Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will be supporting this bill in the House. We would have preferred the government adopt the policy that both Labor and the Greens took to the 2019 election but that Labor since dropped at the 2022 election, which is a familiar pattern with this Labor government. It was to remove the safe harbour and arms-length tests for multinational debt deductions and instead limit multinational debt deductions in Australia to the same ratio as their worldwide debt-to-equity ratios. We are yet to be convinced that deductions denied under the thin capitalisation rules provided by this bill should be able to be carried forward for up to 15 years, and we will be pursuing this issue through the Senate legislative committee inquiry.

However, what I wish to focus on is what's not in this bill, and that is the public country-by-country reporting. In November last year, the Assistant Treasurer and the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury put out a media release promising that by 1 July this year Labor would require multinationals to publicly disclose revenues, profits and taxes paid in each jurisdiction, the operations and activities of the global group, and an entity's international related party dealings.

The exposure draft of this commitment proposed the first unrestricted and mandated public country-by-country reporting framework. In what would have been the first time in a long time, the exposure draft proposed by the government would have established Australia as the gold standard. It was widely welcomed by tax justice advocates and civil society in Australia and around the world. Of course, it was not so wildly welcomed by big business—businesses like who else but the globally renowned facilitators of multinational tax avoidance schemes and disruptors of government attempts to crack down on these schemes, PwC, who said in their submission:

…based on our own observations and discussions with stakeholders, domestically and internationally, there has been significant concern with these measures as currently drafted. In summary, in our view, the design of the proposed legislation may not meet policy objectives of enhancing transparency and trust without an excessively onerous compliance burden.

That's why we don't see the public country-by-country reporting in this bill. It's because big business and their proxies and the big four consulting firms don't want transparency because of what that would mean—more public pressure on them to pay their fair share of tax.

And if we know anything about the Albanese government by now, it's that they're not up here to upset big business or take them on. One of the hallmarks of this government is to do just enough to be able to say they're doing something, while keeping to a bare minimum any inconvenience to big corporations and their wealthy shareholders.

But, in a clear demonstration of the government's backflip, public country-by-country reporting is actually in the explanatory memorandum of this bill. While the minister says it will come at some point in the near future, you can bet that it's going to be heavily watered down compared to what was originally proposed. In a similar process, when the government originally struck the deal with the Greens to introduce $1 million fines for bankers who break the rules, it took a day for the banking lobby to force the government to renege on their promise. I'm sure, in a similar process going on right now, the government will be backing down from what would have been an actually effective form of transparency imposed on these big corporations.

We also note that part of this bill's title is 'making multinationals pay their fair share'. Yet in this term of parliament we have seen the government go harder on making students pay than on multinational corporations. We've seen them go harder on people living below the poverty line. We've seen them go much harder on forcing millions of people to live in permanent housing stress. What we would like to see this government do when it comes to making multinationals pay their fair share of tax is to do the bare minimum and make those multinational corporations pay their fair share and pay some of their superprofits in tax. While millions of people in this country do it tough, we've seen companies like Chevron, Woodside and the big four banks record billions of dollars in profits. The big four banks alone recorded $17 billion in half-yearly profits this year. Compare what this bill is going to raise, which is just over $350 million a year, to how much students will have to pay when their student debt is indexed over the next four years, which is in the billions of dollars. In fact, the government are raising more money off indexing student debt than they will off apparently cracking down on multinational corporations and their tax avoidance.

If we did actually crack down on multinational tax avoidance and if we did make them pay their fair share in tax, then we could fund the construction of hundreds of thousands of good quality public homes. We could lift the over a million people being forced to live on just over $50 a day out of poverty and give them enough money to go and live a good life. We could make sure that the millions of people right now who can't afford to go see a dentist, because it's not covered under Medicare, could use their Medicare card and go to the dentist. We could make sure that we use the wealth in this country in a way that guarantees everyone what they need to live a good life.

It should be very clear to the public by now that these are political choices that the government is making. The inflation crisis is one driven by corporate superprofits, one driven by companies like Coles and Woolies increasing their profit margins, and one driven by companies like Chevron taking advantage of the war in Ukraine and price gouging this country for gas that should be taxed fairly and used to build wealth in this country that allows us to invest in alternative industries and manufacturing but is instead going into the profit coffers of the same corporations that happen to be some of the biggest donors to the Labor and Liberal parties.

So, while the Greens might end up supporting this bill, raising just over $350 million a year off multinational tax avoidance while they're raising billions of dollars off student debt should make clear to the public where this government's priorities lie. It is going to be another wasted generation where billions of dollars of this country's wealth is shipped offshore into the profit coffers of foreign shareholders and multinational corporations. Australians are often not going to see even a single cent of that wealth that could be put to work making sure that everyone in this country has what they need to live a good life.

See this speech in context