Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We don't need to do a committee on this because the economics committee has already looked at it. They received a submission from ASIC that said: 'Please remove the exemption,' and the committee made a bipartisan recommendation or endorsement to remove it. We don't need to have a committee into this. Blind Freddy could see that this is an unacceptable situation that we have in Australia, where we have a group of companies that have a special privilege. They don't have to lodge their financial returns, their affairs are kept completely secret and they can engage in aggressive tax minimisation; that's all okay. As a company director—and I am a company director—I can't go to ASIC and work out whether or not I should deal with these companies, because there's no information there that helps me do that. It's a serious question, and it's not me that wants to know; it's my constituents that want to know. I can tell you, from communicating with my constituents directly through phone calls and through Facebook and even from feedback on Twitter, Australians want to understand why this exemption exists—what the policy rationale is for maintaining this exemption. It's quite in order for me to ask that question. The fact that you're unable to answer it tells me there is no policy rationale. I'll let everyone know that I did talk to the Treasurer about a week ago about this bill and I said to him: 'Lay out on the table what the concerns are,' and I didn't get a response.