Wayne Swan's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Government Procurement | Questions without Notice | House debates
We could not hear it back here. It was not working.
I couldn't hear the member when he was asking the question. There was clearly something wrong with the sound. I believe he should be given the chance to ask it again.
Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | House debates
I was fishing for that! When I first drafted the speech, I did want to reach out across the chamber. I actually thought I would be able to ask people, perhaps, to remove their party blinkers and...
I was fishing for that! When I first drafted the speech, I did want to reach out across the chamber. I actually thought I would be able to ask people, perhaps, to remove their party blinkers and at least try to understand a bit more about why people take the policy stances they do, even if they're disagreed with. From my point of view, that's particularly the case in what I had to say about the global financial crisis and so on. It's not just a question of Labor good, Liberal bad or anything like that. It's just that if we do have another crisis we are going to need a response like that, and the current demonization of that response is not going to be consistent with our national interest at any time in the future. But I'm even more pessimistic about other things, because, unfortunately, there's been a divisive tone that's pervaded this place in the past week. It has made me realise that reaching out to the other side is perhaps impossible. I say this because I was here during the Tampa episode in 2001, and I do recall the way it changed us. The night John Howard sprung his Tampa trap in the parliament, otherwise known as the Border Protection Bill, I actually wasn't here. I was on the couch at home recovering from prostate cancer surgery, and I watched the events unfold with growing trepidation. In the weeks that followed, the politics of fear drowned out domestic political issues. And, of course, before that event covert appeals to racism and xenophobia were regarded as unworthy of our country's elected representatives. When the ship was turned back, something else floated into our harbours in its wake: American race based dog-whistle politics. That politics is not new; it's as old as politics itself. We all thought it had died some time well before 2001. But we were wrong. During the eighties, it was brought back to life in America during the 1988 presidential election. There was a determined strategy to link the black community with violent crime. It worked. It became the template for what happened in Australia in 2001—a scab that's remained there ever since. Sure enough, 18 years later, it is being used again. Read the Hansard, listen to the debate, read ministerial transcripts; the only thing missing is the subtlety of yesteryear. Soon after that 1988 campaign—this is the one in America—the architect of that strategy, strategist Lee Atwater, contracted fatal brain cancer. Before he died he set out to make his peace with the world. He said that his illness had helped him to see that what was missing in society was what was missing in him: 'a little heart, a lot of brotherhood' and that his own actions had contributed to 'a spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society' and a 'tumour of the soul'—that is, the man who invented the political strategy now being dusted off once again had repented. It says a lot. My hope is that this ugly approach is so soundly defeated at the ballot box that it can never arise again. And that's the good news; it won't work, not this time. One of the greatest things about democracy is its moral force. Sometimes parties can lose a moral right to govern before they lose their numerical majority in parliament. For the coalition, the first is already gone and the second is about to follow in its wake. Finally, I want to thank the workforce in the parliament and, more generally, the support and backup that we all get as MPs. I want to thank the cleaners, the drivers, the transport office, the attendants—I just talked to Luch before; he has been here 30-odd years—the cooks, the security, the library staff for all of their help over the years. And I want to say to them that I was here for people like you. We will not prosper as a country unless we value the contributions of everyone in our community and in our workforce—the cleaners, the office workers—just as we value the work of the policy strategists, the entrepreneurs. We can only prosper as a country if we are all in this together and we don't think that wealth is created just by a brilliant few. We are in this together and we will succeed if we recognise that. I have some friends from Brisbane up there from Logan City and they presented me with a plaque the other day that was very touching. It said: 'It's the things that we do together that make us strong.' Nothing will stop this country if we always keep that in mind. Thank you for all of your support.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek your indulgence to make some remarks. First of all, I want to thank all of the people who have travelled here today and, in particular, all of those who are listening to...
Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek your indulgence to make some remarks. First of all, I want to thank all of the people who have travelled here today and, in particular, all of those who are listening to and viewing this broadcast. When I announced my impending retirement some time ago, there was a crusty old COMCAR driver who said to me as I was opening the door at the side entrance, 'I see you're getting out while you're still alive.' I thought at first he was referring to his driving, but I soon realised he was congratulating me on making a wise life decision. There was a time, when Australians didn't tend to live so long, that the only two ways out of this place were through the ballot box or in a wooden box. Thankfully I've survived long enough to make the decision all on my own. I've been a member of this parliament almost continually since 1993, with a one-term 'holiday' at the suggestion of the voters between 1996 and 1998. So I've had eight wins and one loss. That loss in 1996 was a crushing defeat for the party and a gut-wrenching loss for our family—a family anxious about the future with three young children under 10. That was very uncomfortable, but it did make me a much better politician, so I was re-elected in 1998, and now I've attended 1,422 sitting days—that's just under four years of continuous parliament. Just imagine all that before you! In that time, there have been seven Treasurers and 11 Speakers. Had the Speaker been here, I would have said I regarded him as one of the best. I wasn't expecting to have that compliment returned! The pace of political life is now absolutely brutal, particularly when it involves shadow ministerial responsibility or ministerial responsibility, and that was the case with myself—six budgets, three budget replies, stimulus packages, IGR, and trading schemes. The list is long, and it is for anyone who's serving in a very senior position. Three years in the House of Representatives in the early nineties would easily squeeze into two years today, perhaps even one, and that's only taken place in over a quarter of a century. Of course, we all know how much more demanding political life is because of modern technology. I certainly do regret, as a member, as a minister, as a shadow minister, that I didn't take enough time to refresh and recharge with my family. On our 30th wedding anniversary, I told my wife, Kim, that we'd really only been married for 25 years, as five years had been spent away. And on reflection, that was probably a conservative estimate. I notice the Prime Minister's wife made a similar comment just recently. Yesterday was our 35th wedding anniversary, but today is even more special. Today marks the birth of our second grandchild, just two hours ago in Denver, Colorado. A sister for a toddler, Eala, and a daughter for John and Erinn. I also want to give a huge shout-out to nanna and great-nanna up there today. They are very, very happy. Labor politicians have a 'great objective'. It's the light on the hill, and I am both proud and grateful to say that that light always shone in my home. My family has always believed in the very same labour values the light illuminates, and we're very much aware of what it takes to pursue it. My work in this place and my electorate of Lilley was only ever possible because of my family—Kim, Erinn, Libbi and Matt. They believed in it, and they believed in me. Their love and support knew no bounds. No sacrifice was too much, because the Swans are Labor, and I owe them such a debt of gratitude for that and love them very much. A political career, I think, is worthless if it's not grounded in the lives of the people that you represent—the people who get up in the morning, go to work, go home, cook the tea, put the kids to bed, get up and do it again the next day and never expect anything other than a fair day's pay for a fair day's work; people who understand we're all connected to each other and we have to reach out and look after those who are vulnerable and left behind. I was reminded of this only just the other day in my electorate, but it happens continuously, when I attended a volunteer function for Charlie's Angels at the Prince Charles Hospital. There were over 40 volunteers who had between them hundreds of years of volunteering at the hospital. These are the people who ask for no reward more than the joy of helping others, and Australians like this inspire. They embody our nation at its compassionate best, and they inspire me just as much now as they did when I became the member. I want to offer my deep thanks to the people of Lilley for their support and, in that same breath, also to my dedicated Labor Party members. I never took for granted my responsibility as a local representative, and their views were always the first I sought when trying to make difficult judgements about policy. As Kate said yesterday in her fantastic speech, you cannot be an effective local member without dedicated electorate office staff. A good local member needs to listen, work hard, fight hard and get results—I wish Tanya wouldn't start crying—and, for that, you need an effective local team. I'm honoured to have served here with so many great Australians. Some of them are not household names, though they should be. They're the public servants and advisers—some of them in the gallery today—who sacrifice so much to serve our democracy. All of us owe them an enormous debt. After so long here I've worked alongside so many people that, in attempting to mention all, I will inadvertently leave others out. So, to avoid embarrassment, I'll be thanking them all personally. But there is one person that I particularly want to mention today, and that is Barb Pini. Barb Pini has served the Labor Party in this House over decades with exceptional dedication, and we are all very thankful for her service. Others I've served alongside are well known—like Mick Young and Gough Whitlam, who joined together and launched my election campaign for the 1993 election. These are two people who instilled the values that inspire and sustain so many of us to this day. There is of course the late, great Wayne Goss. There's no prouder boast for any Queenslander than to say you worked with Wayne to take our state out of the dark and broken Joh Bjelke Petersen era. Another Queenslander, Bill Hayden, a great Labor