Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I am seeking to suspend standing orders so as to move two amendments to this motion—to omit from paragraph (b) 'No. 6 Tax Laws Amendment (Combating Multinational Tax Avoidance) Bill 2015' and to omit from paragraph (e) 'Tax Laws Amendment (Combating Multinational Tax Avoidance) Bill 2015'—so that the Senate can get on with debating those bills, which have been agreed and discussed previously, but not to enable the bringing on of the dirty deal that the Australian Greens have done, because we do not believe it is in the Senate's or the taxpayer's interest to facilitate debate on what is a dirty deal done in the middle of the night, in the dead of night, by Senator Di Natale with the coalition.

And I do want to go to the substance of some of the issues, because it is pretty extraordinary listening to some of the contributions from the Australian Greens in this chamber. Senator Whish-Wilson says the Greens are on the side of the angels, but they are more on the side of tax dodgers and multinational companies. The Greens are against tax transparency. In order to play themselves into the political game they have done a deal which lessens what this Senate would have insisted on in terms of tax transparency. Who would have thought?

I did sit there watching Senator Di Natale as he said: 'You know, a "better than nothing" approach is what we are taking. This is better than nothing. The Labor Party want to take an all or nothing approach.' And I thought to myself, 'This is the same man who voted with Cory Bernardi and Eric Abetz some six years ago against the carbon price.' We remember that day.