Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate that the Greens will be supporting the Treasury Laws Amendment (2022 Measures No. 1) Bill 2022, although, as senators will be aware, we do have some amendments to the bill, which have been circulated in my name.

I want to speak about the issue of corporate tax transparency. I understand we will get an opportunity to debate these amendments in detail, but I do want to place on the record that the first of these amendments changes the corporate tax transparency requirements by removing the distinction between Australian resident and foreign resident private companies for the purpose of corporate tax transparency. It requires instead the ATO to publish information on the tax paid by private companies with a turnover greater than $100 million, regardless of where those companies are domiciled. The second of the Greens amendments abolishes the grandfathered list of private companies which, since 1995, have been exempt from having to lodge financial reports with ASIC.

Those senators who have been in this place for a while might recall the pretty unusual circumstances that resulted in the corporate tax transparency requirements that we currently have, and I want to be very clear about how we find ourselves in this place. In 2013, the former Labor government, with the support of the Greens, legislated that the ATO would publish the gross revenue, taxable revenue and tax paid by all private companies with a turnover greater than $100 million. That was legislated 2013 by Labor with the support of the Australian Greens. But, in October 2015, before the first of those transparency reports was released by the Australian tax office, the former government—a Liberal government—repealed this requirement in relation to Australian resident private companies.

Shortly thereafter the Greens, in the name of my friend and colleague Senator Whish-Wilson, moved an amendment to another tax bill to reinstate those requirements that the LNP government repealed in October 2015. At that time, former senators Xenophon and Muir reversed their previous support for the abolition of those tax transparency requirements and so the amendment to reinstate corporate tax transparency requirements passed through the Senate. But the Turnbull government rejected that amendment shortly afterwards in the House. Following sustained public and political pressure, in December 2015 the Turnbull government relented and agreed to reinstate the corporate tax transparency requirements for Australian private companies but at a higher turnover threshold. That threshold which was agreed to by the Turnbull government was a turnover threshold of $200 million a year.

It was the Greens who secured this agreement from Prime Minister Turnbull to partially reinstate corporate tax transparency requirements for large Australian private companies that he had repealed only two months earlier. Of course, what we got from Labor at the time was that they didn't like it. What we got from Labor was that they didn't like it—that the Greens were being pragmatic; that we didn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That's what we got from Labor. They got cranky with us because we didn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We got all pragmatic and actually worked to deliver something to improve transparency around corporate tax arrangements.

Of course, Labor didn't like it that we led a successful political, community and public campaign to force Prime Minister Turnbull to back down, so they spent, collectively, a good part of the next four years telling a lie to the Australian people—that the Greens watered down tax transparency for big companies, when in fact not only did we not water down transparency with regard to corporate tax arrangements; we improved it. That was a lie at the time, and it remains a lie today, because you can't water down something that doesn't exist.