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

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share—Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023. There is an extraordinary situation in this country where one in three big corporations pays absolutely no tax whatsoever. By 'big corporations', we are talking about corporations that have revenues of over $100 million. Let's be clear about this: one in three of the corporations that have revenues of over $100 million in this country pay absolutely no tax at all. On the latest figures, that is over 800 corporations. It is actually 816 corporations who have revenues of over $100 million and pay absolutely no tax whatsoever.

Let's put that another way. A single, aged-care worker pays more tax than 816 big corporations in Australia, each and every one of which has revenue flows of over $100 million. Let's put it another way. One nurse in Australia pays more tax than 816 corporations, each and every one of which has revenues of over $100 million. I'm not talking about it collectively. I'm talking about one aged-care worker or one nurse paying more tax than any one of the 816 big corporations in this country with revenues of over $100 million, because, of course, the facts are that there are 816 big corporations in Australia, each and every one of which has revenues of over $100 million but pays absolutely no tax whatsoever. The share of the Australian economy going to corporate profits has never been higher than it is today, and the share of the Australian economy going to workers has never been lower than it is today. The corporations are making off like bandits, and Australian workers are paying the price. The corporations are raking in billions of dollars in profits every year while Australian workers are watching their real wages go backwards, as they have been for many years now. This is a massive public policy failure, and it needs to be corrected.

This bill, unfortunately, isn't really going to do the job. It is largely focused on one method of tax evasion, which is debt shifting, and unfortunately the government has placed a multitude of loopholes into this bill so that corporate accountants can work around it. Believe me: the corporate accountants will be able to work their way through these loopholes in their sleep. The reason the government has put these loopholes in the bill, the reason Labor has put massive loopholes into a bill that purports to strengthen multinational tax compliance, is that those were their marching orders from the top end of town. It's the same reason Labor won't support divestiture powers in this country—because the top end of town, the big corporations and the BCA have given them their riding instructions. It's the same reason that, after a full consultation process around merger law reform in this country, Labor is going to put forward a pathetically weak proposal. The BCA and the big corporations are the puppeteers, and the Australian Labor Party are the puppets.

Before going into the details of the bill, I want to give a massive shout-out here to the one industry that stands head and shoulders above all others when it comes to avoiding tax in Australia. That is, of course, the gas cartel. Oh, my goodness, what a terrific job they do at avoiding tax in this country! I congratulate the gas cartel for their ruthless exploitation of Australian tax laws, for their tax-dodging activities, for the amount of time and effort that they put into avoiding their tax responsibilities and for the amount of time and effort and political donations they put into dictating to the two major parties in this place, the political duopoly, to ensure that tax laws in this country are not written on behalf of the Australian people and are not written on behalf of the many millions of Australians who go to work and work hard every day and pay a significant amount of tax but instead are written to benefit the gas cartel, who are the tax avoiders par excellence in this country. It's absolutely unbelievable.

Interestingly, the ATO has done a remarkable job in clawing back billions of dollars through their Tax Avoidance Taskforce, with $6.4 billion in additional revenue this financial year. Remarkably, $4.4 billion or about 70 per cent of what the ATO has clawed back has come from dodgy tax-avoiding gas companies. The ATO has labelled the gas industry in Australia as 'systemic non-payers of tax'. That is not the Greens saying that; that is the ATO saying that. That's why we've circulated an amendment that will improve transparency around which gas export projects are sitting on billions and billions of dollars of PRRT tax avoidance credits.

It is astounding, colleagues, and let's never forget it, that, when the Labor Party in government put forward two options to reform the PRRT and went out to consultation, the Labor Party landed on option 3 of two, with option 3 being the one that they were instructed to land on by the gas cartel. That's what we're dealing with here. The cartel reaches its power and influence into this place, and there is no political party—and I say this advisedly—that is more open to being instructed by the gas cartel on how to behave than the Australian Labor Party. We know how many Labor ministers and Labor politicians have rolled out of this place and onto the boards of companies like Woodside and Santos, and I confidently predict that the current resources minister, Ms King, will end up on the boards of Woodside and Santos within 10 or 15 seconds of leaving this parliament. I confidently predict that, and I challenge anyone to demonstrate to me, given the history of the revolving door between the Labor Party and the gas cartel, that that will not be the case.