Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Implementation of the Common Reporting Standard) Bill 2015. The Common Reporting Standard is an important measure to combat international tax avoidance, and Labor have strongly supported this measure, just like we support cracking down on multinational tax avoidance. The Common Reporting Standard is a multilateral policy initiative of the G20 and the OECD. This initiative will allow financial account information to be exchanged between tax authorities in participating countries. With over 90 countries participating in this exchange of information, there will be far fewer places for tax avoiders to hide. It is important to note that the sharing of this type of information is crucial to make sure those individuals and companies pay their fair share of tax and to stop the money-shuffling operations. It follows on from other efforts in attacking money laundering. If you can achieve across-the-board agreement with countries to address this issue with appropriate laws then you will succeed in minimising these operations.

Labor want this well-coordinated system to come into effect as soon as possible. However, once again we see Mr Turnbull's government say one thing but do something else when it comes to tax avoidance. The government, in this bill, has proposed delaying the reporting on accounts held by corporate entities until 2019. This means that Australia will be lagging behind most OECD and other advanced economies. There are more than 40 countries which will begin this information exchange from next year. These countries include the UK, France, Germany, India, Argentina and Mexico as well as numerous European Union member states. Under the Turnbull government, Australia makes it glaringly obvious that it is not serious about tax avoidance by delaying this implementation for years. I do hope that in the second reading debate the government can outline cogent and relevant reasons for the delay and not just say that it is because they think industry needs time to adjust. If we wait this number of years, we will be in the same category as Russia, the United Arab Emirates and the Bahamas. This country has led the world in many areas, particularly in seeking to effect agreements across countries to stamp out money laundering, but instead we have now found ourselves at the bottom of the heap, dragging our feet. It does not speak highly of this government. What is more concerning is that this government will make individual reporting mandatory from 2018 while delaying corporate reporting for an extra year, until 2019, giving their mates in big business even more time. During this debate I encourage the coalition to provide a good rationale for the significant delay in making these changes.

The government have form when it comes to avoiding action on tax avoidance. They have cut 4,700 jobs from the Australian Taxation Office. They have done a dirty deal with the Greens to wind back tax transparency. Their multinational tax plan, if you can call it that, is so vague that Treasury could not even cost it. It is important to highlight the point about the multinational tax avoidance legislation, because it shows the government's complete insincerity when it comes to this important tax reform. After the Senate had already amended the government's bill so that companies at the lower threshold of $100 million in earnings had to pay their fair share of tax, the coalition made an agreement with the Greens at the last minute to keep the reporting threshold at $200 million. You have to put it in the frame of this government not being about transparency. It is not about ensuring that it can sign up to a multinational agreement to shed some light in this area to ensure that big business reports. Because of the last-minute deal they signed, instead of information being released about 900 companies, we will end up with information being released for only about 300 companies, and the rest will be kept out of sight, in the shadows. We would expect this type of manoeuvre from the coalition, but it just shows how deeply ingrained the Greens are in trying to move towards the coalition. Worse still, I can see—