Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026

Mr HOGAN (Page—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business) (19:22): I will just put out straight away that the opposition is not going to oppose the Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026. We are, however, going to, hopefully, refer this bill in the Senate to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee.

I am hearing that maybe there's been a dirty deal done between the government and the Greens, and that may not happen, but there are some very good reasons why you would want to refer this bill. There are eight schedules in this bill, most of them uncontroversial, but there are two that we think are important and significant. One is effectively imposing a new tax on energy and infrastructure projects in Australia, but it does give a tax concession to renewable energy projects only.

We support the fact that you might want to look at a capital gains tax put on foreign investment in this country. We think there's merit in investigating that; maybe foreign investors can pay more tax than they currently are on those assets. But already we know there's a tax break for renewable investors and nowhere else.

While we want this to go to the Senate economics committee—Deputy Speaker Boyce, with the region you're from, you'd certainly know this—we have very large projects in Australia that need and use foreign capital to build. In particular, we are a large energy exporter. We've seen large exports in the gas industry and we want these investments.

It's very important for energy security not just for us but also, indeed, for the world and for export earnings that those investments continue to be made in Australia. So we want the Senate economics committee to investigate this, because you've got to get the balance right between whether there is a fair limit that foreign investors can pay on asset appreciation in these industries that we don't have now and what level we get to where we start killing off these investments.

Beetaloo is one, Deputy Speaker, which you will know about. There are some very big investments in energy and other areas that we want to make sure have security of investment and will get up. To that, I think it should be very important to the government side that there's a Senate committee hearing into the $6 billion Karratha ammonia-urea project too.

It's very important we have sovereign capability in that. I've spoken to the investors in that, the people who are looking at that project. It was very tight as to whether this would go ahead, even with government support.

This tax is the type of thing that could throw those things and mean they become unviable to build in Australia. Another one that the Prime Minister has been starting to talk about is proposed oil refinery capability in this country. These types of things are what we want the Senate economics committee to look into to see that we get the tax level right so that we don't mean that they're unviable for foreign capital.

I am hearing, unfortunately but not surprisingly, that a dirty deal is being done between the Greens and Labor where they will give a tax break on this foreign capital to renewables but renewables only. That's probably a reason we really do need to have a Senate economics committee look into this. To give a bit more data around the bill, at the moment, foreign investors pay capital gains tax on real property, which is the land or interest they have in the land.

Assets that aren't land currently aren't always captured with this, which aligns with international tax principles. Investors have argued through multiple court cases that things like powerlines, turbines, solar panels, batteries, pipelines and major mining and manufacturing equipment aren't Australian real property. The problem is that the definition of 'real property' wasn't defined in the income tax law, and this bill is dealing with that.

Labor originally also announced that it would backdate these changes to 2006, retrospectively applying the tax, and override Federal Court decisions, but they have been forced into an embarrassing backflip on that already. Schedule 2, as I said, rewrites the definition. I have some empathy and I understand why I think it's a good idea to look at this, but I restate the case that we do not want to kill off foreign investment into essential infrastructure in this country.

As you know, some of these projects that we're talking about can be in the tens and tens of billions of dollars, and we certainly sometimes need foreign capital to do that. The 50 per cent discount to soften the change to renewables is also only for disposals up to 30 June 2030 at the moment, so it's a discount that changes nothing. Even though they have done a deal on renewables, the current discount that's public to 2030 will also mean that some of those will necessarily not go ahead in the future, because it's not a big enough discount.

I'll repeat what I've said. We need an ammonia-urea plant in Australia. We need an oil refinery built in Australia.

These assets, often because of the size of them, depend heavily on major investment. Higher taxes make them harder to finance or more expensive to build. Already, the Prime Minister has said the two important things around those urea plants and also the oil refinery.

We need a Senate economics committee to investigate this. To go through some of the other schedules, the ones that aren't necessarily as contentious, schedule 1 goes to Tax Practitioners Board powers. It strengthens the TPB sanctions and introduces new suspension powers and civil penalties up to $18 million for bodies corporate.

We support holding tax advisers to account. We support this schedule. There are merger law fixes, technical amendments to the new merger control regime, clarifying that an acquisition needn't be notified and replacing an automatic voiding of non-notified deals with the court supervised model.

We think that's reasonable enough as well. Schedule 6 is for deductible gift recipients listing, granting tax-deductible donation status to a handful of named entities. We support those.

Schedule 5, on national competition policy references, updates the competition law to reference the 2024 National Competition Policy agreement and adds a ministerial power to prescribe future agreements. Schedule 7 is renaming 'ancillary funds' as 'giving funds' and implements part of a Productivity Commission recommendation—uncontroversial. Schedule 8 is an ATO administrative fix which aligns the law with the existing ATO practice on withholding credits.

Again, we are not opposing this bill in the House of Representatives, but this is a serious issue that we're looking at—getting the tax level right without killing off foreign investment in this country. We are going to refer it to a Senate economics committee, and we hope no dirty deal has been done between Labor and the Greens to kill that off. Debate interrupted.