Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Whish-Wilson today relating to the collection of North West Shelf royalty revenues.

The ANAO report into the collection of North West Shelf royalty revenue landed yesterday in the Senate. It is a very important report. We have few agencies in this country that can independently assess situations such as how much tax the Australian Taxation Office collects or whether or not government departments are adequately collecting royalties from regimes we have around the country. I recommend that senators have a look at the ANAO report from yesterday. The report found that nearly $5 billion of deductions were being claimed by oil and gas companies in Australia—some of the biggest, wealthiest multinational corporations we have operating in this country—that were not permitted under the Commonwealth royalty schedule.

This issue has made a splash in the media today. It is on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald. Why has this issue resonated so strongly? I have called it a bombshell, and I think that is exactly what it is. The Australian National Audit Office has released a damning report, an indictment on a federal government and a government department that is failing to do its job properly and provide oversight on a royalty regime which requires big, wealthy oil and gas companies to pay revenue to the Australian government, to pay for hospitals, to pay for schools, to pay for police.

The same week that that report arrived, here in the Senate we are trying to squeeze the proverbial lemon, as Mr Scott Morrison calls it—that is, backpackers. They are some of the lowest paid workers in this country, they provide important, critical labour for our agricultural producers, and we are trying to squeeze every dollar we can out of them. Mr Scott Morrison said we cannot squeeze any more out of the lemon. I put to Mr Morrison that he has some very ripe mangoes hanging right in front of his face, if he would only choose to see them.

This is exactly what Australians want their government to do: they want them to crack down on big companies that are rorting our tax system. But it is not just that the big companies are doing this—and, who knows, knowingly doing this—it is that we are not actually picking it up. This audit report identified that these issues have not been looked at for nearly 17 years. A Western Australian government department is providing some basic oversight into this with some very limited auditing, and the limited auditing that they have done has found significant underpayments, claims and deductions.

I do not like getting into distracted arguments at a time like this, because I have very limited time, but Senator Cormann's lack of response to my questions was very telling. He tried to say it was Senator Canavan's portfolio. That is not the case; this is a whole-of-government approach. The Australian Taxation Office liaises with the Western Australia government and the industry department on the collection of revenues. And, of course, the Treasurer is responsible for setting what deductions corporations can and cannot claim, yet Senator Cormann would not answer the question to the Australian Senate today, to the Australian people. He refused to answer the question asking why some of the biggest, wealthiest companies on the planet operating in the North West Shelf have not paid up to $4 billion in potential revenues to the Australian government. That is just over a very short period of time. Who knows how far back this goes and how much the Australian people have been dudded, because a government department is not doing its job and because a government has its priorities wrong.

On Radio National on the weekend, the Prime Minister said, in response to an interview that I did, that the ATO should go after all backpackers and audit them on paying their tax. I have no problem with the ATO auditing backpackers, but it shows you where their priorities are. Their priorities are not chasing after big oil and gas—the big mining companies that are large backers of the Liberal-National Party. Their priorities are to go after some of the lowest paid workers in this country, who we need for our agricultural enterprises. We need them in Tasmania to prop up our fruit growers and our vineyard industry. Here we have a government that has its priorities all wrong. They are not taking on the big end of town. They need to fix this problem. The Greens will be moving an inquiry into this issue, because that is exactly what the Australian people expect us to do in this parliament.

Question agreed to.