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

I rise to say the Greens will be supporting this Taxation Administration Amendment (Corporate Tax Entity Information) Bill 2017 today, and we will be moving amendments in the committee stage to improve this bill. It is often said that in Australia we have a tax-and-transfer system: people pay their taxes, and then those taxes are transferred to pay for services such as schools and hospitals. But the Greens have often argued that in Australia what we have, in effect, is a tax avoidance system. I'm very proud to represent a political party that has led on this issue in this Senate, in the last five years especially.

In fact it was in 2014, nearly five years ago, that previous leader of the Greens senator Christine Milne initiated a groundbreaking Senate inquiry into tax avoidance in Australia, an inquiry that ran over a number of years and produced some very strong recommendations. Many of those recommendations and much of that witness evidence have been used to implement legislation in this place to tackle the issue of tax avoidance. I give a shout-out to those stakeholders that came to visit us in parliament in 2013, 2014—stakeholders such as Micah Challenge, an umbrella group of activists in their own way, I suppose you could say, who wanted to see changes to tax laws, to prevent tax avoidance, which of course punishes the poor; and Tax Justice Network, who have campaigned tirelessly to see laws improved.

It was interesting to listen to Senator Macdonald's speech. He actually surprised me this morning: he did a reasonable job of getting his mind around the issues. He outlined what the government have done, during their term, around some significant pieces of legislation. What he omitted, of course, was that that legislation wouldn't have passed without the help of the Greens and all the work that we've done to tackle this issue.

I need to step through the history behind why we have this bill here before us today. I know corporate knowledge tends to get eroded very quickly in this place not just in the chamber but also in the broader community and the media. This bill dates back to another bill, in June 2013, in the dying days of the Gillard government. Labor put forward the Tax Laws Amendment (2013 Measures No. 2) Bill 2013, requiring the public reporting of information on all companies—that is, private and public companies—earning over $100 million, and that passed into law. Those original Labor laws aligned the thresholds for public reporting by entities with basic tax and income information at $100 million. I'm not sure why that $100 million level was chosen; nevertheless, it passed into law. The Greens supported that bill—of course we did. We voted for it both here in the Senate and in the other place.

That act was repealed when the Abbott government came into office. They introduced a bill to remove private and public companies from any public reporting requirements. Of course, the Greens opposed that bill. Here's where it gets a little bit tricky. On 15 October 2015, the bill to repeal Labor's laws relating to tax transparency snuck through this Senate. I say 'snuck' very carefully. I was sitting in the chair as acting deputy president when the bill was being debated, and the speaking list collapsed. A critical piece of legislation from the coalition government passed the Senate without even a vote; it went to the voices. The speaking list collapsed, Labor didn't call for a division—I would have if I hadn't been in the chair, but that's where I was—and it passed without even a vote. That surprised a lot of people.