Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on today's matter of public importance, which is the need for multinational companies to pay their fair share of tax. The government's bid to combat multinational tax avoidance is only a token action. The government must put tax reform back on the table and be prepared to consider reforms that have the capacity to make a real difference to the budget without making cuts to 99 per cent of the population. The government can start by looking at a financial transactions tax, a tax between 0.01 per cent and 0.1 per cent—and I am being very conservative here; I could raise it—applied only to six high-frequency share-trading companies. This tax is likely to raise, conservatively, $1.4 billion a year at a minimum, without taking money from Australia's pensioners, families, students and jobseekers. A 15 per cent death tax on estates worth more than $5 million would raise $5 billion a year and would only impact the top 0.8 per cent of Australians. A cap on capital gains tax exemptions for houses worth more than $2 million would raise $3 billion per year, and 56 per cent of the revenue raised would come from Australia's top 10 per cent of earners.

These things have all been costed independently. They have come from the Australia Institute. And what do you know? The Treasurer and his ego will not even look at them. Being conservative, we can raise $10 billion in a year. The government is struggling to balance the budget, because it is taking crumbs from the people in Australia who need them the most. A government that takes $50 a fortnight from pensioners or families has completely wiped out their budget for power, or the funds they have stored away to cover insurance or groceries, let alone put milk on the table. But the economic and tax reforms I have mentioned here are a drop in the ocean in terms of wealth held by the groups targeted. All I am talking about is hitting, mostly, one per cent of the top-earning Australians and their companies in this nation, and we can leave our pensioners alone finally. (Time expired)