support to this measure. This is a sensible measure because—guess what?—the government is implementing the former government's approach. We are more than happy to give credit where it is due and to commend the government for implementing Labor's proposals to reduce multinational tax avoidance, which are contained in this bill. I do want to say some things about multinational tax avoidance, because it is a very important issue for Australia. When we were in office, we laid out a very comprehensive plan to deal with multinational tax avoidance. It was at the end of the story and there was always more work to be done, but it was a very comprehensive plan indeed. There were measures that would have prevented $5 billion in revenue being moved offshore.

We put these measures in place because these are important principles and because, as I have said before, governments, Labor or Liberal-National, will always need to fund important government services, so there will always be a certain measure of tax which needs to be collected. If it is not collected from multinationals, then it is collected from somebody else. It will be collected from small Australian businesses, which do not have the wherewithal or the resources to engage in these elaborate and complex tax-avoidance schemes; it will be collected from Australian personal income taxpayers; or it will be collected from others through the tax system.

This is about fairness. It is also about competitive neutrality, because businesses who do pay their fair share of tax should not be disadvantaged in their competition against these multinationals who seek not to pay their fair share of tax. This is a very important principle. We put in place comprehensive measures which the Treasurer just last sitting week referred to as being robust and world class. These are the measures put in place by the previous government: addressing aggressive tax structures that seek to shift profits by artificially loading debt in Australia; better targeting resource sector concessions for depreciating assets to support genuine exploration; improving the integrity of, and ensuring better compliance with, the foreign resident capital gains tax regime; closing loopholes in the offshore banking unit regime; preventing sophisticated investors from engaging in dividend washing; and—importantly—increasing ATO compliance checks on offshore marketing hubs and business restructures. As I said, the Treasurer himself referred to the robustness of this approach.

I do want to take the opportunity again in this House to pay tribute to the former member for Lindsay, Mr David Bradbury, who as Assistant Treasurer in the previous government provided detailed leadership in implementing these changes. So good was his work that, after leaving the parliament, he was engaged by the OECD in the important role of advising the OECD on tax reform. He now resides in Paris, advising the OECD on international tax. Again, the Treasurer has referred to the work of the OECD and to the Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurria, who was in Australia last week, in Cairns—well, in very large part, the work of the OECD is being led by David Bradbury, the former Assistant Treasurer. It is testament to the work that he did in his portfolio that he was recognised by this international organisation and was engaged by it.

Most of that has been kept in place by the current government, except that the current government wants to leave open tax loopholes which are worth over $1.1 billion. This is to the government's great discredit. It is to the government's great discredit that it is reversing or not implementing changes that the previous government was putting in place which further minimised international tax evasion, at a cost to the Australian taxpayer of $1.1 billion. This goes to priorities and values. This is a government that says in its budget: 'We have to make tough decisions. We have to change the way we index pensions and make it less fair. We have to make people wait half a year for important Newstart arrangements. We have to cut $80 billion out of health and education. We have to make all these unfair cuts. But, by the way, we can give $1.1 billion back to tax evaders.' That just shows the wrong priorities that this government has.

Again, if the Treasurer wants to recognise the error of his ways and reverse his reversal of the previous government's initiatives, he will have our bipartisan support. I have said before that I fully accept and recognise that there can be implementation challenges on complex law changes; and, if he has a different way of doing it, we are more than happy to look at that. If he takes advice about how it could be done better, we would be more than happy to look at that. But he does not, because he does not want to provide the leadership necessary to ensure that these changes can be made. This just goes to show that this is a Treasurer who is strong when it comes to standing up to the weak but weak when it comes to standing up to the strong. He is not prepared to take on multinational companies who are engaging in tax fraud and tax evasion. He is not prepared to take them on. He is prepared to talk about it, he is prepared to beat his chest, he is prepared to say to other countries around the world that they should be doing more; but he is not prepared to show that leadership here in Australia, and that is to his discredit. That is to the discredit of the government and of the Treasurer.

We do think that more needs to be done when it comes to international tax avoidance. It is not good enough for the Treasurer to say here at the dispatch box that he has instructed the tax commissioner to double his compliance efforts in this regard while at the same time reducing the tax office's resources. How is the tax commissioner, who has the Labor Party's support—a very good tax commissioner, he has our support in his endeavours—meant to double his compliance efforts at the same time as this government is reducing resourcing for the Australian Taxation Office, which will have a clear and definite impact on its compliance measures?

Because of this government's cuts—let us be very clear—there will be tax avoidance which is not stopped because compliance is reduced because this government is reducing resources to the Australian tax office. The Treasurer is good at rhetoric. He is good at beating his chest and saying that he has issued an instruction to the tax commissioner to double his compliance efforts. Bu at the same time the Treasurer is reducing the resources available to the tax office for compliance. Again, the government and the Treasurer are full of rhetoric, but when it comes to action they are completely lacking in that important regard.

On behalf of the opposition, I have indicated those measures which the Labor Party are prepared to support. The schedules in bill No. 5 which we are prepared to support are schedule 1 and schedule 4, I believe, but we will be opposing the other schedules in the other house. We are prepared to give our support to bill No. 4 on the basis that it is implementing measures that were contemplated and begun by the previous Labor government. We commend the government for proceeding with them. We condemn the government for handing back $1.1 billion to international tax avoiders by not proceeding with the previous, Labor government's other important changes and we will vote accordingly in the other place.

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