Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Okay—it was Paul Keating. That's correct, Senator Whish-Wilson. At the time there were more than 1,500 companies that were on the list. When the bill passed through the Senate in 1995, the then Senator Michael Baume, AO—a Liberal senator—moved an amendment, and I'll read the amendment:

At the end of the motion, add:

"and the Senate resolves that not later than two years and six months after the commencement of the amendments set out in items 1 to 6 of Schedule 4 of the bill, the Australian Securities Commission is to cause to be laid on the table a review of the first two years of the operation of those amendments".

Do you know what? So far as I can tell that review never took place, despite the Senate commanding that it should. I asked at estimates whether or not ASIC could find evidence of a review, and nothing came back in relation to that. So we can comfortably assume that the review did not take place.

The Senate Economics Committee conducted an inquiry into multinational tax avoidance across both the 44th and 45th Parliaments. One of the submissions it received, submission No. 32, was from ASIC, who raised the concern about these exempted companies. That led the Senate economics committee to ultimately recommend:

… that the government require all companies, trusts and other financial entities with income above a certain amount to lodge general purpose financial statements with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

My amendment will implement the recommendation—which was, in effect, initiated by ASIC—that was made to the Senate.

There is no reasonable excuse—I repeat: there is no reasonable excuse—for the coalition not supporting this amendment. I put the question to the minister in the last estimates about the government's response to this Senate report, and—noting it was a 2015 report—I got the answer: 'The government is still considering its response to the Corporate tax avoidance, Part III, Much heat, little light so far report. The government will respond in due course'. I'm sorry; that is not good enough.

In practical terms, my amendment removes the special status of these exempt companies. Currently, there are 1,119 exempt companies, owned by some very familiar names—names that the Liberal Party will know very, very well. They will have to lodge financial reports with ASIC going forward. They'll be subject to the same scrutiny as everybody else. Colloquially, the current situation doesn't pass the pub test, and, indeed, this elitism would be banned from even entering the pub.