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

I rise to indicate that I don't intend to move my amendment. There's a difficulty with the government in that currently it's hiding the financial reports of 1,119 large proprietary companies. That creates a situation which, when these large proprietary companies—and these are not my words; these are the words of ASIC in response to submissions made to an Economics Committee inquiry into corporate tax avoidance—don't disclose their financial statements publicly, can give rise to aggressive tax avoidance. Sadly, this is an exemption from reporting that applies to only a limited number of companies. These are very wealthy family companies and, also sadly, as has been shown by Michael West, mates of the Liberal Party—donors to the Liberal Party.

Whilst I would love to move this amendment, I understand that the Greens and Labor won't support it. I understand that they aren't supporting it because they don't want to withhold money from the television and movie sector. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that, because the government has in fact let this languish on the Notice Paper for some considerable amount of time. So, whilst not moving the amendment, I think it might be appropriate for those other parties to state why they won't support it in this instance.