Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to speak on this Greens motion. It is great to see the Greens want to take some action on corporate tax evasion. Hopefully they will support the government's bill to clamp down on R&D issues for large companies. My understanding is that the Greens are not supporting that. Certainly the Labor Party are not supporting it right now.

All these comments we are hearing today, about wanting to tax corporations more apparently, are just empty rhetoric, because we have a bill in front of this parliament right now—we heard about it during question time as well—that would reduce deductions for companies that have a turnover of more than $20 billion.

These are not small companies; these are big companies, the kinds of companies the Greens typically do not like—Rio Tinto, BHP. We have decided as a government that they should fund their R&D themselves. Indeed the Labor Party came to the same conclusion just a year ago when they were in government. But right now those changes are being held up by—wait for it!—the very people that have moved this motion today saying that corporations do not pay enough tax. We hear from the Greens about how the Tax Justice Network report shows that companies do not pay enough tax. But they do not pay their taxes because of the deductions they are allowed to make, and a big part of those deductions are to do with research and development incentives, which the Greens want to keep for big companies.

Senator Heffernan before asked for some facts, and I think that is fair enough; you should have some facts.

Senator Heffernan interjecting—

You might not like my facts, Senator Heffernan, but they are facts. Corporations in Australia pay more corporate tax, as a percentage of GDP, than almost any other OECD nation—