activist, never let go of his vision and fight for Medicare—and that is a fight which continues. That, of course, brings me to Kim Beazley, a towering figure in both the Labor Party and Australia's defence and foreign policy. Kim's record of service to this country and this place requires no embellishment from me. He is rightly valued and admired across the chamber. His name is a byword for passion and decency in public life. I'm not the only one to believe that our recent political history would have been immeasurably more stable, successful and dignified had he become Prime Minister a decade ago. It's difficult to serve effectively over the years in this House without having the support of longstanding friends. It is just so important when you are in the pressure of the moment to have friends in this House that you can talk to—and I have many. I want to particularly highlight my two Monday night dinner companions, Tanya Plibersek and Jenny Macklin, but there are many others—Stephen Conroy, Stephen Smith, Anthony Albanese and the late Steve Hutchins, Rob Mitchell, Chris Hayes, Tony Bourke, Amanda Rishworth, Kate Ellis and the list goes on. Of course, there is also the fantastic class that came in in 2013 and 2016—Jim Chalmers, Anthony Chisholm, Milton Dick, Joanne Ryan and of course that great representative of the Swan Left, Graham Perrett. I've mentioned a lot of names, and I don't really want to embarrass anyone else by putting them out there as being in the Swan Left. Being in this place is actually about service, and that is what I have striven to give to the Australian people for my 24 years as a member, including my nearly six years as Treasurer, which makes me behind only Paul Keating and Ben Chifley as the third-longest serving Treasurer. It's a record I'm very proud of and one that I will be absolutely happy to surrender to Chris Bowen, who has done the hard yards in what is one of the most difficult jobs in both opposition and in government. There's a special place in hell for people doing that job from time to time. I'm not the first Swan to serve this country, and I won't be the last. My grandfather fought on the Somme during the winters of 1916-17 and 1917-18 and later as part of the 3rd Division under General Monash. He was gassed at Messines and later at Broodeseinde and was wounded again at the start of the great German Spring Offensive of 1918. That generation never spoke much about its war service. He died young. His health was broken by the physical and psychological effects of service. His son, my father, then served in the Second World War across the Pacific, and saw fighting at Balikpapan. Today, members of parliament are now more likely to be the children of Vietnam veterans and the veterans of various conflicts and peacekeeping missions since then, and we must always do the right thing by them. And how fortunate our generation and our children's generation have been by comparison. We've largely avoided war and, where we haven't avoided it, we've worked harder than previous generations to look after those who were sent away to fight. We've had our lives lengthened by advances in medical science and by our wonderful public institution Medicare, which is why we fight so hard to keep it. My father died in his 60s of the same prostate cancer that I was diagnosed with at the age of 49. I was treated successfully. He was not. So it was very satisfying as Treasurer to have made available Commonwealth funding to keep Australia at the forefront of prostate cancer research—sadly, research that was suddenly and without reason withdrawn by the health minister at the end of last year, and there is still not an explanation for it. Fortunately, we now recognise and, of course, reward the service of women. It was a great honour and pleasure to have served as deputy PM and Treasurer under Australia's first female Prime Minister—an honour I think many of us valued—Julia Gillard, no tougher warrior for Labor values, who, possibly alone among recent Prime Ministers, has cracked that secret code about how to carry herself with dignity after losing the job. Now, Julia was only one of the great Labor women that I've been blessed to have served alongside. There are too many to name, but I particularly want to highlight the contribution of Tanya, Jenny and, of course, Penny Wong. It's a great source of satisfaction to me that my successor as the Labor endorsed candidate for Lilley is a woman. If Anika Wells, Corinne Mulholland and Ali France, the three women selected for north Brisbane seats, go on to win, Labor will have more than 50 per cent female representation in this parliament. I went back and had a look at the figures. When I arrived, our representation in 1993 was 12 per cent. So that's another historic achievement for social equality in our country. It is our far-sighted affirmative action policies. They were not just right in demographic and democratic terms; they have been and are and will continue to be an enormous political advantage for the ALP. And, of course, our generation has been fortunate in another respect too. For the last quarter of a century, our country has avoided an economic recession. It's incredible to think, but, when I entered parliament in 1993, unemployment exceeded 10 per cent and more than half a million Australians at that stage were long-term unemployed. It was the formative context of my political life, and I arrived in this place to make merry hell about it. And I did, including for my own party, that we should be doing more about it. Of course, in politics timing is everything. That's also out of our control. In 2007 Labor had returned to government just before the end of a long boom that had driven dramatic increases in Australia's and the world's wealth. We all, of course, hoped the boom would last forever, and that's why my first budget as treasurer was initially framed to fight inflation. But, as that budget approached, the investment bank Bear Stearns collapsed, our policy had to be revised and the rumbling began. Four to five months later, those tremors turned into an earthquake—an earthquake that swallowed up Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock and Wall Street and shattered global economic confidence. Neither the global economy nor global politics has been the same since then. The history books will record it as a moment of profound significance, second only perhaps to the Great Depression of 1929 and onwards. And yet Australia did avoid recession, alone of the world's major developed economies to do so—a miracle, some say, but there was no divine providence about it. Australia avoided a recession because of sustained recession-beating policy. As I said a dozen times in this place: we did this by choice, not by chance. Within two months of the meltdown, 30 major world banks had been bailed out, all G7 economies were recording negative growth and global stock markets were down 50 per cent. As students of Labor history, members of the cabinet back then remembered and knew what had happened to the Scullin Government, which also had the misfortune of coming to power at the start of a recession. But the Scullin government lacked the necessary policy tools to deal with the crisis. We did not. While the Scullin government was bullied into austerity, we would not be. We knew from the failures of the 1930s and 1990s what recessions do. They destroy lives. They cost people their homes and their savings. Communities turn into ghost towns. They lead some to lives of misery—even suicide. We also know it takes a decade or more to fully recover. And, of course, some communities and some families never recover. Not heeding those lessons would have been ignorant and irresponsible, so we did choose to act—to inject demand in the economy, to reject austerity policies that many, including the Murdoch press, were calling for and, in fact, still call for today. That austerity would have made the crisis much worse. Had we listened, the results would have been disastrous. Instead, Australia became the gold standard of recession busting. That's what we became. And, of course, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz described our fiscal response to the crisis as the best designed stimulus package and one of the strongest Keynesian stimulus packages in the world. In recognition of our policies, Euro Magazine named me finance minister of the year, citing careful stewardship of Australia's finances and economic performance during and after the global crisis. It added: … Australia has not only avoided falling into recession but has been the best performing of the world's developed market economies. And we did all this knowing full well—we did it with our eyes wide open; when we sat around the cabinet table we knew this precisely—what our opponents would be saying. They would hound us with slogans about deficit and debt. In departing this place, I have a perspective that perhaps I didn't have in the heat of that battle. I can honestly say that I'm happy to wear that criticism—absolutely happy to wear it as the price of saving Australia from something that was far worse. Yes, there was deficit and debt. But, by far, the majority of it was the result of $200 billion of revenues being wiped from the forward estimates in the wake of the crash. But there wasn't a recession. There wasn't higher unemployment. There wasn't a decade of lost opportunity for our people and for our country. In short, you don't feel the bullets you dodge and, of course, we dodged a huge bullet. It's worth reflecting briefly on what might have been. Let's say we went down the road that many were urging us to. Let's say we went down the road of austerity and let's just consider how the rest of the world has changed and how Australia compares to the rest of the world. Think about where the rest of the world is now: we have the rise of populism and ugly nationalism, particularly across Europe. We have the end of the last remnants of political consensus in the United States. We have the sweeping away of mainstream parties of the Centre Left and the Centre Right across Europe, and the prominence in Germany and the rest of Europe of the Far Right. We've got Brexit and we've got profound rising inequality in wealth and income across both the developed and the developing worlds. Weirdly, 10 years ago there was an attraction in some corners—and you'd see it reported often in The Australian Financial Reviewto the idea that the cleansing fire of recession wouldn't be such a bad thing for Australia. I rejected it then and Labor rejects it now, even more forcefully, precisely because of the potentially terrible human consequences that have flowed from the imposition of austerity around the developed world. Of course, we have seen some polarisation in our country over the last decade, but it has been far milder and we should cherish the overall result. We have come through the decade after the global financial crisis stronger, bigger and more united than any comparable nation. We are the envy of other nations; that is true. We have an economy now that is 32 per cent bigger than it was at the end of 2007. The rest of the world is still catching up to that, so that's a fantastic Australian achievement and one that Australian Labor can be particularly proud of. I think that our entire political system, sadly, should be proud of that achievement. In any case, what lies ahead? We do have the chance to create something extremely and truly great in this country on the back of that decade and the last quarter-century of growth. We have generalised