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

Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (11:43): I rise in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026. It's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? In doing so, I'm glad that I get a chance to talk about this bill in the presence of the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, who has done a lot of work not only on this bill but across the government's economic strategy, particularly around looking after ordinary Australians and ordinary businesses that don't have the advantage of access to the big consultants and the big money—the ordinary mums and dads and small businesses that play by the rules.

They play hard, but they play honestly. Whether it's in superannuation, in reforms around digital assets or in strengthening the safeguards that Australian consumers have with regard to tax professionals, I appreciate the Assistant Treasurer's work. I'm glad the Assistant Treasurer is here to be able to hear that this colleague particularly appreciates that work.

This work sits well and truly within the core Labor mission, which is, at its heart, to make sure that there is equality of opportunity, that there is equality of access to the law and that people should play by the rules. Those are very much core Labor values. In fact the recent 2026 ALP conference reaffirmed that this legislation very much sits within the platform.

Chapter 1 paragraph 17 says: Australia's taxation system should be efficient, simple, transparent and equitable. There is no place for tax evasion. Meeting Australia's economic and fiscal challenges requires everyone, including Australian and multinational corporations, to pay their fair share of tax.

It's no coincidence that is in our first chapter, because that is a core part of our platform. It is a core part of the government's strategy around taxation and around levelling the playing field for Australians. It is within that part of the platform that this work exists well and truly.

When you look at the 2026 ALP National Conference, it's because ultimately the Labor Party is made up of teachers, electricians, pensioners, students and people who through disability aren't able to work. We are the most broadly representative party in the country. We hold our conferences in public, so it is hardly surprising that you end up with a platform like that and you end up with a government, the parliamentarians elected, to implement that platform who take it very seriously and are very focused on delivering on that platform.

Ultimately it means that everyone should contribute their fair share, that nobody should be able to use their wealth or their contacts to get around the rules and that they shouldn't be able to play by a different set of rules. What this legislation does is make sure that somebody who's getting their tax done by an agent has the confidence that it's being done properly, that the honest small accountant shouldn't have to worry about competing against the dodgy or unregistered provider, that that an Australian business shouldn't have to compete against foreign multinationals who are able to use big consultants to game the rules and that foreign investors should play by the same rules and should not have tax advantages that Australians don't have.

At the very heart of this legislation lies the PwC scandal, something that really tells the story of this legislation. This legislation, of course, is a part of the government's response to that scandal. It sets the principle that there should be one set of rules applied fairly and that everyone does their bit.

I have taken the opportunity in this House before to talk about my own personal experience of running my own businesses. I know that there are two ways to run a business. In fact it's the philosophy that I apply to how a country can be run—There are two ways to run a business as there are two ways to run a country.

You can strip out the profits and you can run the business into the ground, or you can invest in your plant and your people. The Labor way is very much about investing in your plant and your people, because we want to see an economic return on that investment, because we value what business does, but, more importantly, we value what Australian businesses do, and we really want to back Australian businesses.

The irony of this legislation is the story of PwC, because this legislation does two things. It enhances the Tax Practitioners Board's sanctions framework, and it strengthens the foreign resident CGT regime. It deals with dodgy tax advisers, and it's part of the government's strategy to deal with foreign multinationals having a lend.

This legislation tries to do those two things. The story of PwC, in fact, was exactly those two things. You had dodgy advisers trying to get around the very laws they helped to write, when it came to making multinationals pay their fair share of tax.

Rather than me try garble my own version of it, I came across a story from 5 May 2023 by the ABC business reporter Kate Ainsworth, who I thought summed it up really well. I'll just read a bit of what she had to say in her story, so I know that what PwC did is on the record. She said: To understand what's happened, we need to go back in time.

About a decade ago … She wrote this in 2023, so that's somewhere in 2014. She goes on: … the federal government asked PwC's international tax expert Peter-John Collins to help them design laws that would solve a problem … And that problem was getting big multinationals to pay their fair share of tax. She goes on: That legislation was known as the Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law (MAAL) … I'm not quite sure how it's pronounced.

