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

Of course, the Greens complain about it. But you did it. Do not hide from it. Own it and defend it if you will—but I do not think you can defend it. You certainly do not want to talk about it now. We could be here all day talking about the self-serving, hypocritical, narrow-minded and perpetually outraged little clique that is the Greens, but there is the business of actually holding this government to account.

A report by the ATO in December last year confirmed that one in four companies earning more than $100 million paid no tax in Australia in 2014—not one jot. Anyone would think that is unacceptable, and that is why Labor's $7.2 billion plan would further tighten the tax net by putting in place a measure such as the Common Reporting Standard and making sure it is up and running as soon as possible.

We would also address the practice of shifting money from different parts of the company's global corporate structure to its Australian arm, thereby sending their money overseas as repayment of these artificial loans and at the same time claiming tax deductions. Our plan would see companies only be able to claim tax deductions against the average amount of debt that they owe banks around the world. These plans are detailed, costed and responsible measures that Labor has outlined to make sure that companies which do business here pay their fair share of tax.

The bill, as it stands, does not require that information collected through the common reporting standard to be public. Labor believes in greater tax transparency, and we have proposed that the Commissioner of Taxation make this information public in an annual report by providing aggregated and, importantly, the identified information about the financial account holdings of foreign nationals. The government continues to oppose measures to bring the time line for the common reporting standard forward. It, along with the Greens, has clearly opposed greater transparency and it has only been forced to take any action on multinational tax avoidance by the work done by the Senate economics committee, particularly the Labor senators on that committee.

This government clearly has the wrong priorities when it comes to tax avoidance. But speaking of tax avoidance, there is another kind of avoidance occurring to the great detriment of our country and our economy. It is something that has emerged gradually—it is the policy avoidance that we have seen from the Turnbull government and the Treasurer. While Labor has announced tax policies to counter the fiscal vandalism that those opposite have wreaked on the budget, Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison have actively avoided the debate on tax reform. I have never seen in this place a government that has avoided so many debates about tax. It trumpeted in the early stages that it would be a government that would have tax reform at its centre—it would have a white paper on tax reform; it would set out an economic plan on tax reform. To date there has not been a squeak from this government. I would be embarrassed if I were a backbencher for the coalition at this point in this debate. Not only have they avoided making any proposals to reform our tax system, they have actually gone out of their way to rule out everything and anything possible. In fact, they created their own scare campaign around the GST and then ruled it out. That is hilarious! I have never seen a government create its own scare campaign so that it could rule it out. It is unique, let me say.

Let me throw-out a policy for those opposite which I could announce—a national policy avoidance scheme. It seems germane to this government which has no big ideas. Its only idea is how to create a national policy avoidance scheme, which could be independently analysed by the Parliamentary Budget Office. Those opposite could figure out a way at least to have fines for not complying with the national policy avoidance scheme, because to date this government has failed to deliver an economic plan for this country. The shame of that is that it has been in government for 2½ years and its only explanation is: 'We'll get to that budget and we'll have our economic plan.' What are we going to do between now and the budget? What have we done between the last budget and now? This government does not have an economic plan and it does not seem to be prepared to have the wherewithal to put its shoulder to the wheel and develop one. It wants to wait for a budget. Budgets come and go, but I am concerned that the plan that this government might produce will never materialise.

In all seriousness, this is not good governance by a coalition which leaves ordinary Australians hanging and waiting for a plan which has not materialised. Announcing that it will have a plan is not a plan—that is not a plan that sells. That is not economic leadership. Mr Morrison, at the Press Club the other day, did not display economic leadership, and I would say the media thrashed him for not being able to articulate an economic plan to this country when he had the opportunity to do so. This was on display for all to see. At the end of the day, Mr Turnbull did not want to become Prime Minister because he had a grand vision he wanted to set out for this country on how we would move from here into a way forward. Really he just wanted to be Prime Minister. Why? Perhaps he thought he deserved to be Prime Minister. The day that Mr Turnbull challenged Mr Abbott, he said:

Ultimately, the Prime Minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs. He has not been capable of providing the economic confidence that business needs.

That is what Mr Turnbull said when he challenged Mr Abbott. He set him down as a failure.