affluence, but that is now threatened here by rising inequality. That is something that we have to avoid at all costs. Inequality breeds disdain, resentment, suspicion, arrogance and callousness, and I believe it is ultimately what lies beneath the election of Donald Trump and the result we saw in Britain with Brexit. Of course, tackling inequality cannot just be dismissed as the politics of envy, as we read all the time in the papers. I say to our side of the House that nothing should spark the imagination of us on this side of the House more than fighting inequality. Nothing should spark our imagination and our policy push more than fighting inequality, because the future of economic democracy is actually on the line. The problem we face in this fight is that too many Australians have no knowledge of how others live. Too many people on generous incomes are simply tone deaf to the world in which they live. I call this the blindness of affluence. It is true that Australia has done much better than the USA, but in this country inequality and deprivation are still far too high. Tim Winton has written that he became preoccupied with the topics of power and class not because he was chippy or resentful or because he was some sort of latter day of Marxist; rather he got involved writing about this because he saw it pounding the lives of too many of his friends and associates in his local community. Not enough Australians see that. Not enough Australians experience how other Australians live. So, like Winton, I am dismayed by the self-interest shown by some of Australia's wealthiest institutions, and, of course, it's little wonder as a consequence of all of this that people do feel on the wrong side of the economy, particularly when they see the outcomes from the banking royal commission. We all know what follows: a loss of trust in institutions and government, people not being treated fairly while other people walk away with everything. If that continues, it cannot end well here, as it hasn't ended well in many other counties in the world. I'll put it this simply: democracy cannot survive in a morass of mutual resentment that we are increasingly seeing. That's why, after coming to this conclusion, I have spent the latter part of my political career and policy interests looking at tackling inequality head on, because there are rapid changes going on in the global economy and they come with the potential of undoing the great advances towards social equality of the post-Second World War era. If that is undone, so will be the political stability of the post-World War II era as well. Just consider this: in other nations—but the United States stands out more than many—the benefits of growth are now going exclusively to the top 10 per cent, more dramatically again in the hands of the top one percent and more dramatically again in the hands of the 0.1 percent. This is just morally wrong and economically stupid, and we cannot allow it to happen here. We can't allow the gains from new technology and all of the prospects it brings for the future—we can't allow the gains from that new technology and rising productivity just to go to a narrow group of people in our economy and in our society. We're here to serve and defend a community, not a corporation. Of course, to do that, we have to support progressive taxation. We have to ensure we have a fair industrial relations system where the unions and their members have the ability to bargain for and gain rising wages and better conditions. We've got to continue to build that great Labor initiative, the NDIS. We've got to pursue needs based funding. We've got to lift the unemployed out of poverty. We've got to keep Medicare strong. There are so many things we need to do. But, beneath those particular policy responses, we've got to get away from the idea that collective action by people to pursue their economic interests is somehow illegitimate or that attempts by governments to create a fairer society by redistributing income and opportunities are wrong. We've got to get away from the idea that private and public sectors are somehow mutually antagonistic. They are not. There is a stupid and destructive idea that has come to dominate our political debates: the proposition that taxes and social investment are inherently antibusiness, that every dollar that government raises and invests on behalf of people somehow robs us of vitality and that pursuing equality somehow makes us all collectively poorer. You've heard it all before, but it's rubbish. The lot of it is simply rubbish. The truth is that business thrives best in a decent society. A decent society can't be created through trickle-down economics alone, and smart businesspeople understand this. Having been elected National President of the ALP, I will be continuing to pursue these issues in the years to come. I don't want to live in a country which is captured by either the extreme Right or the hard Left. And, of course, the fourth estate—up there— play a very important role in our national debate. I do want to pay tribute to those in the press gallery who've kept true to the best the fourth estate can offer. There is no greater responsibility than holding all of us to account. Why? Because democracy depends on it. To my Labor colleagues, I want to say a couple of things. First of all, we must not be overconfident. It's true that we could be on the cusp of something quite special and unexpected and return to government in just two terms. I believe the strength of our current position has been made possible by two things. The first is that during the global crisis we avoided recession and kept our real economic credentials intact. It's a great record and we should be proud of it. The second is that we've found a new lease of political unity. That unity has come from the excellent leadership of Bill Shorten and the senior frontbenchers he works with. We cannot underestimate how important that unity is to not only electoral politics but also the faith that people have in our political institutions and wider institutions across the board. At the heart of this unity is what I would call a unity of political purpose. Our policies have been able to unify us because they speak to the things our movement and the wider Australian society hold dear: decency, fairness and greater economic and social equality. It was said of the Whitlam generation that they made Labor electable, but they also made it worth electing. That's the power of the agenda, I think, which has been outlined by Bill and the team. Mr Speaker, when I first started drafting this speech, and when I first spoke today, I said I thought you were one of the best Speakers we've had, and we've had a lot. I don't want to test you, but I do want to—
For many years Australia's largest company, BHP, has been gaming our tax system, and it has been involved in disputes with the ATO over unpaid taxes in excess of a billion dollars. BHP has been...
For many years Australia's largest company, BHP, has been gaming our tax system, and it has been involved in disputes with the ATO over unpaid taxes in excess of a billion dollars. BHP has been joined by other large multinationals like Rio Tinto and Chevron in fleecing the Australian taxpayer through the use of tax havens and tax shields such as Singapore. BHP's Singapore tax shield and other tax havens exist to smuggle profits out of Australia. Last month BHP's status as one of Australia's largest tax evaders was laid bare by its settlement with the tax office on disputes which go back as far as 2003. The settlement confirms what BHP has repeatedly and publicly denied, that its Singapore marketing hub was used for tax evasion using transfer pricing. This settlement with the tax office was made possible by laws I passed in 2012 and 2013 as Australian Treasurer. Over our six years in government the Liberals opposed every measure introduced by Labor to close corporate tax loopholes, which had in themselves been opened up by previous Liberal governments. The laws that delivered the settlement were opposed by the current Prime Minister. But, thanks to the Labor Party, the full impact of these laws in the years ahead will return many billions of dollars back to the Australian taxpayer. I first raised the issues at the core of the BHP settlement with the tax office in 2015. BHP's duplicity and hypocrisy in this matter was laid bare in the Senate tax inquiry of that year. The finding of the Senate inquiry gave BHP the chance to come clean, reform their practices and rejoin the majority of Australian businesses that do pay their fair share of tax. Sadly, they chose the path of concealment. Since then, at every turn BHP have continued to deny the true purpose of their dual structure, which it continued to defend aggressively in all its public statements. But now, in this agreement with the tax office, it has shut down. I said then that the full impact of their activities was yet to be realised. These laws were used in the 2017 Chevron judgement handed down by the Federal Court, which added $430 million to the budget bottom line. I said then, assuming conservatively that 10 per cent of corporate tax revenue over the forward estimates was lost to tax minimisation and evasion, that a minimum cumulative cost to the budget would have returned many, many billions of dollars. At every stage since 2015, BHP have chosen to deny, obscure and mislead the public over their deliberate tax evasion. The settlement with the tax office confirms that more than $1 billion in tax and royalty revenue has been funnelled out of Australia over the past decade, contrary to BHP's public statements. Stunningly, in the 2017 BHP annual report they confirmed that their CEO was awarded a million-dollar bonus for enhancing BHP's tax and transparency reputation. BHP cannot claim to be transparent given their failure to outline numerous back payments to the tax office as a result of tax audits over a decade long. When global companies like BHP act this way they compromise the social contract and give a green light to others to go about minimising or evading their tax. When the former chairman, Jac Nasser, retired and a new chairman, Ken MacKenzie, was appointed, BHP did have the opportunity to restore its reputation as 'The Big Australian' and shut down its Singapore marketing hub. Sadly, it did not take the opportunity and launched another misleading advertising campaign. As I said at that time, BHP was at risk of becoming known as 'the dishonest Australian'. Sadly, its announcement of the settlement with the tax office continues down that path. The BHP board now has an opportunity to be honest and forthright with the Australian people and not hide behind a legal agreement. The board should provide a full and frank explanation of its role in aggressive transfer pricing and the ethical framework it will use in the future to re-establish trust with the authorities and the public. It should now come clean about the total amount of royalties it owes state governments as a result of deliberately understating their sales to related parties. Anything less than a full and frank statement about these matters leaves a cloud over the board's commitment to transparency. Congratulations to the ATO staff, who pursued this matter doggedly, and to our pensioners, patients and students who all benefit from their hard work. I salute the hard work of the tax office. In the wash-up of this scandalous attempt to undermine the tax base, what has become evident is that some leaders of corporate conglomerates like BHP simply believe they are above the law.
