Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The government has two tax bills on the books at the moment. One aims to give a $50 billion tax cut to some of the biggest companies in Australia, and that includes giving a $7 billion-odd handout to the big four banks. That tax bill keeps getting lower and lower and lower on the agenda, on the Notice Papersomehow we never seem to get around to debating it in this place. That is probably a good thing; perhaps the government is starting to get the message from the Australian public that people are sick of multinational companies making huge amounts of money in Australia—operating here, selling here, employing some people here—and then paying no tax. People are increasingly sick of Australian based very large companies operating here and making millions if not billions of dollars in profit and then, through clever accounting schemes and loopholes in the law, paying no tax. People are sick of finding out that, for example, when it comes to LNG exports people can extract resources from underground or under the ocean in Australia, sell them off and countries like Japan make more on tax from those LNG exports from Australia than Australia does itself. People are sick of watching mining booms come and go, leaving behind crashing house prices and high levels of unemployment in states like Western Australia. We look around and ask what has the public got to show for it—what lasting infrastructure is left? Have we really benefited or have we just missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to raise the money we need to build the infrastructure and services that Australians rightly expect?

It is no surprise that the government is deciding to soft pedal on its tax cuts for big businesses and instead push higher up the agenda something that might have the effect of making some big multinational companies pay something close to their fair share. But, as is always the way, the government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. The Australian public does not accept being asked to pay more to see the doctor or less money going to people who find themselves between jobs and looking for a new job, or paying more to get certain health tests, only to fund corporate tax cuts. The Australian people are rightly saying the parliament has to be the custodian of the public interest—not the corporate interest but the public interest. It should be our job as parliamentarians not to do whatever big companies want but instead to stand up to big companies and say, 'You have to pay your fair share of tax if you want to operate in Australia,' because that way we will have enough money available so that people can go and see the doctor and take their kids to go and see the doctor and not be asked to pay big co-payments along the way. So the campaigning from inside this parliament and outside the parliament might have started to have an effect.

What the government has brought here is a good start. It is following some other countries who say to multinationals, 'Look, if you are going to operate here you have to pay effectively a minimum amount of tax here.' The Greens hope that that will have some effect, and that is why we are supporting the Treasury Laws Amendment (Combating Multinational Tax Avoidance) Bill. It is one of a suite of measures that are necessary. The Greens took to the election a very comprehensive 18-point plan for ending the epidemic of tax avoidance and making sure that the companies that operate in Australia—which is a good place to do business—pay their fair share of tax, and we are pleased that in the last couple of years the government has clearly looked through the Greens policy that we took to the election and decided that there are some good things in it.

If you are going to have a law, that law is only as good as its enforcement. If we have a law that looks good on paper but the Australian Taxation Office does not have the resources to chase it up, then it is not going to deliver the kind of extra money that the government has proposed. The Greens were the only party that went to the election saying that over the coming few years we will restore all of the funding that has been cut from the ATO. To give you an idea of what has been ripped out of the ATO, if you were to restore all of the funding back to the ATO that has been taken out of it, on last year's figures you would be looking at $1.62 billion over four years—$1.62 billion that needs to go back into the ATO, because that is how much over successive years has been taken out of it. If you want to know why we have a problem with declining revenues in this country, a squeeze on revenues, that is a good place to look first. We have taken money out of the ATO, and that means fewer people able to chase not only companies like Google, like Facebook, but also those large companies that operate here as well, and make them pay their fair share of tax. We are pleased that the government has come some way towards restoring some funds to help implement legislation like this, but unless we fully restore funding to the ATO it is not going to be enough and we are going to find ourselves back here doing half measures all the time.

Ultimately this comes down to whether as a parliament we say that we will be the guardians of the public interest. We will say Australia remains a good place to do business, and we want it to be a good place to do business, but tax is the price you pay for doing business in a prosperous country like Australia. Everyone wants the Australian economy to do well but people do not want large companies operating here and using their money and their wherewithal to hire clever accountants and lawyers and get themselves out of paying tax. I am glad that this bill has been elevated rather than the company tax cut bill for debate because it suggests, as the penny drops, that the government might have heard the message that there are better ways to balance the books than taking the axe to the young, the old, the sick and the poor. This might be a good start in having more money coming into the public coffers that should have been here in the first place.

There is a question—and we will pursue this in the Senate—about whether the tax office is going to commence its investigations at a too late or too low of a point, where the presumption about the amount of tax being paid is the right one. We will pursue that when we get to the Senate. But for here, as a good start it is much better that we are debating this bill than the bill to cut company tax. It is much better that we are debating this bill than a bill to give $7 billion to the big banks. For that reason, the Greens will be supporting the passage of this bill through the House.

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