Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in continuation of the remarks I made earlier about the tax transparency issues. What I was saying was that it is important that in this nation we commence a conversation about what it is that we seek from government and what we might be better prepared to pay in taxation to secure those outcomes. What is critical in a debate of this kind is a belief that the way we are currently proceeding is fair. There is nothing more corrosive to a conversation of this kind than a perception that things are not fair.

Unfortunately there is a lack of confidence at the moment in many aspects of our political system. In 2013, just 22 per cent of people were able to agree that politicians understand what ordinary people think. In that same survey in 2013 conducted by ANU, 66 per cent of people agreed that people in government look after themselves. That is a very sad reflection on the situation in Australian politics and it is a reflection that is derived from a survey conducted by the ANU that is quite reputable and has been running for many years.

There is a sense in this place that we are not interested in the lives of ordinary people. There is a sense in this place that our priorities are determined by the elite rather than by a real appreciation of what goes on day-to-day in most Australian households. And when we are talking in this bill about making arrangements to limit the transparency around the tax affairs of companies that earn more than $100 million a year, I think we ought reflect on the fact that the median income, the income earned by most Australians, the people at the 50 per cent mark is $57,000 or in that order. It is not very much money when we think about that in comparison to the very wealthy individuals and businesses that we are talking about in this bill. And it is why it concerns me that special provisions are being contemplated here.

We have very high levels of compliance with the tax code, particularly by individuals. That compliance is reliant on individuals having confidence that the tax system is fair and effective. There are some companies whose actions erode the faith that Australians have in our tax system. And the answer to this is not to hide that fact, to hide that information. I think we can have confidence in the Australian people. We can take them into our confidence because we know that the Australian people are, in fact, mature enough to understand this conversation. The answer to this, about securing support for the tax system and securing support more generally for the legitimacy of our actions in this area, is to bring the information into the open and those were the measures that Labor brought in in government and which the coalition government now seeks to repeal.

Companies are welcome to take whatever legal approach they wish to their tax affairs. But if they are out of step with community values, they should have to explain themselves.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.