Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will be supporting this amendment, as Senator Patrick has already indicated. This is an old regime. It's a regime that was put in place in 1995, and it provides very significant exemptions for a narrow set of companies. Companies on this list are owned by some of the wealthiest Australians. You can't even get off the list, I understand; those who've tried to take themselves off the list including, I think, former Prime Minister Turnbull, were unable to do so.

This is a sensible amendment. It's an amendment that, as the minister has noted, was canvassed in the Senate committee's work around corporate tax avoidance. The private companies that are on this list—very rich and very powerful people—are benefiting from an unfair grandfathering regime. As the title of the Senate report indicates, 'you cannot tax what you cannot see.' Why should these people be removed of their obligations to report transparently in the way that other companies do? Newer companies—and when I say 'newer', I mean companies founded since 1995—have to comply with very sensible ordinary ASIC requirements. While there may have been genuine policy reasons in the past for this exemption, the time for this exemption is over. If the Liberals, as they've indicated, won't back this amendment, then they need to explain to the public why it is that they are standing up for a special privileges regime that benefits the old, the wealthy and the very, very powerful.