James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are quite a few second reading amendments that have now been moved on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Accountability and Fairness) Bill 2023. This wouldn't surprise anyone, but I certainly am a supporter of the amendment moved by the member for Hume, who of course made a contribution on this bill in the chamber yesterday, I think, or Tuesday—apologies if my recollection isn't completely accurate there. I don't support the other amendments.

The member for Warringah makes the same point that the member for Hume did, and I'd like to start on that: how ridiculous it is to have these two completely separate issues crammed together within the one bill. It's putting a lot of people in a position—I respect that I've got a different view to some of the Independents that have made contributions, but I think it's ludicrous that they should be expected to take a position on the bill because of one part which they hold a view on. That would mean they are torn on whether to support this bill because there other elements, which are completely separate and unrelated, that they do in fact support. That point is made by the member for Hume in his amendment and by the member for Warringah in her amendment. Whilst I don't support the member for Warringah's amendment because of other elements within it, I'll just put on the record that she's quite right, as is member for Hume, about how ludicrous and ridiculous this is. This bill should not be one bill; it should be two separate bills.

I think the important matters to do with addressing the awful PricewaterhouseCoopers scandal—which has exposed significant shortcomings in legislative arrangements to prevent people advising on, essentially, breaking the law—have unanimity within the parliament. I would hope that they would.

But then, within that, also having the changes to the tax deductibility treatment of investments in the oil and gas sector is patently ridiculous. These are two very separate matters. So I would start by very clearly saying that the government should not be doing this to the parliament. The government should not be bringing in legislation on completely different matters and expecting people to vote for or against a bill with such dramatically different propositions contained within it. The whole point of us having different pieces of legislation to debate and vote on is that we all have different perspectives and opinions on the different legislative changes that are proposed. The extension of this principle is the ludicrous concept that maybe we'll just do all legislation in one omnibus bill each week and have every single measure frankensteined together into the one proposition, which is where, in what we see in this bill, we could be heading.

Let's not forget that even when we deal with something as totemic as a budget—and I've had experience in other parliaments where the budget is done quite differently to the way we do it in this Commonwealth parliament—we see governments hand down budgets that have a vast amount of legislation associated with them that are separately put to the parliament as individual pieces of legislative change. When we have the appropriation bills come forward, parliament passes the appropriation bills, which are underpinned by a whole range of expenditure that might not subsequently be legislated. When, particularly the Senate, which governments rarely control, decides to pick and choose which of the budget measures that are in the appropriation bills they've already approved, they will indeed choose to go ahead and authorise where legislation is required. That's quite a common thing in budgets. We've got the reverse principle here, where in one bill two very separate matters are being put together, and that point is being made by the member for Hume and the member for Warringah in their amendments.

Schedules 1 to 4 are on the PwC elements—I think there are four schedules that are specific to that. I'd like to start by saying that I commend the Tax Practitioners Board—the chair is, indeed, a constituent of mine. I think they've done an excellent body of work in getting to the bottom of what has happened with the conduct of PwC. A lot of people, who were initially in a state of shock, are now surprised that that was going on in such a blase way and that we don't have an appropriate statutory regime in place to punish that sort of behaviour and conduct. So the first four schedules of this bill are doing exactly that.

It is just outrageous that people who are operating in the Australian economy and being supported by the Australian government, and where the Australian government is providing the economic circumstance for them to operate a successful business in this country, would be providing advice on effectively breaking the law and how to avoid paying your fair share of tax to the Australian government—that they would be looking at every opportunity to cheat the Australian people out of an appropriate amount of taxation that you should be paying to the government to run this country.

Every dollar of tax that is avoided and cheated out of by someone with a clever little scheme to hide away the way in which they're making money out of the Australian economy is just a greater tax burden on other Australians. I'd love for taxes to be as low as possible, and I'd love for everyone to pay as little tax as is necessary to make sure we have the fundamentals of government—a proper social safety net and all the other important services that government provides—and the security of our nation et cetera.

But I want that to be through the lowest amount of expenditure that we can make it, which therefore means I want all Australians to be able to pay as little tax as they absolutely have to.

Every dollar that we don't take out of the household budget of an Australian family is one that they get to spend in their own way. As someone coming from the free-market capitalist school—if not with a little bit of libertarianism in there as well, in my case—and the heritage of the centre right of politics in this country, it's always been our objective for government to be as small as we can make it and it's always been our fundamental principle that we think Australians are much better at spending their own money than their government is. That has been borne out in countless examples in the history of this democracy and any democracy, let alone other governments that aren't democracies.

We want taxation to be as low as possible, but it also needs to be fair. It's also vitally important that, in the decisions that we make and the policy settings that we put in place—where we say this is what the taxation arrangements need to be for individuals on income, for companies on their earnings and on capital gains and the like and what the deductions frameworks and regimes that are put in place need to be—and when we pass those laws, they capture everyone as they are intended to. If there are people out there that are saying, 'Hey, come and pay me a little bit of money to advise you on how to avoid paying tax in Australia and to break the law'—even if it's not the law they're breaking but the spirit of those tax settings we have—then that is appalling. It's morally bankrupt, and hardworking Australians and businesses are the victims of that, because the cost to government doesn't change. But, when people aren't paying the tax that they should, it results in the rest of us taxpayers paying more tax than we should. That is fundamentally wrong.

We in the coalition welcome the work of the Tax Practitioners Board and the other work that's being done to make sure that the powers are appropriate, the whistleblower protections are in place and the investigative cooperation between agencies is properly legislated so that, if a situation like the PwC scam ever comes along again, there are no loopholes or gaps in legislation and to make sure that it is well and truly, comprehensively known to be wrong, to be prosecutable and investigable. We need the corporate advisory ranks of this nation to understand full well that that sort of behaviour won't be tolerated by our government or within our economy.

I'll reconfirm in the final few moments of this debate that it is ridiculous that we're seeing the matter of responding to PwC's egregious and outrageous behaviour coupled with these changes to the PRRT and that some of those changes to deductibility to bring forth some of the revenue are being brought forward. How these two matters are related and why they should be in the same bill is absolutely ridiculous. The member for Hume, of course, made that point in his second reading amendment, and the member for Warringah has made that point.

Just to conclude, one thing I've not enjoyed but been surprised at is the number of people who have talked about how important it is for us to increase the amount of money the government earns from fossil fuels. A lot of the people that are talking about Norway and saying, 'We've got to earn more money from natural gas than the taxpayer,' are the same people that are saying they want to ban gas entirely. It's a very contradictory point from the people that are saying: 'This tax regime on gas is not high enough. We want to earn more money from gas and ban gas.' The exact same people that want to get rid of all gas also want to make even more money from the gas that they want to get rid of. I struggle to understand that point—I can't really connect the dots there—because I think you're either for or against that sector earning money from royalties for the taxpayer, encouraging an important framework of investment.

But, if you don't believe in the industry existing into the future, it is a little bit hypocritical, little bit rich, to be also saying in the same breath that we're not earning enough tax from something that you don't think we should be earning any money from it all. So some of those contributions are to me a little bit strange. Nonetheless, in the coalition we support the gas sector and want to see it continue to be part of the transition into the future. So I commend to the chamber the contribution from the member for Hume and his second reading amendment.

Debate adjourned.

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