Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Zebedee Growth Fund, one of the Prime Minister's many Cayman Island investments declared on the register. The fund is headquartered at Ugland House, an address shared with 19,000 other companies, prompting US President Obama to say, in May 2009:

… either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world.

Does the Prime Minister have the same position as President Obama? Is he concerned by Australians not paying their fair share of tax by investing in the Cayman Islands?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can explain it to the honourable member now for the third time. The purpose of a managed fund being domiciled in the Cayman Islands is to cater for international investors—non-US investors—so that the income from the fund accruing to each of the investors is taxed in their own jurisdiction. If an investor were located in a low-tax jurisdiction then they would pay a low rate of tax. For any investor in a fund like that, as indeed for any Australian in a fund like that, the consequence of that arrangement is that all of that income that accrues to my share of investment is brought to account fully and tax is paid on it fully in Australia. The fact is that all of that income, all of my share of the income, is fully taxed in Australia. That is the point. No Australian tax is avoided—Australian tax is paid in full.