|
representatives vote 2024-03-18#7
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2024-03-21 17:48:45
|
Title
Bills — Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Accountability and Fairness) Bill 2023; Consideration in Detail- Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Accountability and Fairness) Bill 2023 - Consideration in Detail - Statutory review
Description
<p class="speaker">Allegra Spender</p><p>by leave—I move amendments (1) and (2) as circulated in my name together:</p>-
- The majority voted against an [amendment](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2024-03-18.52.1) introduced by Wentworth MP [Allegra Spender](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/wentworth/allegra_spender) (Independent), which means it failed.
- ### What is the purpose of this amendment?
- Ms Spender [explained that](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2024-03-18.52.1):
- > *My amendment would insert a statutory review of the changes to the PRRT, to be commenced no later than 1 July 2026. This would allow two full financial years for the government changes to take effect and for it to become clear whether these reforms are delivering an equitable return to the taxpayer.*
- ### Amendment text
- > *(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 1), omit "to 3", substitute "to 4".*
- >
- > *(2) Page 2 (after line 11), after clause 3, insert:*
- >
- >> *4 Review of operation of amendments made by Schedule 5*
- >>
- >> *(1) The Minister must cause a review to be conducted of the operation of the amendments made by Schedule 5 to this Act.*
- >>
- >> *(2) Without limiting the matters that may be considered when conducting the review, the review must have regard to:*
- >>
- >>> *(a) the appropriate distribution of petroleum resource rents and the need to provide a fair return to the Australian community; and*
- >>>
- >>> *(b) the appropriateness of the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax Assessment Act 1987 (as amended by Schedule 5 to this Act) and associated regulations in light of recent, and potential future, developments in industries subject to that Act; and*
- >>>
- >>> *(c) the applicability of the review's findings to resource export industries not subject to that Act.*
- >>
- >> *(3) The review must start no later than 1 July 2026.*
- >>
- >> *(4) The persons who conduct the review must give the Minister a written report of the review no later than 1 January 2027.*
- >>
- >> *(5) The Minister must cause a copy of the report of the review to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 3 months after the day the Minister receives the report.*
<p class="italic">(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 1), omit "to 3", substitute "to 4".</p><p class="italic">(2) Page 2 (after line 11), after clause 3, insert:</p><p class="italic">4 Review of operation of amendments made by Schedule 5</p><p class="italic">(1) The Minister must cause a review to be conducted of the operation of the amendments made by Schedule 5 to this Act.</p><p class="italic">(2) Without limiting the matters that may be considered when conducting the review, the review must have regard to:</p><p class="italic">(a) the appropriate distribution of petroleum resource rents and the need to provide a fair return to the Australian community; and</p><p class="italic">(b) the appropriateness of the <i>Petroleum Resource Rent Tax Assessment Act 1987</i> (as amended by Schedule 5 to this Act) and associated regulations in light of recent, and potential future, developments in industries subject to that Act; and</p><p class="italic">(c) the applicability of the review's findings to resource export industries not subject to that Act.</p><p class="italic">(3) The review must start no later than 1 July 2026.</p><p class="italic">(4) The persons who conduct the review must give the Minister a written report of the review no later than 1 January 2027.</p><p class="italic">(5) The Minister must cause a copy of the report of the review to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 3 months after the day the Minister receives the report.</p><p>The petroleum resource rent tax is supposed to ensure that Australians get a fair return when their oil and gas resources are sold overseas, but the current system is completely broken. In the last couple of years, Australian LNG exports boomed as gas prices skyrocketed, with Climate Energy Finance estimating that gross profits of LNG exporters exceeded $63.5 billion in 2022. But, despite these profits and despite gas exporters being able to extract these resources without paying any additional royalties, the Australian people have seen little return. In the 2020-21 financial year, there were 33 projects eligible for PRRT, yet only six paid any tax. Even more shockingly, despite Australia being the second-largest LNG exporter in the world, the most recent set of budget papers noted:</p><p class="italic">… not a single LNG project has paid any PRRT and many are not expected to pay significant amounts of PRRT until the 2030s.</p><p>So the changes to the PRRT are welcome, and I appreciate the government taking action on this. It was well overdue.</p><p>But, sadly, the government has not gone far enough in these changes and reform. Whilst a few projects that would never have paid PRRT will now do so, the main impact of the bill is to bring forward a small amount of revenue a few years earlier, giving the budget bottom line a boost today at the cost of taxpayers tomorrow. It's not even as much revenue as you would think. The reforms were originally slated to bring in just $600 million a year over the forward estimates, despite gas companies bringing in an additional $20 billion in revenue in the last financial year alone, yet in the latest Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook this amount had shrunk even further.</p><p>The lack of significant reform on PRRT is not only a missed opportunity for the budget bottom line; it's a missed opportunity to fund the kind of cost-of-living relief that households desperately need right now. If the government lowered the deductions cap from 90 per cent to 80 per cent, it could fully fund a people power plan that permanently lowers power bills for nearly half a million households by turbocharging the uptake of rooftop solar, home electrification and improved home energy performance. The government has not yet taken this chance, but it must, and I hope it changes its way—at least in the Senate. I also want to put on record my deep concerns about the concessions the government are rumoured to be making to secure support in the Senate, which could result in massive expansion of the fossil fuel industry in the midst of a climate crisis. This would be a deep betrayal.