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

Ms BOELE (Bradfield) (12:13): This is a subject very close to my heart, and this bill, frankly, does many things, but I'm going to focus on just one part of that today: the tax changes that, until today, risked making it significantly more difficult to build clean energy that we need for an affordable, reliable, competitive and secure energy system. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026 increases the value of the CGT payable by international investors in Australian wind, solar and large-scale energy storage.

The consequences of these changes is to disincentivize investment in clean energy. But today, after months of pressure from the crossbench and industry, the government has announced an important change to the bill, which will greatly decrease the risks posed to clean energy. To be clear, these risks are not entirely gone, but the situation is much improved, and I commend the government for making these changes.

Let's step through what's going on in this bill. But let's also be very clear from the beginning that, like it or not, tax—like death—is a certainty. Tax is also necessary.

It pays for things like hospitals, schools, roads, public housing and social supports—all the things that make this country function. When foreign investors profit from Australian land and natural resources, it's entirely reasonable for them to contribute their fair share to the country that generated this wealth. This bill does that by broadening and clarifying what counts as taxable Australian real property so that CGT will be payable on a wider range of assets, including renewable energy assets.

This isn't changing the CGT rate itself; it's broadening the tax base. But the practical effect for foreign investors is the same as if the rate had gone up. More of what they hold and sell will now be subject to more Australian tax.

Ensuring that foreign investors pay their fair share is a good idea, so my argument today is not that these reforms are ill advised in principle. My objection is that in practice the changes disproportionately affect clean energy projects, which we should be doing everything we can to support. We know renewables are pushing down power prices.

We know that they are displacing imported fossil fuels and improving Australia's energy security. We know that we need to be building more of them faster. Building renewables is capital intensive, and much of that capital comes from offshore because the scale of what we need simply outstrips what domestic capital alone can provide.

Between two-thirds and three-quarters of investment in Australia's clean energy sector comes from international investors. Long approval times and issues with transmission are already making it hard for projects, wind projects in particular, to meet financial closure. Our 2030 target of 82 per cent clean energy is a worthy goal, but it's looking doubtful as we stand.

Disincentivising clean energy investment at this critical juncture is the exact opposite of the kinds of policy signals that we should be sending. These tax changes have been signalled since the 2024-25 budget, but when the government announced the detail earlier this year it included an ability to retrospectively tax investments all the way back to 2006. This would have been unprecedented, and, to its credit, the government has since removed this retrospectivity.

Until today the government had included a transitional 50 per cent discount for four years to foreign corporate investors who dispose of Australian renewable assets. It framed this as a generous concession, reflecting its commitment to Australia's clean energy future, but this was misleading because a four-year transition window is simply not how renewable energy investment works.

These projects are built, at a minimum, on eight- to 10-year investment horizons, often much longer—multidecades. A four-year window would have created a very obvious incentive to sell before 2030 while the 50 per cent discount still applies, and then commit no further capital after 2030—in other words, a fire sale of existing assets in the lead-up to 2030 followed by a freezing of new investment once the discount ceases.

Thankfully, after months of advocacy from the crossbench and industry, the government has agreed to extend that transitional period all the way to 2040. I commend the government for this concession. It's an extra 10 years, and this is very welcome.

I'm very pleased that the government has engaged constructively and in good faith on these amendments, and I thank the minister for doing so. Extending the transition period for an extra 10 years will mean that the law more accurately matches the timescale of this century's energy economy build-out, and it aligns with real investment cycles rather than the arbitrary four-year political deadline.

A 2040 date will now capture one to two whole investment cycles, ensuring that more clean energy is built, and more cheaply, and with the knowledge that the policy risk factor doesn't have to be baked into the cost of capital. The reality of the clean energy build-out so far is that we are relying on private capital to do much of the heavy lifting. The government is underwriting projects through the Capacity Investment Scheme, but it's not building its own renewable energy projects.

If we want to deliver an energy system at the pace required for industries to remain internationally competitive then we need to be doing everything we can to support international clean energy investors. Some will say, 'Won't Australian super funds simply fill the gap left by departing foreign capital? They have so much money under management.' Yes, they do.

But, unfortunately, their track record to date shows that they won't fill that gap. Australian super funds have consistently and disappointingly underinvested in domestic clean energy, in large part due to a very conservative risk appetite, which is baked into their regulations. Australian super funds have contributed only 0.8 per cent of investments in renewable energy projects since 2020.

They've been hamstrung by the performance test rules, which, to its credit, the government is in the process of fixing, as I've spoken about elsewhere. But given such low levels of investment, even if changes to the performance test help the volume of investments from Australian super funds to double or even triple, it's still going to be far below the 70 per cent that international investors make up.

So I will be moving two additional amendments to this bill. The first amendment will provide additional transitional support for clean energy by resetting the cost base of renewable energy assets when the tax changes come into effect. This means that the new CGT rate would apply only to capital gains accrued from now rather than to all the gains accrued since the project was initiated.

This is not full grandfathering. I recognise the government's intent here is to broaden the tax base, and a blanket exemption for existing assets isn't realistic. But this amendment would strike the right balance between respecting commercial decisions that were made legally and in good faith on the basis of existing taxation rules before any investor could have known that these changes were coming with the government's tax policy intent.

This amendment has broad support from investor groups. As the Global Infrastructure Investor Association told Treasury in its submission, 'Introducing a deemed market value cost base reset at a time of commencement would address the government's concerns while preserving Australia's reputation for policy stability.' As EY put in its submission, 'Many investments were priced, financed and held on the explicit understanding that they were not taxable Australian real property.

The absence of transitional relief imposes an unfair and retrospective tax burden on genuine commercial decisions made under the law as it stood.' This idea has precedence in our law. It's a sensible change. I will also be moving a final, further amendment to make it very clear that battery energy storage assets qualify for the concession and that the definition is technology neutral, with flexibility for new clean energy technologies involved in transmission and grid stabilisation.

Unfortunately, the government signalled that it's not open to accepting these changes. That's regrettable. It's a missed opportunity, in my opinion, to further accelerate the build-out of clean energy at a time when we need it more than ever.

Finally, I want to register a broad objection to how this legislation has been put before us. The bill bundles eight different schedules together, all of which address different topics: tax adviser misconduct, foreign investment, CGT, national competition policy arrangements, DGR listings and so much more. Some of these schedules do really worthwhile things.

I won't detail them all here; I don't want to detain the House. I understand the case for legislative efficiencies. No-one wants a parliament clogged up with dozens of small technical bills when they could just sensibly group them all together.

But in some cases, as here, it makes it really hard for the parliament to hold the government to account when we're being asked to deal with legislation that's so varied all at once. It would be great to see these consequential changes split off from the rest of the bill so they can be properly scrutinised. I want to end by saying that I support the intention of these changes.

Foreign investors should pay their fair share. Until today, the bill risked dealing a very large blow to investment that we need to deliver cheap, secure energy that's going to set us up for long-term prosperity. It simply didn't make sense for the government, in one breath, to express support for cheap, clean energy and simultaneously to make it harder for investors to build the wind farms, the solar farms and the battery energy storage that are going to make this economy cheap and clean.

I commend the government's willingness to extend the transitional period to 2040 and I urge it to continue doing everything it can to support the clean energy that we need and make our economy as competitive as possible so households can have the cheapest possible energy for their livelihoods.