Exports, Broadband | Constituency Statements | House debates
Sanofi Consumer Healthcare is a complementary medicine manufacturer located in Virginia in the electorate of Lilley. It employs more than 300 locals and annually produces around 360 million soft...
Sanofi Consumer Healthcare is a complementary medicine manufacturer located in Virginia in the electorate of Lilley. It employs more than 300 locals and annually produces around 360 million soft gels and 1.8 billion tablets. Currently its products are eligible for the Australian Made label, which acknowledges the high quality of Australian-made products. This label assists Sanofi to secure its lucrative $1.2 billion export market for complementary medicine. The Australian Made label has given Sanofi and other Australian based companies a competitive advantage in export markets, particularly in China. The nature of the Sanofi supply chain means some raw ingredients need to be imported because certain ingredients are not able to be grown domestically due to the Australian climate. In March, changes to the Australian Made guidelines will mean Sanofi and others won't be able to use the Australian Made label from 1 June 2019. These changes to the guidelines don't recognise the work that is done to imported raw ingredients to create this uniquely Australian product. For over six months, Sanofi has met with the government, trying to reach a solution. However, the government has been dithering—simply paralysed—and has done absolutely nothing to fix this problem. So Sanofi will soon have to begin the process of removing the Australian Made label from its products, and this will damage its standing in critical export markets. This will mean production shutdowns and staff lay-offs can be expected, as the manufacturers adjust to anticipated reduction in demand. There is a simple solution to this. It has been sitting on the desk of Minister Andrews for a long time. It's been with both prime ministers for a long time, but in 'Liberal-world'—now 'Morrison-world'—simply nothing ever happens, even when there are very simple solutions. There are some quick steps the government could take to avert these lay-offs, fix this problem and protect a vital export market. The export market for these products is a huge advantage for Australia, and it's been a stunning success for this country, but the government is simply paralysed and sitting on its hands as this car crash evolves. Also, for local businesses, we've got the debacle of the NBN rollout. Fortunately, in my electorate of Lilley, there are around 20,000 households that received Labor's first-class NBN. There are another 20,000 households that got the 'fraudband', but the rollout of the NBN was then suspended over a year ago and there are another 20,000 households that are getting nothing. (Time expired)
Pharmaceutical Industry | Constituency Statements | House debates
I rise in support of the pharmaceutical success story in my electorate of Lilley. Sanofi Consumer Healthcare, based in Virginia, employs more than 300 locals at their manufacturing facility....
I rise in support of the pharmaceutical success story in my electorate of Lilley. Sanofi Consumer Healthcare, based in Virginia, employs more than 300 locals at their manufacturing facility. Sanofi has tapped into the lucrative Chinese market, with a trusted Australian-made labelling on its product that has helped drive sales in that region towards $1 billion. By making the decision to set up manufacturing plants in Australia, Sanofi has chosen to pay a level of wages consistent with our status as an advanced economy. There are 300 workers in my electorate who benefit from Sanofi's decision to set up in Virginia, on Brisbane's north side. Inevitably, some aspects of Sanofi's supply chain are not Australian made. The raw ingredients for many of its supplements simply cannot be grown on a sufficient scale in the Australian climate and must be sourced from overseas. Nevertheless, there should be no reason to deny Sanofi's deep connection to Australia or to question the Australian-made endorsement its products receive, particularly when the same endorsement is given to other goods assembled, manufactured or elaborately transformed in Australia by Australians from local or imported ingredients. I commend Sanofi for their ongoing service to the electorate of Lilley and for their commitment to the Australian-made ethos; long may it continue. I also refer to the ongoing blatant tax avoidance by many of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. An Oxfam report released today has found that four of the biggest pharmaceutical companies operating in Australia have avoided four times as much tax as they have paid. Tax avoidance by these four multinational companies amounts to $215 million in Australia, the equivalent of five million medical prescriptions each year. Nor is the tax-dodging behaviour of these big four confined to Australia. Oxfam estimates that their tax avoidance costs advanced economies nearly $4.8 billion in lost revenue and robs developing countries of an additional $146 million per year. Typically, these big four pharmaceutical companies avoid paying tax in advanced economies by booking most of their profits in tax havens in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Singapore. Where tax rates are as low as zero per cent, these companies have notched up profit margins of 31 per cent. In Australia, their combined profit margins are a negative seven per cent. The booking of high profits in tax haven countries and low or negative profits in countries with decent tax rates has been well documented by my colleague, Gabriel Zucman, from the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. By now, we know well the consequences of multinational profit shifting: higher inequality, entrenched corporate power, a massive redistribution of the tax base away from countries like Australia and the undercutting of our world-class health and education systems. Tax avoidance on such a grand scale impoverishes all of us, not just in the developed world but in the developing world also, where it is a threat to the Sustainable Development Goals. They will simply not be able to fund health and education— (Time expired)
Workplace Relations | Constituency Statements | House debates
I rise in support of a constituency that's been consistently left out in the cold by the coalition government and by some of this country's biggest businesses. As a proud member of the Australian...
I rise in support of a constituency that's been consistently left out in the cold by the coalition government and by some of this country's biggest businesses. As a proud member of the Australian Workers Union for nearly all of my adult life, I stand in solidarity with the 1,600 AWU members working at Alcoa in Western Australia. The employees of Alcoa at five sites across Western Australia are the latest casualties of the merge, purge and gouge mentality of some multinationals. Following more than 20 months of enterprise bargaining negotiations, Alcoa's workers have taken indefinite industrial action against their multinational employer. The workers are simply asking the company to preserve existing workplace conditions. Instead, Alcoa wants to terminate the current employment contract and force workers to accept an inferior offer, an offer which introduces forced redundancies, keeps casual workers casualised and locks in a real pay cut for thousands of employees. When this substandard workplace agreement was put to Alcoa's 1,600 strong workforce, some of whom have worked for the company for more than 30 years, over 80 per cent voted it down. Nobody enjoys a strike. It's not just the act of standing out in the cold, wind and rain—an appropriate metaphor for the contempt that this government and some of its big business backers have for working people—and it's not just the loss of income. Each Australian worker in Western Australia has already given up thousands of dollars in pay. The Alcoa workers simply want secure jobs and fair conditions, the jobs and conditions that they fought for decades to establish. The coalition government claims to hate regulation, but it's the first to break out the red-tape dispenser if it can be used to restrict the right of workers to take industrial action against unfair conditions. The truth is that when it comes to driving down wages and ripping up workplace conditions, this government and their multinational backers like Alcoa are joined at the hip. Alcoa is known to have made hundreds of millions of dollars in corrupt payments to officials in Bahrain for over 20 years but hasn't been able to guarantee its loyal workers the same pay and conditions for the last 20 months. What does it say about industrial relations in this country when a multinational can pay bribes, but it can't pay its workforce? Alcoa is firmly engaged in a sick race to the bottom against other multinationals, where each company competes to minimise tax, suppress wages and casualise its workforce. I lend my strongest support and solidarity to the AWU members at Alcoa in Western Australia. I applaud them for their courage, and I wish them a speedy and satisfactory resolution to this industrial action.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, almost to this minute, I held a press conference in this building after the fourth largest US investment bank Lehman Brothers had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy...
