Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Monday I was visited by a number of young people who were in Canberra for the Micah Challenge national Voices for Justice event. They talked to me about Millennium Development Goals and the great progress that was made against poverty through investments in public health, provision of immunisation and vaccinations, and how since 1990 15,000 fewer children are dying each day. These are dedicated young people who visit Canberra each and every year and lobby members of parliament about the issue of poverty and providing aid and assistance to people in developing countries. Each year I make a point of meeting with them. I know they meet with people on both sides of this parliament, and I encourage members on the other side to get behind their campaign of shining the light on tax dodging and corruption and using Australia's position as chair of the G20 to raise this issue and to ensure that we support fairer global trade by taking strong action to mitigate dangerous climate change.

In 2014, as I mentioned, we were chairing the G20. This gives us a really great opportunity to urge that we tackle the scourge of tax dodging, which robs developing countries of a massive scale of vital revenue for poverty reduction. This is vitally important to the young people who came and spoke to me, and vitally important to me. We are in a position where we will have a leadership role at the G20. I think we should use that role to highlight this issue. Christian Aid estimated that in 2008 developing countries lost more than US$160 billion through two forms of multinational corporate tax dodging, price transferring and false invoicing.

I call on the government to highlight the need for dealing with automatic exchange of information between tax authorities; beneficial ownership disclosure through a public registered list of the true owners and beneficiaries of companies, trusts and foundations; and country by country reporting for multinational corporations. This is important. The government should endorse the G20 adopting this country by country reporting approach and all the other approaches I have highlighted in this speech.