</p><p>So my amendment asks the government to be open to doing things better in the future, to reviewing whether these new arrangements are delivering a fair return and to further reforming the tax if necessary. My amendment would insert a statutory review of the changes to the PRRT, to be commenced no later than 1 July 2026. This would allow two full financial years for the government changes to take effect and for it to become clear whether these reforms are delivering an equitable return to the taxpayer. Like the Callaghan review and the gas transfer pricing review, this review would examine whether the superprofits from our resources are being shared equally between the taxpayer and gas exporters. But, unlike these reviews, it would consider how learnings from reforms to the PRRT could be applied to the other resource export industries, which are increasingly important as our economy decarbonises. This is a reasonable and constructive amendment that would help deliver a fair return for Australian taxpayers in the future.</p><p>I'd like to make a further point, which is that we sent this amendment to the Treasurer's office back in November last year and I think it was only today or yesterday that we got a response or engagement on this amendment. I will constantly work with respect with members of the government on this and on any other amendments because they are made in good faith. These are challenges that I am making because I think they could be better, but I'm always open to having a conversation about these things. I was very disappointed not to get more constructive engagement from Treasurer or Assistant Treasurer on these matters, because they are really important and my community expects to understand, in a fulsome and time-appropriate way, what the government's position on this is and, if we have different views, why those are there so that we can engage constructively, perhaps to come to a middle ground.</p> <p class="speaker">Zoe Daniel</p><p>I rise to support the amendment proposed by the member for Wentworth. This legislation is simply not good enough. It's not good enough for the government to bundle together a couple of random items and to expect a pat on the back from the parliament—in effect, a tick and flick. Put simply, this is an abuse of process and less than the voters expect from our parliament and its elected representatives. At best it's lazy, and at worst it's a deliberate attempt to underplay the significance of these two issues—one issue being imposing adequate taxes on our resources and the other issue being critically needed oversights on consulting companies, who've recently been exposed for their poor behaviour.</p><p>To be abundantly clear, I would prefer to see the bill split as proposed by the member for Indi in her second reading amendment. However, this amendment from the member for Wentworth would go some way to imposing some oversight on the proposed changes to the PRRT. There would be a review of the effectiveness of the changes to the act in line with recommendations from the Callaghan review instituted by the previous government. We would then know just how much is being returned to the taxpayer for exploitation of an asset owned by all of us: the fossil fuels deep underground and underwater. This is critical, and I remain deeply concerned that, at a time of cost-of-living pressure and a critical energy transition, when we need the revenue, we are way underdone on tax on export gas.</p><p>We also know that in the lead-up to the last budget the Treasurer had three options in front of him on the PRRT, and we discovered, courtesy of the <i>Australian</i><i>Financial Review</i>, that he chose the option that the gas producers wanted. Four vulnerable seats in Western Australia may have had something to do with it, and also the fact that Woodside appears to have a stranglehold on public opinion in WA and that its media are the most concentrated in the country and enablers of the fossil fuel lobby. This is not the way to make policy affecting the whole nation. At budget time, the government estimated that its new approach would raise no more than $2.4 billion over the next four years, and it now turns out that it won't even do that, as, in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the Treasury revised the estimates, revealing that it will be much less than originally predicted. The <i>AFR</i> also calculated that at current prices the second option that was offered to the Treasurer would have brought in $21.9 billion in 2023-24 alone, but, instead, as the paper put it back at budget time:</p><p class="italic">The big gas producers can go back to what they do best—exporting huge amounts of Australian gas and printing money …</p><p>This bill is not a good illustration of the government's supposed aims to restore public confidence in the way that policy and legislation is done. I have had this conversation with the Assistant Treasurer. I have made very clear that I think the bundling together of these two entirely disparate matters is not good process. I think the bill should have been split. Given that the government will not tolerate that and does not find it palatable, much as I think the vast majority of the Australian people would, I definitely support the member for Wentworth's amendments.</p> <p class="speaker">Stephen Jones</p><p>I want to thank the members for Wentworth and Goldstein for their contributions. I acknowledge that they have engaged in good faith on these measures, including the amendments, and other bills that have come forward in my portfolio before now, and I look forward to them continuing to do so. I also note that people can engage in good faith and, frankly, just disagree, and this is one of those occasions.</p><p>Briefly, the reasoning for not supporting the amendments is this: this package of laws has come forward as a result of two separate reviews, the first of which was initiated back in 2014. We want finality and certainty. We've implemented the change. We've looked at all the competing views and forces. Frankly, in the community and even in this parliament there are people who want more gas, there are people who want less gas and there are people who want no gas and, therefore, no revenue arising out of the gas. I think that's a fairly accurate summation of the views right across the chamber. We're trying to strike the right balance, and we believe the 90 per cent deductions cap strikes the right balance in ensuring that we have sufficient gas supply, particularly for the manufacturing industry in Australia, for as long and until we have a viable economic alternative energy source, particularly for those sectors. For the Australian people, it means that we'll get more revenue sooner and provide certainty for industry. I don't believe that the amendments moved by the member for Wentworth will deliver on that objective. Parliament is ultimately the reviewer of all measures and bills that come before this House and will continue to do so.</p> <p class="speaker">Milton Dick</p><p>The question is that the amendments moved by the honourable member for Wentworth be agreed to.</p><p></p><p></p> -
-
|