Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. It is difficult to see how the minister could regard the fiscal rules as being irrelevant to a debate over a Treasury laws amendment bill. It speaks to this government's attempt to jettison its own fiscal strategy by suggesting in this House, as the minister has just done, that the fiscal rules are irrelevant to the debate on a Treasury laws amendment bill.

The very fact is that this bill has an accounting gimmick in it—an accounting trick that the projected budget surplus relies upon—which was one of the last-ditch efforts that the government made before completely abandoning any pretence of fiscal responsibility. This is a government which is engaged in fiscal profligacy and fiscal gimmickry and is unable to crack down on much of the wrongdoing that we've seen in the multinational profit shifting, tax havens and the black economy.

Of course we welcome the modest measures in this bill, but the government's complete failure to do anything about tax havens means they are ignoring the $600 billion of profits shifted annually to tax havens and the $40 million dollars of multinational profits shifted to tax havens. Tax havens are used by drug runners, extortionists and money launderers. The government's failure to close the loopholes that are allowing profits to be shifted to tax havens is imperilling the budget, as well as being a threat to good, honest businesses in Australia which are not availing themselves of tricky accounting tricks and tax havens.

Labor will get tough on multinational profit shifting and Labor will get tough on tax havens through our transparency measures, through cracking down on passports for sale, through the introduction of a beneficial ownership registry so we can see who really owns Australian firms, and through mandatory shareholder reporting of tax haven exposure. Labor believes in cracking down on tax loopholes. Labor takes seriously the task of budget repair.

In conclusion, at the next election Labor will be able to invest more in schools and hospitals. We will deliver more generous personal income tax cuts for the bulk of Australians. We will pay down debt faster over the forward estimates and over the medium term. We can do that because we've made the hard decisions under the consistent leadership of Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen over the last five years. Labor takes this task of budget repair and economic policy very seriously. We support these modest measures, but we wish the government would close the loopholes that remain gapingly wide.

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