Ten years ago, almost to the day, almost to this minute, I held a press conference in this building after the fourth largest US investment bank Lehman Brothers had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was clear then that the financial system was ripping apart at the seams. As I said that night, no country in the developed world was in a better position to handle these events than ours. That night, I drew attention to Australia's strong and well-regulated financial system, which had been strengthened and enhanced thanks, in large part, to the joint efforts of the Reserve Bank and the new Labor government. During our first 10 months in office we put in place reforms the previous government had refused to do. It's crucial to have an accurate record of these events so that when the next crisis comes we can look back and assess the effectiveness of all of those things that we did. On the weekend, the Financial Review published a feature on how Australia responded and rescued our banks. The article spoke of the tireless actions of the RBA during the crisis, which are an enduring tribute to our central bank and the public servants at its helm. These facts are beyond dispute. The Financial Review, however, neglected to outline how Australia's financial system had been strengthened by the new Labor government, working with our world-class regulators. It neglected to outline how, in February and in April, our Labor government met with the Council of Financial Regulators to discuss how best to buttress the financial system. It didn't outline how, in May, our Labor government increased the issuance of Commonwealth government securities and granted new investment powers to the Australian Office of Financial Management. It failed to outline how, in June, our Labor government announced the Financial Claims Scheme, which would provide the backbone to the bank guarantees we announced in the wake of Lehman's collapse. It neglected to say how we outlined new powers for our regulators to take over distressed financial institutions in order to maintain financial stability. Without such actions, we would not have been able to move as quickly as we did to shore up the financial system and to keep the supply of credit flowing to households and to small businesses. We can deal effectively with the next crisis, and, if we can deal effectively with the next crisis, it will depend on whether political leaders have the courage to actively intervene to avoid recession and to reject policies which insist that governments should sit on the sidelines and say there is nothing that can or should be done. Indeed, the events of 10 years ago already have a familiar ring to them. It was 10 years ago this Sunday, the day after Lehman Brothers fell, that the then member for Wentworth, Mr Turnbull, toppled the then Leader of the Opposition, Dr Nelson. As the then Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth then saw fit to play politics with the deposit guarantee that our Labor government had announced a month later. The sorts of policies we subsequently saw, we saw played by the opposition under both Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott against our stimulus, which international authorities regarded as one of the best designed and most effective in the Western world. Our country came through the GFC by choice, not by chance. Where governments didn't act like ours did, either by providing stimulus that was too weak or stimulus that gave way too quickly to austerity, they left a legacy of dangerous economic and political aftershocks with living standards falling and political extremism on the rise. It's 10 years on and I believe that Australia could combat the next crisis. Whether we would combat it would depend on which party was in government and what lessons they had learned from 2008 and 2009. In 2008, Labor was facing the choice between a recession and a deficit. I feared then as I fear now, that facing the same choice, the coalition would give us both. Let's hope, if the worst happens, that we remember the importance of international coordination and gather the political courage to take the critical fiscal and financial regulatory actions to avoid the next recession. Ten years on from the GFC, we do need a new conversation about what we can learn from the past and what we must do in the future, and that's why it's important that, when these matters are analysed, we don't get partial explanations of what happened, such as was provided by the Financial Review on the weekend.
Lilley Electorate: ALP Shield, Lilley Electorate: Welcoming the Babies | Constituency Statements | House debates
This weekend in Lilley we have a double-header of family and community events. On Saturday I'll be proud to cheer on the under-sevens playing in the 2018 ALP Shield, which is hosted this year by...
This weekend in Lilley we have a double-header of family and community events. On Saturday I'll be proud to cheer on the under-sevens playing in the 2018 ALP Shield, which is hosted this year by the mighty Aspley Rugby League Football Club. Hundreds of junior players and 20 teams from across the north side will battle it out in a friendly round robin competition. The ALP Shield has a long and storied history, kicking off in 1982 with sponsorship from the Labor Party. Five teams participated in the inaugural competition: Norths, Aspley, Sandgate, St Joseph's and, the winners, Banyo. Labor has proudly continued its sponsorship of the shield over the past 3½ decades, during which time the competition has expanded to include all the current affiliates of the Northern Broncos. The ALP Shield is the premier training ground for future Rugby League stars to learn the rules, develop their skills and enjoy the game. I'd particularly like to thank the Norths Devils for all of their assistance with the competition. Also, on Sunday, 19 August I'll be hosting my 19th Welcoming the Babies ceremony, my last as the member for Lilley. I'll be joined by Labor's dynamic new candidate for Lilley, Anika Wells, whose daughter Celeste we welcomed as a baby last year. Welcoming the Babies is another proud north side tradition. This year it will be held at Taigum Square shopping centre in conjunction with the Taigum Square Family Fun Day. After the fun of the shield on Saturday, I encourage young families in the area to pop down the road to Taigum to help welcome the babies and to enjoy the fun day on Sunday from 10 am. Kids are sure to love the free activities and entertainment, including Peebo and Dagwood the clowns, Super Steph the puppeteer, and a special guest and super coach Laurie Lawrence. As master of ceremonies, Laurie is the heart and soul of Welcoming the Babies. His passion for young people and their water safety brings him to our event every year. We're lucky to have him. I'd like to thank Laurie for his dedication. I'd also like to thank my tireless staff and all members of the north side community who have coordinated these popular events over the past few years. The truth is that events such as this are the heart and soul of a local community, whether they are junior sports events, activities that occur in schools or events across our RSLs. We have very strong community organisations across the north side of Brisbane, with an enormous number of volunteers, who put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that our community is a stronger place. There could be no more satisfaction than going to a Welcoming the Babies; to bring together all of the committee groups that assist young families with young children in our community is a very, very special pleasure for a member of parliament. So I'd like to thank community groups that will also be coming along on Sunday morning to Taigum Square to talk to the parents about what assistance they can receive on the north side of Brisbane.
Broadband | Constituency Statements | House debates
Last February, I raised matters in the House about the quality and rollout of the NBN in the electorate of Lilley. Since then, there has been no significant improvement. Since coming to...
Last February, I raised matters in the House about the quality and rollout of the NBN in the electorate of Lilley. Since then, there has been no significant improvement. Since coming to government in 2013, Mr Turnbull and the Liberals have done just about everything possible to destroy the NBN. They’ve taken a world-class fibre-to-the-home network, which should have been completed by 2016, and turned it into 'fraudband'. Entire communities have been delivered a substandard service with low speeds and unpredictable connectivity. Labor created the NBN to bring Australia into the 21st century and to make us competitive as an advanced nation. But this government has now put us decades behind. Around 20,000 fortunate households in Lilley have received Labor's first-class broadband. They've received fibre. But, across the rest of the area, there are approximately 40,000 premises that are receiving 'fraudband', mostly the old HFC network. Around 20,000 households in places such as Chermside, Chermside West, Geebung, Kedron, Northgate, Nundah and Wavell Heights have received absolutely nothing. Now they're falling even further behind, because the government has announced further delays because there are substantial problems with the HFC network. For those who have been connected to the inferior HFC network, the problem is that speeds and services that were promised have not arrived, and people have been left in limbo. Some people have no service whatsoever. Some people have services that drop out. This is particularly the case in the bayside suburbs in my electorate. The standard HFC network has been more degraded in the bayside suburbs, leading to cost blowouts, long wait times and very, very poor service. Other problems faced across the electorate include faulty installations and missed appointments. Worse still, when trying to seek a resolution of the issue, people are experiencing blame-shifting between the NBN and telecommunications retailers. The NBN is too important for these problems to continue. That is why this week Labor have announced our NBN service guarantee to deliver a better experience for NBN customers. The NBN service guarantee aims to address the problems with installations, fixing faults and missed appointments. Labor will set new standards for installations, repairing faults and missed technician appointments. We'll impose financial penalties on the NBN when these standards are not met and will impose strong penalties to protect small business from excessive downtime. Significantly for people in my community, these penalties will also result in compensation for wronged NBN customers, and the ACCC will have oversight of the guarantee to ensure its correct implementation. The rolling rollout disaster of the NBN is a huge problem for people living in the northern suburbs of Brisbane and right across the country—for people who are operating businesses from home, for schoolkids who are trying to do their assignments and for families who are trying to do both these things at once or more. It short, it's been a disaster and it needs to be fixed.
Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2018-2019, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 2017-2018, Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 2017-2018; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
You can waste a bit more time if you like. Over the last five years, our two prime ministers have seen real wages flatlining. The cost of living has risen steeply, driven chiefly by health...
