Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

As tempting as it is on occasion to take at face value the assertions that Senator Whish-Wilson makes, I won't because I don't present myself as a resource industry taxation expert. Senator Whish-Wilson did commence his question in relation to tax avoidance by implying that the government had not taken action in this area. Can I remind Senator Whish-Wilson and colleagues that we have taken action by implementing a multinational anti-avoidance law to stop multinationals artificially avoiding a taxable presence in Australia. We have introduced a new diverted profits tax to prevent multinationals shifting profits overseas. We signed the OECD multilateral instrument on 7 June 2017. We've doubled the penalties for multinationals avoiding tax. We've increased the penalties for breaches of tax reporting obligations by multinationals. We've implemented the OECD recommendations for country-by-country reporting to give the ATO greater access to multinational transfer pricing information—