Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

As millions of Australian families get the kids up, make the lunches, pack them off to school, and then trundle off to work today, working their guts out, some of them shiftworkers, away from their families in the afternoons and evenings, some of them workers who work on weekends, they are thrilled with the fact that the Turnbull government is trying to take away their penalty rates for being away from families and working on weekends. These families are struggling with the high cost of living, electricity prices going up and private health insurance premiums increasing above inflation levels on an annual basis now, with childcare costs recently increasing, the cost of education going up and of course the extreme cost of housing, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne markets. There are also the struggling pensioners who are finding it hard to put the air conditioner on in summer or the heater on in winter because they can't afford the increases in electricity prices. About 330,000 of these pensioners have lost their pension over the course of the last couple of years under this Turnbull government, and now the government is trying to take away their energy supplement. Then there are students who are facing cuts to TAFE colleges and dramatically increasing fees. There are universities that have had funding ripped away from them, which will no doubt be passed on to university students in the form of higher fees.

All of these hardworking Australians would be thrilled to know—very pleased to know—that the ABC has uncovered that about one in five Australian companies pay no company tax whatsoever in this country. Yes, that's right: 380 of Australia's largest companies pay absolutely no income tax at all—a big doughnut; a big fat zero. They include airlines, banks, financial service companies, mining, energy, clothing, steel, and telecommunications companies. There's even a condom manufacturer. That's rather appropriate, given what they've just done to the Australian taxpayer in paying no tax at all during the course of the last couple of years.

Given that these hardworking Australian PAYG taxpayers can't do what these big companies do—shift debts to other jurisdictions to avoid paying tax—they'd be very pleased to know that some of these companies have made an art form of it. I'm speaking of EnergyAustralia, which over the last 10 years—not just the last couple—has paid no company tax at all in this country. This is despite the fact that, when you look at the revenues, they have increased quite handsomely over the course of a few years—no doubt off the back of those skyrocketing electricity prices that hardworking families and pensioners have to pay on an annual basis.

In the almighty 'Up yours!' that's been given to the Australian taxpayer, some might ask why a company like Goldman Sachs, which employed none other than our illustrious Prime Minister in the past, would be rolling in funds from the New South Wales government that they've received over the last couple of years for advising on—yes, you guessed it—the sale of assets that are owned by the Australian taxpayer. Goldman Sachs recently received $16.5 million to advise the New South Wales government about the sale of WestConnex. They too are one of these companies that pay no company tax here in Australia. The approach of Goldman Sachs can be summed up not best by me but by a quote that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine: 'The great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.' That is a rather damning indictment upon some of these companies that we find today are paying absolutely no company tax at all here in Australia.

The hardworking Australian taxpayer would be extremely pleased to know as they go off to work today—after they've simmered down about the fact that these companies aren't paying any tax—that the Turnbull government think that these companies are doing it so tough that they want to give them a company tax cut. Yes, that's right—these companies that pay no tax whatsoever in Australia under corporations laws believe that they deserve a tax cut, and, yes, the Turnbull government is going to give them one. The Turnbull government believes that these companies do it so tough that they deserve a tax cut. This is despite the fact that 380 of these largest companies paid no tax at all over the course of the last couple of years. I kid you not; you can't make this stuff up! It's one of the greatest one-finger salutes to hardworking Australians that the Turnbull government has given them and a greater sop to their mates in big business that, despite the fact that 380 of these companies pay no tax, the Turnbull government is planning to give them a tax cut. What a disgrace! What a demonstration of just how out of touch this government has become.

Let's not forget the National Party in all of this. The National Party members, the MPs that predominantly sit over there, like to slink off back to their electorates and, when hardworking farmers and people on the land in Australia come up to them and complain about these sorts of things in the streets of Tamworth, Armidale and other rural and regional towns throughout the country, you find these National Party MPs will say: 'That's the Liberal Party. That's the Liberal Party philosophy. We don't believe in stuff like that. We don't vote for things like that.' But that's exactly what they do, because then they slink back into this chamber, put up their hand and vote for corporate tax cuts for some of these companies that are paying no tax whatsoever in Australia.

We're discussing here today the appropriation bills—the bills through which governments draw funds for the ordinary course of expenditure on government programs throughout the country. Labor of course has a principal policy of not withholding supply, unlike those opposite in Australian politics. But the fact is that this government has presided over, since they came to government in 2013, an increase in a budget deficit. The budget deficit is now $23.6 billion. What does this government want to do? They want to rip $65 billion over the next decade of revenue out of that budget to give these companies a tax cut, an ideological sop to their mates in big business. Labor won't cop it. We won't cop this argument about competitiveness and using the United States President's tax cuts as a justification for trying to say that Australia's biggest companies deserve a tax cut. We won't cop them trundling out the CEOs of these large corporations, many of whom, strikingly—it was revealed in papers today—pay no tax at all. But they trundle out these CEOs to immorally dangle this carrot of a prospective wage increase in front of Australian workers as a means of trying to convince them that these large corporations deserve a corporate tax cut in Australia at the moment.

The Australian people and the Australian Labor Party ain't buying it. We ain't buying these rubbish arguments that are being trotted out by this government and its representatives, and by some of the CEOs of these large multinational corporations. Labor will fight for a fairer taxation system, one that provides more equity in the system and seeks to curtail some of the excesses of particularly generous tax deductions that have existed and benefited wealthy Australians in the big end of town. I'm speaking, of course, of the current system of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount that exists on the sale of investment properties. Only Labor is fair dinkum about reforming these outrageously generous—in fact, the largest in the world—tax deductions that exist for the sale and purchase of investment properties.

Labor will fight for decent jobs and for fair wages in this country, for the hardworking nurses and for people like childcare workers, of whom those opposite say, 'Yes, they work very hard and they deserve more money,' but oppose their fair work cases in the Fair Work Commission and the like. They rile against them when hardworking childcare workers dare to go on strike to try and boost their incomes to be paid fairly under the current industrial relations system. Those opposite also seek to restrict public sector workers every year to below-inflation annual wage increases.

The hypocrisy of this government is rather striking when it comes to this argument about corporate tax cuts. The thing that they fail to mention to the Australian taxpayer, of this whole argument about corporate tax cuts, is that the overwhelming beneficiaries of a company tax cut aren't Australians. They're foreigners. Because of the operation of dividend imputation in this country, the people who will benefit from these company tax cuts will be foreigners because of dividend imputation and franking credits that Australian shareholders receive for the fact that company tax is paid by the company—when they pay it. Let's face it, after the revelations today, a lot of them don't, but when they do pay it, if they pay a dividend, the shareholder gets a franking credit. So they don't pay any further tax because it's already been paid by the company. The overwhelming benefit of the reduction in tax, if there is one for corporations, will flow to foreign investors. So it's hardworking Australian workers, pensioners, and students that will pay for a tax cut for foreigners. Can you believe it? In an environment when families are struggling with the cost of living, they're restricting the pension and taking people off the pension, they're cutting funding for education services and making students pay more and this mob want to give a tax cut to foreigners.

As I said, Labor won't stand for it. We will fight this tax cut and we will get out there in the community and explain to the Australian public that it's unfair what this government is doing, and the only party in this parliament that's fair dinkum about ensuring that we rein in some of the excesses that exist in the taxation system in this country and that support fair and decent wages and jobs for hardworking Australians is the Australian Labor Party.

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