Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Coonan, representing the Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer. I refer the minister to the $300 million in kickbacks that AWB paid to the former Iraqi regime. Can the minister confirm that AWB were able to claim so-called ‘facilitation payments’ as a tax deduction? Doesn’t that mean that Australian taxpayers subsidised AWB’s bribes to Saddam Hussein to an amount of $90 million? Hasn’t the government’s failure to align the definition of ‘facilitation payments’ in the tax act and the Criminal Code allowed this to happen and placed legal doubt on the ATO’s power to reassess AWB for $90 million in unpaid tax? Given that the Commissioner of Taxation has now called for the law to be clarified, will the government reverse its position and support changes to the tax act to ensure that AWB-type payments are not tax deductible in the future?