Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Financial Systems and Other Measures) Bill 2025. The Greens are supporting the bill in the House, but we reserve our position for the Senate, pending a Senate inquiry into the bill. This bill introduces several Treasury measures, and I'm going to speak to schedule 1 of the bill, relating to beneficial ownership reforms, and schedule 7, relating to the instant asset write-off. Schedule 7 extends the $20,000 instant asset write-off for small businesses until 30 June 2026. This was a policy the Greens took to the election, so we welcome the Labor government's getting onboard.

The Greens understand how important small businesses are to our communities and to the broader economy. I very much understand this myself from deep and long-term personal experience—many decades as a director of my own small and then larger business. Small businesses make a huge contribution to Australian society and to the economy. And we know that too many small businesses are struggling right now in the wake of the pandemic and with high inflation and interest rates, and these employers of so many Australians need some extra support.

Extending the instant asset write-off will give small businesses the certainty they need to invest in their businesses, which will have flow-on benefits for their customers, workers, the communities they're based in and indeed the whole economy. Schedule 1 of the bill relates to beneficial ownership obligations for listed entities. Last term, Labor failed their election promise to legislate to create a public register of ultimate beneficial ownership. This term, we get this bill, which marginally improves existing disclosure obligations but does not address private companies or trusts and does not create a publicly accessible register.

Did you report your income and investments to the ATO? If you did, then you're probably not a billionaire or a massive multinational corporation. Just last week a report from Global Energy Monitor found that people profiting from 22 million tonnes of Australia's annual CO2 emissions are hiding their identity behind nominee companies. Nominee companies are the fossil fuel industry's favourite middle men. They hide the real owners of shares, letting coal, oil and gas profiteers cash in from the shadows. Last term, Labor failed on their election promise to legislate to create a public register of ultimate beneficial ownership. That's because billionaires and the powerful owners of these companies lobbied the government and convinced them to back down on their election promise, because they just don't want that gravy train to stop.

If you're a nurse, a teacher or a small-business owner living in my electorate of Ryan, you paid more income tax than almost a third of Australia's largest companies. We need a public register of ultimate beneficial ownership, because billionaires and massive multinational corporations hide behind trusts and shadowy corporate structures to avoid accountability and to avoid paying their fair share of tax. Are you one of the lucky one in three massive multinational corporations that pays no tax in Australia?

Let's take a stroll down the corporate tax avoidance lane. The world's biggest meat producer, JBS, made $19 billion in income and paid zero dollars in tax. Massive gas and energy producer AGL made $12 billion in income and paid zero dollars in tax. Massive mining corporation Santos made $8 billion in income and paid zero dollars in tax. Transurban, the infrastructure company that owns and operates almost every toll road in Brisbane, received $3.2 billion in income and paid $0 in tax. Rupert Murdoch's media empire, News Australia Holdings, received $1.8 billion in income and paid $0 in tax. Microsoft's data centre in Australia received $1.5 billion in income. Guess what? They paid $0 in tax. Sony Australia received $1.5 billion in income and paid $0 in tax. Netflix Australia received $1.1 billion in income and paid $0 in tax. Optus telecom, infamous for its recent triple 0 outages, and its parent company received $8 billion in income and paid $0 in tax. You'd think, with that income, wouldn't you, that they could afford to spend some on reliable services for Australians.

So why aren't the massive multinational corporations, who are recording billions in income, paying no tax? That's because Labor and the LNP refuse to close the huge loopholes that let big corporations keep stealing from everyday Australians. 'Hello? Triple 0? Yes, I have an emergency. My phone provider, Optus, made $8 billion in income last year and paid no corporate tax. Hello? Hello? Oh, the line dropped out again.' Optus is once again responsible for an outage in their service that has left customers unable to contact triple 0. Four-and-a-half thousand people were affected by that outage, and services were impacted for nearly nine hours. That includes 9 triple 0 calls made during that time. Last year, Telstra shut down its 3G services, which left some rural Queenslanders with either much poorer service or no mobile coverage at all. Despite making those billions in profits, they're providing poorer service to their customers.

But, in fairness, just like everyday Australians, these companies are doing it tough! In the 2023-24 financial year, Optus recorded a measly $8 billion in income, while Telstra reported a trivial $23.5 billion in income. With tiny incomes like those, how can we really blame these massive corporations for offering us more and more unreliable and poorer services for increasingly higher prices? Optus has clearly shown again that they choose profit over people. It's time these massive corporations started paying their fair share of tax and actually providing the essential services they claim to provide.

Privatisation has been an utter disaster for Australia. Labor started the asset fire sale in the nineties, and their greatest hits include Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank and CSL. But it was the Howard coalition government that initiated the sale of then publicly owned Telstra in 1997. Let's check in on just how Telstra is going. Just last week, Telstra was fined $18 million by the ACCC for misleading customers about NBN speeds. That's just last week. They've proudly told their investors they will sack Telstra staff across the country and provide a poorer service to customers by embracing AI. It's no wonder that, according to a Roy Morgan Research survey, Telstra are Australia's sixth-least-trusted corporation alongside such esteemed company as Temu and News Corp.

None of this is news to everyday Australians. Selling off public assets has led to the downfall of both state and federal governments. Poll after poll shows people know that privatisation leads to higher prices and mainly benefits the corporate sector. Everyday Australians know what our politicians and the big corporations just don't seem to get: privatisation of essential services, like telecommunications, isn't sensible economic management, it just means higher prices for worse service. Essential services should stay in public hands.

Overall, the Greens are supporting this bill in the House because we know small businesses need more support, and we acknowledge that the bill makes marginal improvements to existing beneficial ownership obligations. However, we're reserving our position in the Senate. We need Labor to implement their 2022 election promise to deliver a public beneficial ownership register with actual teeth. Labor cannot let massive corporations and billionaires off the hook for another term.

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