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

Senator CANAVAN (Queensland—Leader of the Nationals) (11:02): There are lots of industries struggling in this country right now under this government. Lots of areas are doing it quite tough with the economy not doing well with the government raising taxes and with the price of everything going through the roof. Lots of small businesses I see are doing it really tough.

So it's a surprise that the government has brought forward a bill—well, maybe it's not a surprise—that's going to provide a tax break to some. What is surprising is that it doesn't go to any small businesses. It doesn't go to any of the people in the housing market that are suffering from the greatest reduction in housing values we've seen for a generation or more.

It doesn't go to those manufacturing businesses struggling under some of the highest energy prices in the world. It doesn't go to families struggling to pay their bills after 15 interest rate rises and the price of everything—groceries—going through the roof. It doesn't go to any of those groups.

This bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026, provides a massive tax break to—wait for it—large-scale wind and solar investors. That's where it goes. You've got to ask yourself: what are the government's priorities?

Are their priorities the Australian families doing it tough right now? Are their priorities the small businesses that are struggling to keep their doors open. Are their priorities those people who've just taken on large mortgages with not much equity and who now find themselves owing more to the bank than the house is worth?

They should be; those people should be our government's priorities right now, given how tough people are doing it in our country. Instead, the priorities of the government are not just to bring forward this tax break but to rush through this tax break to large-scale investors, often whom a foreign owned, so that they can pursue their net zero agenda, which has been completely failing.

That's what this bill does. It's a massive tax break for some of the biggest businesses, biggest investors, biggest super funds in our nation. Maybe they're doing it tough too, but I don't think they should be at the front of the queue if we can afford a tax break for some.

I think we should be looking after the average Australian that's doing it tough. I think we should be questioning whether or not this whole pursuit of net zero is delivering what was promised. It's not delivering what the government promised.

They promised that installing wind and solar—pursuing net zero—would lower your power bill by $275, and the Prime Minister promised that almost 100 times on the election trail. That hasn't happened. Power bills have gone through the roof.

The government promised that pursuing net zero would create over 600,000 jobs—604,000 jobs, in fact, according to their economic modelling and their plan. And now we have to spend billions upon billions of dollars just to maintain the jobs we did have—forget about new jobs—at smelters and refineries and keep them on taxpayer funded life support, because right now if we didn't do that those jobs would go overseas.

Those smelters and refineries would shut down, given the astronomical electricity prices that this government now presides over. But none of these things have happened. They promised net zero.

They promised we'd have low interest rates, too. They promised that if we pursue this net zero idea the rest of the world will love us and they'll swamp us with capital, and that will lower interest rates. Now, consistently, Australian government debt—a 10-year government debt—has been at the highest interest rate in the developed world for the last year or so.

The UK has just pipped us in recent weeks, after their troubles, but we have consistently been at the highest bond rate in the developed world—massive surges in the cost of government finance. Those higher interest rates flow through to your mortgage, too. That's one of the reasons you've seen those 15 interest rate rises, and people are doing it tough.

Yet the government comes here and not just introduces it but, as I said, rushes it through. They're rushing through, in a deal with their friends in the Greens, a tax cut for these large businesses, and they're trying to hide it. You might have been a bit confused, if you were listening and paying attention: 'Hang on; the name of this bill is Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill.' The words 'other measures' do more heavy lifting in this bill than I've ever seen.

If you just read the title, the bill is about strengthening accountability for tax adviser misconduct. That seems like a reasonable thing, and we do support aspects of the bill, which I'll get to, that do that. But then you've got this 'and other measures'.

You might ask, what are those other measures? They are a big, big tax break for large-scale businesses and investors who can't make their sums add up right now because the net zero agenda is failing. So the offending provision of this bill, the 'other measures' part, introduces a change to the way capital gains are taxed here in this country.

That's a legitimate issue. Typically only capital gains on real property have been taxed, and generally speaking attached land has not been included in that property, under various tax rulings. So we have seen that companies that build pipelines, factories, and solar and wind investments on land have typically been judged to not be subject to the capital gains regime.

This bill changes that and redefines it. It puts a proper definition on what property is for capital gains tax purposes and fixes up a little bit of a gap. We're not against that as a concept.

It makes some sense—although I would add that most of those assets are depreciating assets, such as pipelines, infrastructure et cetera and are unlikely in and of themselves to make any large capital gains. Be that as it may, it seems consistent to include them in a regime that seeks to tax any capital gain on assets. But then the government, having done that, having made this reasonable change, exempts investors in solar and wind—not anyone else, not anyone who might be, I don't know, building an oil refinery so we can have fuel security again in our country; they're not exempt.

The government's running around, cap in hand, subsidising oil and gas production in other countries, but they don't get an exemption. What about somebody who wants to increase steel production here so we don't have to import so much from overseas? Nope: they don't get the exemption—only people who invest in wind and solar.

As I said, those are the government's warped priorities right now—that they are more interested in pursuing this idea of net zero that's not working than they are in providing relief to Australian families or targeting the real issues that face this country, like fuel security, where we are so reliant on other countries for a basic commodity. The government had proposed in the budget that it would fix this capital gains tax loophole.

It would exempt solar and wind. We were pretty aghast at that. They were going to exempt them for five years, and then they'd be brought in—even the solar and wind investors would be brought into the regime—but, to ram this bill through, the government has done a deal with the Greens to extend the exemption out to 2040 for those who happen to be in a protected class that invests in renewable energy.

