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

The Treasury Laws Amendment (2019 Measures No. 3) Bill 2019 is a sensible amendment. It will increase transparency and consistency in our corporations law. The amendment, of course, removes the exemption that allows certain proprietary companies to avoid lodging financial reports with ASIC under our corporations law. This is a regime that was put in place in 1995, and it was only ever meant to be a temporary regime. It wasn't meant to be a lasting legacy around transparency and accountability in our corporations law. It does provide an exemption to some of the wealthiest individuals in the country who run private proprietary companies so they can avoid that transparency and accountability. Any company established since 1995 is required to lodge their financial reports with ASIC.

When Labor was last in government we established the new transparency and accountability regime relating to proprietary companies and their taxation affairs, and that was established to ensure that all Australians had an indication and the facts about the amount of tax and the turnover of very large companies that were avoiding transparency and accountability because they simply weren't required to report on an annual basis what their turnover and their taxation arrangements were. We put that regime in place and we attempted to remove the exemption for the companies that we're talking about here—that is, those that had a turnover of more than $100 million per annum. That would have increased transparency and accountability around the taxation affairs of those companies. More Australians would have known how much tax some of those companies were paying.

Some of this regime has survived. Some of it was watered down by the coalition government when they teamed up with the Greens to reduce the number of companies that were covered by that particular provision. It's quite interesting reading, when those figures come out on an annual basis, because they uncover the fact that there are quite a number of large proprietary companies in this country that have multibillion-dollar turnovers but pay no tax at all in Australia. Australian society is not benefitting from the wealth that's generated for these proprietary companies in our community. When the coalition was elected, as I mentioned, they reversed some of the changes that were made by the Labor Party and they did it on the basis of some outrageous claims, one of those being that there would be an increase in kidnappings if this particular provision remained in our corporations law.

We all know the term 'astroturfing'. In politics it's a term that refers to creating a false impression that there's a groundswell of community support for a particular issue, and when we look behind it we see that it's being driven by certain MPs and certain individuals who stand to benefit from the particular issue being pushed. A great example of astroturfing, if you were to look up the word in the dictionary, should be the coalition's response to Labor's laws on transparency and accountability around taxation, because their claims about kidnapping and the other evils that would come from this particular law if it remained in place simply weren't there. It was a made up campaign by those opposite who were seeking particularly to support big businesses in this country that were avoiding their obligations to report the amount of tax that they pay.

The average Australian worker can't do that. The average Australian worker who goes to work on a daily basis, works hard and pays their PAYG tax can't avoid that transparency; they can't avoid having to pay their fair share of tax in this country. Why should big proprietary companies do so? That's why this amendment is a sensible amendment. It adds transparency and accountability to Australia's taxation system for some of the biggest corporate players in this country. That's why all MPs should be voting for that increased transparency and accountability.

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