Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

People are really struggling to make ends meet while big corporations make record profits, dodge taxes and drive the very inflation that's hurting so many. Last financial year, Qantas, a company we once owned as a public asset, raked in $2.47 billion in profit and paid no income tax, and they're not alone. Virgin Australia, Canva, Domino's, AGL and over 1,000 other corporations also dodged paying their fair share. Almost one-third of big businesses in Australia contributed nothing. While corporate profits have surged, the share of national income going to wages and small businesses has declined. From December 2019 to June 2023, large corporations pocketed an extra $100 billion in profit above their pre-pandemic margins.

It's not just the obscene size of these profits that's the problem; it's that they're driving inflation. Even former Liberal finance minister Mathias Cormann, now head of the OECD, has acknowledged the link between corporate profiteering and inflation. Those least responsible for inflation are being smashed by interest rate rises and corporate profiteering, while those most responsible get tax write-offs or handouts in the form of subsidies. It's a cruel joke.

Instead of tackling these corporate profits, the Reserve Bank has increased interest rates 13 times since 2022—the most in over 30 years. The idea is to reduce household spending and thereby cool inflation, but that only works if inflation is driven by consumer demand. In reality, it's actually being driven by corporate greed. How is it fair that Qantas can exploit pandemic losses to dodge tax while nurses and teachers, who kept this country going during COVID, pay more tax? Nurses contributed more income tax last year than Qantas and Virgin combined. And teachers? They outdid the entire oil and gas sector, whose petroleum resource rent tax contributions actually fell by 6.5 per cent last year.

In fact, the mining and energy industries have long been some of Australia's worst tax dodgers. If we're allowing corporations to extract resources and profit here, it should be for the benefit of all Australians, not just their shareholders. Look at Norway. They take 55 per cent of revenue from oil and gas, and that funds free university, smaller class sizes and a massive sovereign wealth fund. Yet Labor and the Liberal and National parties refuse to close the tax loopholes that let big corporations keep bilking ordinary Australians.