You can waste a bit more time if you like. Over the last five years, our two prime ministers have seen real wages flatlining. The cost of living has risen steeply, driven chiefly by health insurance, housing and energy prices, and Australians are suffering from precarious and insecure forms of work. We've got record high labour underutilisation and record levels of wage theft in our workforce. All of these things should be within the government's power to change, but not this government. The Prime Minister gives the least to those who need it the most and the most to those who need it the least. The budget holds low- and middle-income Australians hostage to tax cuts for the top end of town while delivering $80 billion to big business, including a $17 billion gift to big banks, whose rank malpractice has been on disgusting display at the royal commission. Having been involved in a few budgets myself, I can attest that preparing budget documents means that you need to keep both eyes open: one eye on the global conditions and one on the great majority of Australians that you represent. But, looking over this year's budget, it's plain to see that the Prime Minister has kept one eye on the top end of town—high-income individuals and big companies—and the other eye entirely closed, meanwhile winking at the wealthy, who are the Liberal Party's natural constituency. The personal income tax cuts in this budget are set to drive a steamroller right through Australia's progressive tax system. If the Turnbull government gets its way and if it's re-elected twice more, the tax cuts proposed in this budget will see someone on $41,000 a year and someone on $200,000 a year paying exactly the same marginal tax rate. Mr Turnbull, the Prime Minister, and Mr Morrison, the Treasurer, have a plan to impose regressive income tax cuts. Of course, it follows the same script that we've seen with the company tax cuts farce: throw a few crumbs to the many whilst hosting a feast for the few. This government is pitching personal income tax cuts in three stages but is refusing to split the bill. It's true that Labor supports the first stage of the personal income tax cuts because it delivers tax relief for true low- and middle-income earners. Australians on low and modest incomes are struggling. Labor will always deliver whatever tax relief it can to working Australians. The only group that doesn't seem to think that low- and middle-income earners need a hand are the Australian Greens. Relative to the rest of the Turnbull government tax heist, Labor's bigger, better and fairer tax cut would deliver faster and deeper relief to 10 million Australians because our plan doesn't hold low- and middle-income earners hostage to the top end of town. We take a much harsher view of the second and third stages of the Turnbull government's income tax cuts, which are undiluted, vintage Turnbull trickle-down economics, as I said before. The Australian National University has concluded that these measures are targeted at lower and middle-income individuals, but, by the middle of the next decade, the measures are weighted towards higher income individuals. The government are still refusing to provide year-on-year costs of their tax plan. We know that the first two stages cost $102 billion and the third stage costs $40 billion, but all of the talk and analysis about their 10-year package only serves to obscure the fact that it's the second and third stages where the big year-on-year costs come into play. In the later stages, the income tax steamroller really clicks into gear. The 37 per cent tax bracket—currently a pillar of our progressive tax system—applying to those on $80,000 through to $180,000 is bulldozed while the 32.5 per cent threshold is lifted to $200,000, helping an earner on this salary pay the same marginal rate of tax on $200,000 while earning five times what a low-income earner would receive. According to analysis by the Australia Institute, the top 20 per cent of income earners will get 80 per cent of the benefit of this income tax demolition job and the top 10 per cent will get half of the benefit. Meanwhile, 60 per cent of taxpayers—Australians on low and modest incomes—will see no change to their situation whatsoever, apart from reading ever more blatant misreporting from the government and its Murdoch allies that people on up to $200,000 are somehow middle-income earners. This is deeply, deeply misleading. The average full-time worker in Australia is on $84,600. An ever-increasing number of Australians aren't even getting this much, nor are they in full-time work. A report from the Centre for Future Work released today reveals that, for the first time in recorded history, fewer than half of Australian workers are in permanent, full-time paid jobs with leave entitlements. While the Turnbull government might want to pretend that the average Australian household consists of a couple earning $120,000 per year per person, the stark reality for most Australian households is that most are struggling to accumulate $120,000 between them. On top of this, we've got gross misrepresentation of wage growth. The budget forecasts wage growth of 3½ per cent a year returning immediately and continuing for 10 years. It's bizarre! It goes without saying that the government has no plan to increase workers' wages or to improve conditions to vindicate such an optimistic forecast. Future wage rises are just supposed to appear out of nowhere while the government is out there actively working to suppress wages and conditions for workers across the country. The government is saying that wages are going to grow by 14 per cent over the next four years. Given that record, I can only see it getting up to argue against itself in the Fair Work Commission. So let's be clear: wage growth is plummeting to record depths under this government. A worker starting a job today in the Prime Minister's Australia will, if they're lucky, be on exactly the same real wage as a worker who started a job on the same day that Mr Abbott became Prime Minister. During Labor's period of government, in which we created close to one million jobs—despite the worst global recession in 80 years—wages grew faster than inflation by a considerable margin. Someone who got a job on the first day of our government would, by the time Labor left office, be enjoying a wage that outstripped inflation by 3½ per cent. For the last five years of the Abbott and Turnbull governments, real wages have been just 0.15 per cent higher than inflation. Wage growth has been 23 times slower under the Abbott-Turnbull governments than under Labor. That is a terrible record. Of course, that's before you get to what the government are doing with their company tax cuts. What started out as a $50 billion gift to some of the largest multinationals in the world is now costed at an estimated $80 billion. Now, $80 billion is a very big big-business tax cut, one-third of which goes to just 15 companies, $17 billion of which goes to the big banks. That is what I mean when I talk about the trickle-down trifecta: tax cuts for high-income earners; tax cuts for some of the very biggest companies in the world; wage suppression for everybody else. That's the Turnbull trifecta in this budget, at the very core of this budget. Today in the House, in the context of tax, we had some discussion about tax avoidance and tax evasion. And it is true that, courtesy of legislation put forward by Labor, we now know the extent to which many large companies are avoiding their tax responsibilities. Indeed, a third pay no tax in any one year. We also know that big, respectable companies such as BHP and Rio have been aggressively avoiding and evading their tax responsibilities in our country. Last week in the House, I said that BHP has hit new lows of corporate behaviour. In the Queensland Supreme Court, it has sought to suppress further evidence of tax evasion on royalties payable to the Queensland government. Last week, it was revealed that BHP received an updated $320 million assessment from the Queensland government for royalties evaded. BHP's evasion of state royalty payments through its transfer-pricing activities has robbed the governments of both Queensland and Western Australia. This matter has now been settled in the Queensland Supreme Court, and there is a confidential legal agreement as to the nature of the settlement. Fortunately, this confidential agreement can't cover up the essential facts. Firstly, the Queensland government has included a provision in its budget for a successful outcome in this case to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars. Secondly, the confidential agreement signed yesterday between BHP and the Queensland government leaves the Queensland budget no worse off. So we can conclude that BHP has now conceded that its transfer-pricing activity is illegal. Today's settlement has significant implications, as BHP has been for some time in dispute with the Australian tax office for more than $1 billion for the use of its Singapore marketing hub to facilitate transfer pricing. So, along with Rio, BHP is one of Australia's biggest tax dodgers, and there are now significant questions that must be answered by the BHP board. Firstly, who is going to accept responsibility for this unethical behaviour? Secondly, what action does the board intend to take to reassure the public that this behaviour will not be repeated? Thirdly, when is BHP going to come clean and say how much it owes the Western Australian government? Fourthly, when will it settle with the Australian tax office for its outstanding billion-dollar tax bill? Directors of big Australian companies are the first to put up their hands for Australia Day honours, but, if the directors of BHP continue to hide their behaviour behind a veil of legal secrecy, the public will be entitled to conclude that our 'Big Australian' is the dishonest Australian and that they should be the last in line for public recognition. Ensuring that tax evasion and aggressive tax minimisation are eliminated is absolutely essential to making sure that our budget and our economy are healthy, because, when people evade their tax, what they do is force up tax rates for other people—for small business, for working people—and money is ripped away from hospitals and schools. The opportunity cost of tax evasion is significant in the community. When some of Australia's most reputable and respected companies aggressively engage in the use of transfer pricing through, effectively, tax havens, they are dudding the country that has nourished them and nurtured them through their growth. This should not be tolerated any longer. It is time that corporate Australia put their hands up. When they have been responsible for such actions of profit-shifting and debt-dumping and successfully litigated and dealt with through the tax office and the courts, they should have the decency to say to the Australian people that this will not happen again. They should have the decency to put up their hand and say they got it wrong, and they should move on so that we can all work together to make our country bigger and better.
