Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

It is important that multinationals pay their fair share of tax. People and especially multinationals paying their fair share of tax means that we can deliver the services that we need. We need those services more and more, and we need government, especially the federal government, to provide the finances to the states for those services to be provided. I'll give you an example from my electorate. At the moment, we've just seen maternity services at the Camperdown Hospital cease. My hope is that they will resume as quickly as possible, but it's a classic example of this: if you're not getting the taxes you need, and if you're not then providing the services you need, then services will be withdrawn. We're seeing more and more that pressures through the cost of living and the cost of doing business come onto the budget. Especially in Victoria, we're seeing health services cut, and we cannot have health services cut, especially in my electorate and especially when it comes to maternity services like those in Camperdown. Let's hope those services can be reinstated as quickly as possible. It is so important that services are delivered, and the way you deliver services is by making sure you have equitable taxation.

As we've seen with multinationals over a period of time, there have been real concerns about whether we are getting multinationals paying their fair share of tax. That's why, when the coalition were in government, we started a process of making sure that multinationals would be taxed fairly. As the Deputy Speaker and everyone in this chamber knows, that was incredibly important work. What we're seeing from the government is a continuation of that process, including the OECD two-pillar solution to multinational tax avoidance. We obviously support that work, because we want to make sure that multinationals are paying their fair share. As I illustrated in the example before, if we're not getting everyone to pay their fair share, then pressure comes onto government to provide the services that they need.

We remember that, before the last election, the Labor Party said the only thing they would look to do with regard to raising taxes was when it came to multinationals. It's been two years since the election, and now we see them beginning to do something on this for the first time. Why it has taken them two years is beyond me, but that seems to be the glacial pace at which this government works on anything. They also said, 'That's all we are going to do when it comes to taxation.' And yet, once again, what we've seen is a failure to honour their word and commitment. Let me give you some examples of this. They said, 'Our focus will be on multinationals.' But what have they done as well as target multinationals? They've raised taxes on superannuation. 'We'll have no new taxes. We won't do anything.' But they raised taxes on superannuation. Then came a real doozy. They decided that they would tax unrealised capital gains. How that is going to work is, I think, beyond anyone. How the government could even introduce such a policy and then think it would be workable is just crazy.

I'll give the example of a farmer in my electorate. They might have seen their land value go up over the last three or four years. All of a sudden, because of what's happening with agricultural prices, that land value might have started to go down. How is this going to work when you're trying to tax unrealised capital gains? If the land value had gone up, they might have had to sell some property to pay the unrealised capital gain. Then, all of a sudden, the price goes down. How is that going to work in this wonderful system that the government is putting in place? Obviously, we're going to have to see the detail at some stage and, as we know, especially when it comes to the Prime Minister, they're not very good at detail, so who knows what is going to happen when it comes to that wonderful new area of taxation that they've put in place.

Then there are the increases on franking credits. They said they weren't going to do anything on franking credits, but then we see that, by stealth, they've introduced taxes on franking credits. Of course, they've ended the small business tax concessions, and they've decimated the instant asset write-off relied on by Australian small businesses. Here we were, with the government saying, 'No taxing. No taxing. We're only going to do it to multinationals.' Then, all of a sudden, what we have is new taxes.

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