Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I refer to the member of Chifley's very eloquent point—this is from two budgets ago. I wasn't even in the parliament when they budgeted for this. I've had to come into the parliament—the people of Burt had to elect me—so we could get on with this. I thank the people of Burt for doing that. Imagine how far behind we'd be otherwise.

This is a bit like the NBN under this government. It almost goes backwards. It is amazing we have a fin-tech sector in this country, given the way the government goes around legislating for it. It's a bit like a sandbox it tried to create—despite the fact that we highlighted some of the issues that it would have with it—and realised that it doesn't actually work and now it has got to fix it again.

It's a bit like when we tried to create a better way for start-ups to raise capital online. That is another piece of legislation they put into parliament about which we said: 'This is great and we're happy to move on this. By the way, there are a few things you'd better fix up because we think it's probably not going to work the way you think it's going to work.' Then, 12 months later, they said: 'You're right about that. We'd better fix it up; we'll bring in legislation'. We are nearly 12 months past that point, and they haven't even gotten it through the parliament yet—in fact, they haven't even brought it on for debate in the Senate yet.

This really comes back to the point on the concerns we have about this piece of legislation. This is good legislation in theory, but there are things in schedules 3 and 4 in particular that we say need to be improved or fixed up. We are a party that wants to work with the government on making sure that our tax laws have integrity, that we capture multinational tax loss and that we provide an effective system of taxation and an effective regulatory environment for our fin-tech sector and start-up sector. We want to make sure we get it right. I don't want to find myself back here in six months time debating more legislation to fix this legislation, when it's taken two years to get around debating it in the first place.

Whilst overall we support this legislation and the intent of the legislation, as I said before, what it really highlights is that what we really need is Labor's plan to deal with multinational taxation to make sure we actually fix the issue of companies and high-net-wealth individuals being able to offshore their profits and their high incomes to avoid paying tax in Australia, which is where it's needed, so we can provide the services that ordinary Australians rely on. The Liberal government, when it comes to this area, are all light and mirrors. They make it look like they are doing something, and they say they are doing something, but in reality it's a half-baked approach.

It's a bit like their half-baked approach of looking at the financial sector and the big banks in this country. On one hand, they say, 'We're going to give you a big tax cut.' On the other hand, they say to the public—kicking and screaming, I might point out—'We'll hold a royal commission.' Then they look at some of the things that come out of that royal commission and say: 'Look at that bad behaviour! We'll throw the book at them. We'll make sure they get tough penalties. We'll make sure any criminal behaviour gets investigated and looked into.' Then, lo and behold, they hand down a budget, and when we go through the detail to see what's happening with ASIC, $20 million or $30 million is disappearing from ASIC, the agency that would be investigating and enforcing against the banks and our financial sector. Nearly $2 million was ripped out of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the agency that would be prosecuting them. What we see is a continuation of the protection rackets for the big banks and the financial sector in Australia. Here it is again. It's almost a protection racket. The government will say, 'We are fixing up multinational taxation,' but at the end of the day it's all smoke and mirrors.

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