I said 'Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull'; is that correct?
I said 'Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull'.
In this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, I wish to make a few remarks about the budget, and, in particular, I want to talk about tax. At the heart of this budget is what I'd call...
In this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2018-2019, I wish to make a few remarks about the budget, and, in particular, I want to talk about tax. At the heart of this budget is what I'd call the Turnbull trickle-down trifecta—that is, massive tax cuts for the wealthy, very large tax cuts for large corporates and, of course, wage suppression for everybody else. At a time when global growth is closing in on four per cent—at least according to the latest OECD figures—in Australia, GDP growth is struggling to reach 2½ per cent. We've got the best global conditions in more than a decade, and this government is out there celebrating its enduring mediocrity. Over the last five years of Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull, real wages have flatlined.
Immigration Detention | Questions without Notice | House debates
I rise to speak about the continuing tax avoidance and evasion of BHP. BHP is using political muscle to continue to eat away, like a tax termite, at the integrity of our company tax system and...
I rise to speak about the continuing tax avoidance and evasion of BHP. BHP is using political muscle to continue to eat away, like a tax termite, at the integrity of our company tax system and royalty system. BHP continues to hit new lows of corporate behaviour. In recent times, in the Queensland Supreme Court, it has sought to suppress further evidence of tax evasion on royalties payable to the Queensland government. According to The Australian, a new assessment has now been issued to BHP by the Queensland Office of State Revenue, believed to be in the several hundreds of millions of dollars. The hearing of this latest claim begins in the Queensland Supreme Court on Monday, 28 May. It will add to BHP's existing $300 million dispute with the Queensland government over royalty avoidance through transfer pricing. Altogether, this pushes claims against BHP's marketing hub from state and federal governments to $1.8 billion. No wonder BHP has done its best to ensure its misdeeds are not examined in the court of public opinion. BHP has sought orders from the Queensland Supreme Court to suppress key evidence relating to the price it charges its customers for coal and the amount that it told the Queensland Treasury that it should pay royalties on. In open court next week these documents will be revealed. BHP is one of the biggest tax dodgers in the country, if not the biggest. Its Singapore marketing hub is a blatant exercise in tax minimisation, a fiction confected to aggressively reduce BHP's tax bill and minimise its contribution to Australia. The Queensland government is demanding that BHP pays royalties on the amount that the final coal customer, typically in China, pays to BHP's Singapore marketing hub. True to form, BHP only wants to pay royalties on a much smaller amount—namely, the amount that the Singapore marketing hub pays to the BHP Mitsubishi Alliance in Australia for its own coal. This is the information that BHP has sought to suppress in the Supreme Court of Queensland. When I've raised claims about BHP and its marketing hub, BHP has sought to present itself as a model corporate citizen, fully transparent, when in fact at every turn it has endeavoured to suppress the truth and mislead the public about its tax activities. BHP's Singapore tax shield exists solely to smuggle profits out of Australia. There is no question that BHP has been gaming the system and is in a billion-dollar dispute with the tax office over its unpaid taxes. BHP's evasion of state royalty payments through its transfer pricing activities has robbed the governments of both Queensland and Western Australia. When companies are rorting the system both at the state and federal level they give a green light to everybody else to get in there and do the same. The business community in Australia claim to be a group of honest, tax-paying corporate citizens. Many are, but some are not. Sadly, the Big Australian has become known as the 'dishonest Australian' for the use of its Singapore tax hub and, now, for its attempts to fleece revenue from the state governments of Queensland and Western Australia. What we have in this country is a commodities Kremlin, where some of the big companies are behaving like governments, treating this country and the people of this country with contempt and behaving as if they are above the law. That sort of behaviour produces political polarisation and alienation. While the Business Council continues its crusade for a cut in the corporate tax rate, the behaviour of those affiliated with it, including its biggest affiliate, BHP, demonstrates just how ineffective and insincere their case for a cut in the corporate tax rate is, when so many of the members of the Business Council of Australia are not complying with the law of the land. They wouldn't pay more, invest more, employ more or increase wages if there were a lower corporate rate, because they're doing everything they can to avoid that rate, whatever rate it may be. Of course, the directors of the boards of these companies who have approved this activity, who are some of our most respected directors in the land, have been part and parcel of breaking the Australian social contract—part and parcel of white-anting our tax system and depleting the capacity of the country to pay for the essential services that make us not only a great economy but a civilised society. We need to see some public contrition from these directors and a commitment to change behaviour. We need to see them put their hands up and say, 'We've not done the right thing.' We need to see a commitment from them to this country, the country that has nurtured them, to pay their fair share of tax so that as a country we raise the revenue we need to grow more strongly and fairly.
Kentwell, Mr Alister | Statements by Members | House debates
I'd like to acknowledge the extraordinary role played by one of my constituents, Mr Alister Kentwell, in the forging of peace as Japanese forces surrendered in Borneo more than 70 years ago. Born...
I'd like to acknowledge the extraordinary role played by one of my constituents, Mr Alister Kentwell, in the forging of peace as Japanese forces surrendered in Borneo more than 70 years ago. Born an Australia citizen in Kobe, Japan, in 1925, Alister was bilingual from a young age. He was only 18 when he enlisted with the AIF in Brisbane in 1943. On 10 September 1945 Alister's skills placed him at a pivotal point in our wartime history. Photos held by the Australian War Memorial show the young Corporal Kentwell, who was acting as an interpreter for Brigadier Wood, listening intently as Japanese Rear Admiral Nomura spoke during the surrender ceremony in the jungles of Borneo. After hostilities ceased, Alister was assigned as a translator assisting the New Zealand contingent in the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan. He returned to Brisbane in 1947 at the ripe old age of 22. The Centenary of Armistice is a unique opportunity to reflect on the great weight placed on young soldiers in conflict. I can only marvel at the black-and-white pictures of a calm, collected Corporal Kentwell, taking in his stride the momentous role that he played as the conclusion of the war unfolded. I know his family are incredibly proud of him. On behalf of our community in Lilley, I thank him for his service.
Aged Care | Constituency Statements | House debates
Senior Australians who have worked hard all their lives to make our country great are being neglected by the Turnbull government. The government are holding older Australians in a vice grip. On...
Senior Australians who have worked hard all their lives to make our country great are being neglected by the Turnbull government. The government are holding older Australians in a vice grip. On one side, they've slashed funding for aged-care facilities, ripping out $1.2 billion in the 2016 budget. On the other side, they've fallen pathetically short in funding in-home care. While more than 100,000 older Australians languish in the queue for in-home care packages, this government only found funds for a pitiful 3,500 packages in the budget. Just last Sunday, the Minister for Health and Aged Care said: 'It's going to be a very good budget for health and for aged care in particular.' If the government consider their budget a very good one for aged care, I'd really hate to see a bad one. But, of course, this is a bad budget for aged care and older Australians. It does nothing to address the crisis in aged care which we are seeing playing out in aged-care facilities across the country, and these matters will be revisited before the next budget, because the crisis is acute. Basic elements of care, including showering, brushing teeth and providing food and water to senior Australians, are being neglected and missed more and more frequently. Aged-care providers have cut staff numbers so deeply that it's not uncommon for one registered nurse to be allocated to up to 200 elderly residents. Understaffing means that rather than receiving four or more hours of nursing a day our most vulnerable older Australians are losing one-third of this crucial time needed for showering, toileting and being medicated, dressed, fed and more. Vital care has been missed, which has real and sometimes fatal consequences. I understand that moving into an aged-care facility can be an emotional and stressful time. That's why it's vital that we as legislators work to make aged care decent and comfortable for older Australians. This begins with legislating minimum staffing requirements and adequate skill mixes in aged-care facilities, and for in-home care it means providing enough aged-care packages to meet the demand of older Australians—not the pathetic package that this government has put forward in this pathetic budget. We must loosen the vice grip that the government has tightened around older Australians. They deserve better. And, on indulgence, I note that today is 25 years since my first speech in this building. In this constituency statement I would like to thank each and every one of my electors, who have supported me for a long period of time. Twenty-five years ago I promised to work hard, to listen to their views and to strongly represent their interests in this place. I hope I've gone some way towards honouring that promise for the people of Lilley, and I thank them for their trust and for their support.
