Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to you today about the issue of tax transparency, but I want to talk to you about a house, an impressive, five-storey homestead, a place amongst the palm trees with the waves lapping on the beach. This is not any ordinary house. This is a house in the Cayman Islands, a place called Ugland House. In this house, nearly 19,000—that is right: 19,000—corporations claim to be headquartered. In describing this house, President Obama said:

… either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world.

Ugland House on Grand Cayman Island is one of the most pre-eminent addresses in the world for tax minimisation.

You have to ask: who invests in the companies that claim to be headquartered in this house? Well, friends, among them is our Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Turnbull. How do we know this? In January this year, Mr Turnbull altered his Register of Members' Interests entry to include investments in Zebedee Growth Fund, which is incorporated in Ugland House. Zebedee requires any outside investor to front up with at least a quarter of a million US dollars, and this is not even the only investment the Prime Minister has in the Cayman Islands. There is the Bowery Opportunity Fund, with a minimum investment of $1 million. We also know of the 3G Natural Resources Offshore Fund.

It is all legal and disclosed, but is any of it appropriate? There is one reason I know why people invest in the Cayman Islands, and that is so they do not have to play by the same rules as the rest of us. This is not fair, and it is not right. For two years, I have asked: why is it that this Senate cannot pass legislation to improve tax transparency? Why is it that we cannot crack down on multinational profit shifting? Why have we seen coalition senators refusing to ask companies earning over $100 million to declare how much these companies pay in tax? Why is it that the Liberal Party will go to the ends of the earth to protect big business? And how is it appropriate, how is it acceptable, that the Prime Minister of this country has investments sitting in the Cayman Islands? So I say to you and I say to this chamber: every time the Liberal Party votes against tax transparency, just remember that there is a house in the Cayman Islands, a house where Malcolm's money resides.