Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

All advice and assistance would be gratefully received, if he has got nothing better to do with his time.

I will answer the honourable member's question in a substantive way. I described in an earlier answer the approach that I took to managing my and Lucy's investments in order to avoid conflicts. We took the approach of managed funds, and they were offshore managed funds, to avoid conflicts in Australia, and so I think honourable members understand that. The hedge funds that Luce and I have been invested in, one of which he describes, were selected for us by an investment manager in the States, in New York, Josephine Linden, the very prominent Australian, actually, in New York City, and she has managed that portfolio, if you like, of managed funds. I have left that very much in her hands. I do not have the time to be going through the interstices of all of these funds, and, like many other people with a lot of other things to do, I put my investments in the hands of a very capable professional.

I just should say, with respect to the Cayman Islands: I described the way it was used for offshore investors, by which I mean non-US based investors. And I should just draw honourable members attention to this fact: that many members of this chamber—it may well be almost all members of this chamber, including the Leader of the Opposition—are invested in Australian superannuation funds which have invested in companies or hedge funds or managed funds which are based or registered in the Cayman Islands.

I saw in the press that a Chinese company, Tencent, is over one per cent of the international portfolio of First State Super, and I think many members opposite are invested in that, and I do not think they are suggesting that the trustees of First State Super are doing anything inappropriate.

So the real issue is this: is tax being paid in Australia by Australians? In my case and Lucy's case and in the case of our family interests, the answer is: absolutely, yes, in full. We have always done that. We have been scrupulous about these affairs and we always will be.

See this speech in context