Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Chifley seems surprised to hear these things. The bill highlights our commitment to support innovative businesses in Australia and to build a culture of entrepreneurship and risk taking. The member for Chifley should take advantage of these great new programs that we're introducing. This will improve access to venture capital for fin-tech start-ups and assist these businesses to start, innovate, grow and succeed.

I have many fin-tech companies within my community. Unifii, for example, is a company based in my area that has developed a digital transformation platform that enables large corporate and government enterprises to create and deploy powerful business applications that in hours or days completely eliminate paper processes. Unifii has developed all the intellectual property here in Australia, and every line of code has been written by Australian software developers based in Warriewood, in Sydney. With over two million users already on the platform, the company is delivering enormous economic benefit to Australian businesses and government agencies, and it is expanding internationally to major markets. Unifii is a great example of local talent delivering enormous value to the Australian economy, with very significant export potential.

Schedule 4 of this bill amends the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to continue to exempt from income tax the payments made as reparation to victims of abuse in the Australian Defence Force. Unlike compensation, a reparation payment represents an acknowledgement by Defence that the abuse suffered by the complainant was wrong, that it can have a lasting and serious impact and also that in the past Defence was not positioned appropriately to respond to abuse in many cases. The recipient of a reparation payment should receive the full benefit of that payment and, as such, the payment should be exempt from income tax.

Previous reparation payments made under the former Defence Abuse Response Taskforce were tax exempt. The task force concluded on 31 August 2016, and in the 2017-18 budget the government announced it was expanding the Defence Force Ombudsman's role to make recommendations on reparation payments in relation to complaints of abuse in Defence. The Defence Force Ombudsman may make recommendations in respect of historical cases of abuse occurring on or before 30 June 2014.

Tax systems at their best should be broad, even and fair to everyone. They should encourage entrepreneurship and allow it to be rewarding. They should recognise the great risk that people undertake, and with that great risk should come equivalent rewards. This bill does that, so I commend the bill to this House.

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