She goes on: … and was a major strategy of the then-treasurer Joe Hockey under the Coalition government … The MAAL was designed to stop major companies, particularly tech giants, from shifting their profits away from higher-taxing countries like Australia to others with lower tax rates, such as the Netherlands and Singapore. In his dealings with the government and designing the tax laws, Mr Collins was required to sign multiple confidentiality agreements which specifically stated that the knowledge could not be disclosed.

But the Tax Practitioners Board found Mr Collins shared that secret knowledge with people within PwC, which gave the firm an advantage by being able to come up with ways for companies to get around paying the new tax. PwC then used this inside information to get new clients and make money. They were even boasting about it internally, and all of this was happening without the government's knowledge until earlier this year.

Put simply, PwC had some juicy but confidential information that big companies could benefit from—and pay them for. How did it all unravel? Fast forward to December 2022 and the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) announced it had suspended Mr Collins's tax licence for two years because of integrity breaches.

The TPB was scathing in their assessment of Mr Collins, finding he had been leveraging his insider knowledge to benefit PwC and had failed to manage his conflicts of interest—putting him at odds with the codes he must comply with as a tax agent. The ruling stated: "Internal communications within PwC indicated that Mr Collins was aware that the confidential knowledge he gained from the consultations with Treasury would be leveraged to market PwC to a new client base." It wasn't until a month later, in January, after the Australian Financial Review (AFR) published a story saying Mr Collins leaked government tax plans to clients which led to his deregistration, that Treasurer Jim Chalmers commented.

"[I'm] absolutely furious, absolutely ropeable about these revelations," … … … … "This is a shocking breach of trust, an appalling breach of trust." Later in the article, Kate Ainsworth says: What PwC did was put profits before purpose. If they got away with it, the Australian economy would have been $180 million worse off, because these big foreign companies wouldn't have been paying as much tax.

At a Senate estimates hearing in February 2023, the ATO commissioner said that an avoidance scheme to help big companies avoid paying tax was being marketed to overseas companies within weeks of the new laws taking effect in 2016. The commissioner told the hearing that it was noted at the time how quickly the scheme had been put together and found it frustrating that the new laws were being potentially dodged so quickly.

He said: Normally it would take a while for people to look at it, how it all fits together. Well, it didn't take a while, because they were designing the system and then they were out there marketing ways to get around it. I think 'a shocking breach of trust' does sum up exactly how the Australian people should feel.

We know that, when we found out about it, the Australian people were truly disgusted that PwC had been carrying on in this way. This latest legislation fits within the government's work to make sure that, if that ever happens again, they will not only be caught quickly but be prosecuted properly. In fact, a lawyer friend of mine told me that it is white-collar criminals who look at the penalties and then weigh up whether or not it's worth it and that often they're the ones doing the calculations.

So the tougher the better—and these laws are tough. To finalise, there are two things that this legislation does that I want to really commend to the House. We end up with a system that is safer for Australian consumers, we end up with a system that will properly penalise and deter the sort of behaviour that we saw with PwC and we end up with another arm of our plan to look after Australian business and to make sure that there is a level playing field for Australian business against foreign investors.

Look at how important it is to protect the integrity of our tax practitioner system. There's something like 43,000 registered tax agents in Australia, 20,000 registered tax financial planners and 15,000 registered BAS agents. Last year, according to the explanatory memorandum here, something like $426 billion was collected by the ATO, and much of that money was reconciled, it says here, via the tax returns and BAS prepared by those agents.

In fact, 74 per cent of individual income tax returns were prepared by tax agents. The TPB annual report of 2024-25 said that essentially 3½ thousand clients were assisted to reset their tax affairs following sanctions against their tax adviser and that the TPB dealt with tax advisers who failed to act lawfully and ethically, including around 275 serious sanctions to stop misconduct and protect the public.

It is important that we maintain the integrity of our system, both for consumers and for the public, and it's important that we advance the cause of making sure that multinationals and foreign investors pay their fair share of tax. To that, I commend this bill to the House.