Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will support this bill, the Taxation (Multinational—Global and Domestic Minimum Tax) Bill 2024, through the House, but we will reserve our position in the Senate.

Since the pandemic, big corporations in Australia have been making eye-watering profits. In 2022, corporate profits reached their highest level ever, and they haven't stopped there. At the moment, over 30 per cent of the entire economy goes to the profits of big corporations. Australia's 500 biggest companies made $98 billion in so-called crisis profits post the pandemic. Corporations like Woolworths, Hancock Prospecting, National Australia Bank, AGL Energy and Harvey Norman reaped billions of dollars in profits off the back of forcing people to pay higher prices.

These corporate profits are driving the cost-of-living crisis. They are making more because you are paying more. Wages are not keeping up. According to the latest OECD data, real wages are now at 4.8 per cent below prepandemic levels. The share of profits which goes to working people through wages is at record lows. We've lost nearly 14 years of progress on wages growth and, according to the RBA, it's going to take another 15 years for us to make up the lost ground.

This is an economy that has been rigged by Labor and the Liberals in the interests of big corporations. The RBA governor, Michele Bullock, admitted at the beginning of the year what we all knew: big corporations were using the cost-of-living crisis as cover to push up prices. Alan Fels held an inquiry into price gouging and found that people are paying too much too often for the basics they need in life. He cited submissions like those from Danielle, a nurse whose bills rose by over $8,700 during 2023 while her wages increased by only $102. What makes it worse, though, is that people like Danielle pay more tax than many multinational corporations. In fact, one in three big corporations in this country pays no tax at all. And when it comes to the coal and gas sector, that number of corporations that pay no tax at all is more like two in three.

There are 91 coal and gas corporations and corporate entities operating in Australia but, upon going through the tax database, we found that 54 of those 91 corporations paid no tax—not a cent. Just to spell it out, three out of every five coal and gas corporations operating in this country paid no tax. Those 54 corporations boasted $100 billion of income last year and paid not a cent of tax. What an absolute scam! It's a truly rigged economy. Seventy per cent of gas corporations in Australia don't pay any tax. Thirty-three gas corporations earned over $68 billion in revenue and didn't pay any tax. Petronas Australia—$1.14 billion in total income, no tax paid. TotalEnergies—$2.6 billion in revenue, no tax paid. Chevron Australia Downstream Holdings—$5 billion in total income, no tax paid. ExxonMobil—$15.5 billion in total income, no tax paid. ExxonMobil Australia has never once paid tax in the eight years of corporate tax reports.

Coal companies aren't much better. Half of them avoided paying any tax, and the half who didn't made a tidy $28 billion in total income. To top it all off, some of these coal and gas corporations are getting handouts from the government, subsidised by you—the taxpayer. That's billions that we could use to build more housing and use for mental health care, disability support and students struggling with completely unaffordable degrees. We're all victims of a grand extortion, a swindle, a fraud—and Labor and the coalition are all in on it. In the 2023 financial year the major parties received $2 million in donations from fossil fuel corporations—companies like Adani, Woodside, Santos and Chevron, and they're just the ones that we know about due to our broken donation system.

What do we get in return? We get a nurse that pays more tax than a multinational and a Labor government that's giving 14 times more to corporations to turbocharge the climate and cost-of-living crises than it will to the national disaster relief fund. It's a joke, and people are sick of it. There's not a gas shortage in Australia; there's an integrity shortage. There's a shortage of politicians who actually represent their constituents, not the interests of the coal and gas corporations paying them off. One nurse shouldn't pay more tax than 33 gas corporations. One teacher shouldn't pay more tax than 21 coal corporations. In the 10 years between 2014 and 2024, all the teachers in this country paid twice as much tax as the entire oil and gas sector. There's more in HECS and student related loans going to the government of the country than there is revenue in the PRRT, the big gas tax which is designed to raise revenue from the oil and gas industry. It's no wonder that the Australian Taxation Office described the gas industry as a systemic nonpayer of tax.

The Labor government has failed to mention the role of big corporate profits in driving up the cost of living. How can you tackle a crisis when you can't even say who's causing it and when you can't even identify those big corporations that are price gouging? Rather than cracking down on the big supermarkets, the Prime Minister is more likely to dress up in a Coles high-vis top and pose for photos with them, and, rather than making big corporations pay their fair share, the Prime Minister is more likely to have dressed up in a Rio Tinto shirt. That's because the Prime Minister is more concerned with managing the economy for the profits of big corporations and billionaires than he is with the concerns of everyday people. While people are struggling to keep a roof over their head, being smashed at the supermarket and paying too much on their power bills, Labor is backing the big corporations.

In the past year, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, CEOs have given themselves double-digit pay rises, while many of the same corporations call for restraint when it comes to the pay of their workers. In this wealthy country of ours, we now have over 3.3 million people living in poverty. The number of people who can't find an affordable place to live is growing, as is the number of people who are homeless. People are skipping meals so their kids don't miss out.

This country's economy is rigged. Labor and the Liberals both take huge donations from the big corporations, Labor and the Liberals have both refused to make the big corporations pay their fair share and Labor and the Liberals have both refused to do anything about price gouging from the big corporations. People are fed up with the Coles and Woollies of politics ripping them off at every turn. This is why, every day, more people are telling us it is getting harder and harder to tell Labor and the Liberals apart.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can make the big corporations pay their fair share of tax. We can make groceries cheaper by making price gouging illegal. We can freeze rent increases and drive down the cost of housing to the point where people can afford it. If we make the big corporations pay their fair share of tax, we can actually get to the heart of what's driving the cost-of-living crisis and start to invest in people.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives

Sitting suspended from 18:00 to 18:13

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