It doesn't apply for everyone else. Small businesses don't get it. Small businesses invest in these things in their own businesses.

They're captured. They get taxed. I'm really interested to hear how the government can justify why someone starting up a cafe is subject to this new regime, but a multibillion dollar investor from Europe or North America building massive solar and wind turbines somehow gets off scot free.

I'm particularly interested in why they're giving this tax break because, just two weeks ago, the Prime Minister was in Dubbo—I was there—at the Bush Summit, and he faced a lot of people. He went out and saw a lot of people who were opposed to having 300-metre towers next to their houses and communities. That's understandable.

People don't want their rural setting industrialised by these things. They faced a bevy of opposition from them. In front of them and in front of the nation's cameras, he told them that these investments have to have a social licence to operate.

They should get a social licence. 'They should get local support,' in effect, he was saying. This is his first day back. This is the government's first day back in Canberra, in parliament, since the Bush Summit in Dubbo a few weeks ago.

What is the first thing the government do? They introduce laws to give these investments a tax cut, not to impose new requirements on them to receive that support, which they're clearly not getting right now. These things in rural New South Wales, wind and solar investment, are about as popular as the Queensland Maroons rugby league team right now.

They are deeply unpopular. People don't want them in their community. You can understand why.

Does anyone want a 300-metre tower? If anyone here in this town or in an urban setting decides they want to build a multistorey apartment complex, opposition goes straight up, understandably. People don't want their local community changed like that.

Likewise those in a rural setting don't want it. They don't want it imposed on them with no benefit, just an interruption in their lives, the destruction of their ambience and sometimes impacts on their health too, if they're too close to these things. They're very noisy.

None of that's being factored in here. This government's come back to Canberra after whispering sweet nothings to people in the bush out in rural New South Wales and actually slipped through, in a dodgy deal, this tax cut. What clearly should have happened here, with such a massive exemption to some of the largest and richest investors in our country, is that we should have had a Senate inquiry on this issue.

We should have subjected this to some degree of scrutiny, particularly given this has changed considerably since the government announced in the budget this extension of the tax break to 2040. This should have been subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny, but again—because the government is obviously a bit embarrassed about these deals they're doing with some of the biggest, largest investors in our nation's country not helping out our ordinary Australians—they want to rush it through without really any scrutiny.

We will be moving a second reading amendment that I'll flag that will seek this bill to be referred to a Senate inquiry so we can get to the bottom of who's going to benefit from this tax break and exactly why it's needed, because we were told these wind and solar investments were so cheap and so efficient. Why do they need this? Why do they need another subsidy?

They're getting billions and billions of dollars of subsidies already from you. For those listening, Mr Acting Deputy President and all the listeners here, you're paying them billions and billions of dollars. The government won't provide us the precise figures, but they get massive amounts of subsidies, and now they're getting a tax break on top.

Why do they need that if they're that much cheaper? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Sullivan ): Senator Canavan, are you moving that amendment? Senator CANAVAN: I'll move that now.

I may as well move that amendment now: At the end of the motion, add ", and: (a) the bill be referred to the Economics Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 October 2026; and (b) further consideration of the bill be made an order of the day for the first sitting day after the committee has reported". Before I finish up, I did want to get back to the name of this bill, which is 'strengthening accountability for tax adviser misconduct'.

There are many parts of this bill that we can support. We can't support the lack of parliamentary scrutiny. We can't support massive tax breaks to select few of the government's pet projects and not those small businesses in particular that are suffering in this country.

There are eight schedules in this bill. We support things like strengthening the Tax Practitioners Board powers in schedule 1 and increasing civil penalties and new criminal offences. We have seen some pretty poor conduct in this sector, and we can support that.

We do support schedules 4, 5, 6 and 7, which provide some technical amendments on the merger-control regime, which updates competition law to reflect the 2024 national competition policy agreement. Schedule 6 grants tax-deductible-donation status to some new entities. We're not opposed to those things.

Schedule 7 implements part of a Productivity Commission recommendation to rename things that are called 'ancillary funds' to 'giving funds'. Again, that is something we can support. Schedule 8 provides an administrative fix to the ATO to align the law with existing ATO practice on withholding credits from policy disposals.

All of those things, as I say, are fairly what we would call 'non-contro', or non-controversial, and could have been included in a bill like this. But what is objectionable is how the government has used those legitimate, sensible and largely technical changes to hide a broader agenda where they provide preferment to some select businesses in this country while the rest of the economy is suffering so badly.

It's really suffering. I've spent the last two weeks on the road. As I said, I was at the Bush Summit in Dubbo.

I had a couple of days around there and a wonderful evening in Trangie where over 100 people came along and there was a lot of engagement from people. I had a few days down in northern Victoria with the member for Nicholls, Sam Birrell, in Shepparton and Echuca. I spoke to many businesses suffering from sky-high electricity costs—really struggling.

I spoke to a lot of businesses in that area and farms in that area that are struggling with the government buying back water right now, taking away that opportunity that they would have to grow food for our nation and increase our productivity and wealth. That's being denied to them; it's being hollowed out from that. There's a lot of engagement out there.

I've never seen people so worked up in our country, and it's understandable why they are—because this government has presided over the biggest decline in economic living standards in our nation's history. In recorded history, there's never been a bigger fall in real wages, a bigger fall in productivity, a bigger fall in living standards. That should be the No. 1 focus of this government if it wants to listen to the Australian people.

Instead, we're providing tax breaks to multinational companies. It shows how off track this government is.