Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The only thing about Senator Edwards I am impressed with is his moustache. It is for a good cause, I must say. But let's get back to the very important issue of multinational tax avoidance—in fact, to tax avoidance in general in this country.

What Senator Edwards has failed to understand—and I genuinely believe this is an enormous oversight on behalf of the Liberals in this country—is that this is a significant matter of public interest. It has enormous public benefit. The objectives of having transparency in tax are twofold. The most important, and I will go directly to the Bradbury act, which is what introduced these laws in the first place. The first objective of these amendments is to discourage large corporate tax entities from engaging in aggressive tax avoidance practices. The second objective of these amendments is to provide more information to inform public debate about tax policy, particularly in relation to the corporate tax system.

I would like to read a quote from the previous Treasurer, Joe Hockey, who put out a media release on budget night—12 May 2015. In talking about a voluntary code of tax disclosure—not a mandatory code, like the Greens would like to see, but a voluntary code—he said:

The voluntary code will highlight companies that are paying their fair share of tax. It will also discourage companies from engaging in aggressive tax avoidance.

It is very similar to Labor and Bradbury, so far.

The Board of Taxation will provide a business and broader community perspective for the development of a voluntary corporate disclosure code.

But this is the good bit, Senator Edwards:

The government would like more companies, particularly large multinationals operating in Australia, to publicly disclose their tax affairs. In developing the code they will need to consider what information is disclosed and how it is disclosed.

The Liberal Party and the previous Treasurer believed in tax disclosure. The difference was that they wanted a voluntary scheme. Will you tell me which of the 1,400 companies that Senator Dastyari was talking about are actually out there wanting to voluntarily disclose their tax arrangements to the Australian public? How many of them are voluntary tax disclosers? None. That is why we need a mandatory code in this country for tax disclosure. This is a significant matter of public interest.

Most Australians pay their tax, and they expect large corporations to pay their tax. They do not expect to have a government that is essentially prepared to slug them in the hip pocket—where it hurts the most—with cuts to pensions, cuts to a whole range of different things that we have talked about in this chamber in the last two years. Now they are proposing to increase the GST, which will slug the most disadvantaged Australians in the hip pocket, but they will not take on the issue of multinational tax avoidance.

This is a serious test for the Prime Minister. He wants to put up some legislation in the Senate very shortly that will show he is taking action on tax avoidance. But at the end of the day that legislation, while it has some merits, does not go anywhere near far enough. We have a good amendment that was put up in this chamber by Labor, the Greens and the crossbenchers that asked for a simple system of tax avoidance; a simple system that will not cost anything to administer. That is your only criticism I had heard from the government until Senator Edwards got up here and said the government clearly does not believe in multinational tax disclosure. They want to slug you in the hip pocket, but they do not want to take on the big end of town.

They can throw as much spin into this as they like about kidnap bills, but they are happy to put up their rich mates' amendment bill in this place. It is for their mates, the big end of town, who probably donate to the Liberal Party—a small number of Australians who do not want to disclose their tax. And you have to ask why. Why don't they want to have their tax disclosed? It has nothing to do with kidnapping. It has to do with the fact that they do not want to be part of a public register that can provide incentives and disincentives to avoid tax avoidance.