Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I just read, five minutes ago, a media report in The Sydney Morning Heraldby David Crowe, who said:

Australia's biggest companies are launching a national campaign to restore "faith and trust" in business amid a ferocious political debate over a second round of company tax cuts.

That is exactly what we are debating right here, right now. Apparently there's going to be a blitz of advertising later this year about how you can basically buddy up and become a friend of a big business in this country and how really everyone is a friend. My message to the Business Council and the other stakeholders who are going to be promoting this message is: if you really want to make a statement to restore the faith and trust of the Australian people in the business community then come out now and say these corporate tax cuts were a bad idea, that the revenue that the Australian people have generated through taxes—and admittedly some of that comes from corporations—should be left with us here in government, to spend on our social safety net, on education, on health care, on infrastructure and on action on climate change, just to mention a few things. There are many other ways we can produce sustainable jobs, industry and futures here in Australia without giving a handout to big, wealthy corporations.

I make this very clear: the Greens voted against the second round of tax cuts in this country. We led on tax cuts for small business. We were very happy back in 2012 and 2013 to push for tax cuts for businesses under $2 million, which is a majority of businesses in this country, and many of them are doing it tough. But we have consistently voted against tax cuts for bigger business. We voted against tax cuts for businesses up to $10 million, and we voted against tax cuts for businesses up to $50 million. It is not in our DNA to support tax cuts for big businesses in this country, especially when many of those businesses don't pay their fair share of tax. Of course, that's something that the Business Council, in this campaign, is very well aware of—the reputation of a lot of multinationals who dodge tax. Many of us senators in this chamber have been on numerous committees that have looked at this in a lot of detail. Although we've passed new laws in this place—and the Greens were very happy to be part of putting those laws into place—and we have been able to pursue some of these multinational corporations for tax for the Australian people, to pay for schools and hospitals, we still have a long way to go.

As far as big business all around the world getting in the ear of governments and pushing for tax cuts is concerned, that is a race to the bottom. Senator Cormann's logic is that all Australian people should have been supporting this today because Australia will be uncompetitive if we don't match our neighbours' tax cuts. Given the disparity already between tax levels, this is nothing but a race to the bottom. And we get gamed by multinational companies. They game the system by going to governments all around the world and saying: 'Your tax rate is too high. Look at Australia. You need to cut it.' And we have a race to the bottom. Eventually there will be no corporate tax and they will have exactly what they wanted. No-one can tell me what the optimal rate of corporate tax rate would be. It's only based on a relativity of what the next country is going to pay. We've seen countries, like Germany, with higher both effective and headline tax rates than Australia still having much better employment numbers and economic growth numbers than most countries in the world, including Australia.

I want to make another point before I finish here tonight. The Greens are that passionate about this debate that we want to campaign going into the next federal election on reversing these tax cuts and making sure that Labor, if they get into government—and I hope they do get into government at the next federal election—will reverse these tax cuts. I want to be really clear. We will support the current status quo with tax thresholds of $10 million. Although we voted against the increase of the threshold from $2 million to $10 million, we will support the status quo of $10 million. On 30 June this year the sliding scale changes so that companies up to $25 million will get the tax cut and then, in the following June, companies up to $50 million will get a tax cut. We do not support that, and we want to see that legislation reversed. We hope the Labor Party will join us in our campaign going to the next election to make sure that those corporate tax cuts are reversed.

I remind everybody today of what we saw in the leaked document from the Business Council of Australia that made its way to the Fin Reviewtoday. I said this in my speech last week—and I may have been the only one who raised this point—but it is critical in this debate. If businesses are choosing to take their corporate tax cuts, their windfall gains, as they have in the US, and reinvest them in their own shares by buying their shares or giving money back to shareholders, it's not only an admission that they're not going to give any money to their workers—which will lead to higher wages or more employment—but an admission that they have nothing better to invest that money in. In other words, they're not going to reinvest it in their own industry or their own growth plan if they don't see that investment being the best return. That is actually the most important point here. It's right up there with the fact that they're not going to give any of this money to workers.

The whole logic behind Senator Cormann's push for this tax cut and behind the modelling that the Treasury has done assumes that this money will be invested back in the business. We found out from the Business Council of Australia leak that, out of 130 CEOs in this country, 80 per cent were considering buying back their shares. Only 20 per cent said that they would consider giving some of this windfall gain that the Australian people are passing on to them to their workers. Let's be very clear about this. This is taking Australian government revenue, taxpayer revenue, from the citizens of Australia and gifting it to some of the biggest, wealthiest, tax-dodging corporations in the world—not just in this country. These multinationals get away with it everywhere. We are gifting money from the Australian people to big corporations. It is a transfer of wealth. There's no other way that you can look at this, especially when they say: 'Thank you very much. I'll put that in my pocket.' By the way, rising share prices and, no doubt, better share valuations on the back of changes to their capital structure will mean better CEO and executive bonuses.

So what's at stake here is very real and it's extremely important. We need to not only celebrate the fact that these tax law changes have not got up this week but fight hard to make sure that they don't next week. Going into the next election we need to commit to reversing any tax cuts that we see coming in the Senate, if they happen at all. This needs to be campaigned on. This is critical for those of us who have a different vision for this country and for the Australian people.