Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a point of clarification, I just want to confirm that we are discussing the second amendment that was put up by the Australian Greens yesterday evening. Is that the amendment we are discussing at the moment? Is that correct?

The CHAIRMAN: There is no amendment before the chamber at the moment. It has not been moved.

There is an opportunity that this Senate has before it, this morning, to pass what can potentially be a very good piece of legislation. As those of us on this side of the chamber, certainly in Labor, have previous said, we are very supportive of the bill that the government has put together, the Tax Laws Amendment (Combating Multinational Tax Avoidance) Bill 2015. However, we have felt and continue to feel that with some small, minor amendments this bill can be improved. Frankly, this is not the ideal bill. It is not the bill that I would have put forward. It is not the bill that I would have said is the perfect and right bill. But there are some opportunities here to make a few amendments and some small amendments that will be able to improve the bill.

One of the great opportunities is an amendment that has not yet been moved by the Australian Greens. That amendment is looking at being able to restate and put in some of the measures as they relate to tax transparency and making sure that a handful of very large, very powerful, private corporations are not able to hide behind their own structure. Let us be clear here: this is not mum and dad small businesses. These are some major entities. These are some of Australia's largest businesses, and we are talking about businesses that have revenue of over $100 million a year.

In the past few days we have seen an expose where a small, pretend astroturf group took the Senate Economics Legislation Committee for a ride. We found that the representations being made were being put together by a small group of paid lobbyists who were pretending and purporting to represent the broader community. Heath Aston from the Sydney Morning Herald should be congratulated for his expose of this matter and the demonstration of which all of us need to be conscious—that, while we in this chamber go through our committee process, understandably, senators, Senate staff and the secretariats of our various committees will and should work on the principle that the information being presented to them and the witnesses coming before them are genuine.

What was so disappointing here was that we were all taken advantage of; we were all given a false assessment. It showed that there is not a groundswell of opposition to this information being published. There is a small group of incredibly wealthy, powerful individuals who have structured themselves as private family companies for tax disclosure purposes and who do not want this information out. They are prepared to pay large amounts of money to lobbyists to create pretend organisations, pretend grassroots movements. This was exposed because the phone number that was on the end of their submission turned out to be the law office which also happened to be where this group was registered, which also happened to be one of the other submitters in this process. We found that a con job was being perpetrated against the Senate Economics Legislation Committee. That expose changes some of these material facts.

I think the Australian Greens amendment goes a long way to making sure that there is greater disclosure and greater transparency. Let us be clear: it means that information that has already been collected and gathered by the Australian Taxation Office would be disclosed. This is not any additional burden on the ATO; this is information they already have, information they have already collected, information they were anticipating they would be disclosing in December. If the Australian Greens were to move their proposed amendment, that is what it would do if it were passed.

Minister, does the government believe there is an opportunity, through different amendments, to improve this legislation? Has the government had an opportunity to sit down and have a look at these amendments? Furthermore, Minister, has the government been talking to crossbenchers and other parties about ways this bill could be improved?