Treasury Laws Amendment (Working Holiday Maker Employer Register) Bill 2017; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I rise to oppose the Treasury Laws Amendment (Working Holiday Maker Employer Register) Bill 2017, which seeks to strip away protections from a uniquely vulnerable group of people in Australia,...
I rise to oppose the Treasury Laws Amendment (Working Holiday Maker Employer Register) Bill 2017, which seeks to strip away protections from a uniquely vulnerable group of people in Australia, working holiday-makers. This bill is ripped, if you like, straight out of the trickle-down playbook of the Turnbull government. To businesses who wish to employ working holiday-makers, the Turnbull government says, 'We'll quietly remove the need for you to publicly list on the Australian Business Register.' The Turnbull government says to these businesses: 'You can be a nonentity. You can employ working holiday-makers, treat them however you like and pay them whatever you like.' Instead of shedding light on the galling practices of these employers, the Turnbull government is going to shed darkness. That's par for the course with this government. At the mention of any movement towards the bright light of transparency, whether it's for big business or for shonky operators, the government recoils like a vampire. The government sides with shonky operators, basically because it's prepared to tolerate this exploitation. We've seen them oppose Labor's moves on tax transparency. When we proposed that public companies tell us what they pay in tax, the coalition ran away from the light. We saw their resistance to transparency, indeed, in the parliament this afternoon, when the Treasurer couldn't or wouldn't reveal the cost of his company tax cuts or the yearly cost of the income tax cuts. We're seeing it in this bill as well. It is a chance for the Turnbull government to step into the light and expose employers who overwork, underpay, harm and mistreat working holiday-makers in this country. Labor will not take a backward step in exposing and opposing the practices of these businesses. We will expose and oppose the practices of the Turnbull government, as they are, in some instances, allied with exploitative employers. This bill is merely another bungle that the Turnbull government has banged on the back of the backpacker tax. The package that passed the parliament in 2016 required a mandatory registration process for employers of working holiday-makers. Visa holders could check the public register to see if a business was a legitimate employer of working holiday-makers. There are real concerns about the unconscionable exploitation of working holiday-makers by some businesses. This bill strips working holiday-makers of the ability to look up details of a registered employer and will affect their ability to choose an employer who will charge the correct level of tax and pay them a fair wage. The register was one aspect of the original bill that did allow for greater protection of working holiday-makers against exploitation. Given the significant cases of exploitation in this area, that is why we stand in strong opposition to this bill. The Turnbull government claims to be the champion of choice, but of course it says for big business, 'You're free to choose,' but it says to workers: 'You're simply free to lose. You're free to lose your hard-fought-for penalty rates for weekend work and overtime. You're free to lose your sense of job security, whether that's safety at work or the security of having a job at all. And you're free to lose your job if the employer can find and exploit a migrant worker who can do it cheaper and who won't complain.' In this country, almost one in six Australians are underemployed or want to work more hours. One in six—that's almost 1.9 million Australians on the fringes of the labour market in this country. And, if you're aged 15 to 24, you have a one in three chance of wanting more work. That is 660,000 Australians. These numbers are the shame of this government. We had a chance to reflect on these matters this weekend in Queensland. Last Monday was Labour Day. It was a chance for the labour movement to reaffirm what history tells us: working people can make a difference, and working people can change a country. All of the great reforms of the 20th century came from the labour movement, the unions and the Labor Party working together: a decent minimum wage, Medicare, a fairer and more progressive tax system, a strong voice for working people—the list is long. On Labour Day we acknowledged that the labour movement frequently has to defeat powerful vested interests that seek to crush the voice of the people. Indeed, this bill has been subject to the power of those powerful vested interests in the amendments we are debating today. For us it's a difficult task because we have to organise against people who are well funded, wealthy and powerful corporations who control the public megaphone, who seek to drown out our voice. But on this side of the House we choose to fight those people, to take them on in the parliament and particularly to take on those who run the Turnbull government, including the cheerleaders and puppeteers in the Business Council of Australia. In recent years, I've focused a lot on these issues in the parliament. I've talked a lot about the imbalance of power, the imbalance of influence and the imbalance of class. It's not because I'm particularly chippy or resentful, and it's not because I've become a Marxist. It's simply because class is now a live issue in our nation, and I see it pounding the lives of people in the community I represent and around the country. I see it with my constituents. I see it in the youth unemployment figures. I see it in the insecure work which now comprises something like 40 per cent of the workforce. It is a real issue in Australia. It's changing our politics, and it's changing our society. I've been particularly fired up about it since the global financial crisis because what I have found in our country is something that is quite ugly. It's something that I wasn't prepared to have found but something that I've seen that is new. That is a growing self-interest and arrogance of what I would call an overpaid and overpowerful corporate elite, who are generally the people who are dictating the policies of the Turnbull government. These people have been in the dock at the royal commission into banking throughout the last few weeks. Their arrogance and their blindness of affluence has infected corporate life in Australia. Of course, these are the people that working people have to deal with every day. They seek to bolster their self-interest at every turn. The culture of too many boardrooms is not just selfish but now obviously ranks with malpractice, as we have seen at the royal commission. There's a sick race to the bottom going on to minimise tax, to casualise their workforces—all the way through that process, barracking for lower wages and, of course, cuts to investments in health and education. In office, and over the last five years, the Labor Party in this parliament has fought for the big structural reforms that we need to secure a prosperous and fairer economy and society. But at no stage through any of that process have the overpowered corporate elite who run this government put their hand up for the very big structural long-term reforms that are required to secure our future. They wouldn't stick their hand up for negative gearing, a sensible price on carbon, the Gonski education reforms—the list is long. What we do see in Australia, like the rest of the developed world for that matter, is a capitalist economy which is dominated now by a plutocratic family model backed up by an overpowered and overpaid corporate elite. They do want an economy run by the rich, for the rich, and that's what we're getting. And nothing from the budget last night sticks out more than the obscene tax changes put in place to flatten the progressive tax system and hand massive tax cuts to people who earn incomes like ours and well above. When I was growing up, my father had an attitude about the world he lived in. He went to war. He came back. He was distrustful of the big banks and the big oil companies. His generation had witnessed the Depression and the Second World War. They fought for freedom when they went overseas. They came back. They had plans for a big society, a great society, in which the fruits of that economy were fairly shared amongst working people. They fought for that. They changed it. They fought for it and they were successful. Over the last 30 years, that has been wound back. The beneficiaries have been a relatively small elite on very high incomes who dictate this government's budget and dictate this government's tax policy. It was there last night in black and white for everybody to see the rank unfairness of it—the destruction of the personal progressive income tax system, where someone on $37,000 would pay the same rate as someone on $200,000! To present that budget to this parliament in an environment where there is growing inequality around the world, which is polarising politics, is simply insane. It shows you how far to the right those opposite have drifted and how far they have come from the national interest. In this simple bill this one amendment that we are objecting to today says it all. Why couldn't there be a register so we can stamp out malpractice? Why couldn't that continue in the bill? I'll tell you why. It's because some vested interest got hold of them, or some loony in the Senate dictated to them that it must be changed. What I really find troubling about our country, and particularly the activities of organisations like the Business Council, is that at every turn they smear collective action. At every turn they smear the role and importance of government and, in particular, collective action from trade unions. They tell a great lie about our society. They say it's divided between makers and takers. This Ayn Rand view of the world goes to the core of where they come from, how they make policy and how they present their budgets. Of course, they are the makers. And they just think the takers should take what they can get—and business should of course do whatever they want. And that goes back to the amendment in this bill. We on this side of the House know we need collective action. We know we need unions. There's a power imbalance in our country. Franklin Roosevelt said it all in the 1930s: Our first truth is that the liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. They are very profound words—and very profound public action flowed from those words. Progressive taxation came from those words. Breaking up monopolies came from those words. The union movement came from those words. But this government is now controlled by trickle-downers and plutocrats. F. Scott Fitzgerald said of plutocrats: 'They think they're better than we'—that is, they think they are the wealth creators and the rest of us are just leaners, hanging around. Today, I want to say very clearly in this House that history shows that working people can make a difference, and we'll make a difference again. We will run down this budget because of its rank unfairness and because there is a profound sense of unease, insecurity and unfairness in our society. This bill before us today is a reaffirmation of why we need a strong labour movement that's proud of its history and unapologetic about where it stands and who it represents: the economic interests of working people. History will be made again as we turn back the trickle-down policies of this extreme right-wing government that occupies the government benches.