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

Senator WHITTEN (Western Australia) (12:27): I rise today to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026. Specifically, I want to address the 'other measures', which is often where the government hide the measures they would rather Australians did not notice. Let me be absolutely clear: One Nation supports holding dishonest tax advisers to account.

Australians have every right to expect that people who deliberately exploit the tax system, facilitate misconduct or help others avoid their tax obligations face consequences. There is nothing controversial about that, but this bill is another example of the government using an omnibus bill to bundle together different measures and bury a very different agenda within it.

That agenda is found in schedule 3, and—surprise, surprise—schedule 3 is not about dodgy tax advisers. It is about giving eligible foreign investors a special capital gains tax deal for renewable energy projects, and One Nation will not support it, because what we have here is a Labor-Greens deal that asks Australian taxpayers to subsidise the profits of foreign corporations, global investment funds and wealthy investment structures.

It's a special deal for a favoured industry, and Australians deserve to know about it. This is what schedule 3 actually does—let us strip away the bureaucratic language. Schedule 3 provides eligible foreign investors with a 50 per cent discount on capital gains tax when they dispose of certain, qualifying renewable energy assets in Australia.

That can include major renewable energy infrastructure, such as wind, solar, battery and hydro projects. These are not backyard projects; we are talking about large-scale commercial investments involving substantial amounts of capital, land and infrastructure, and the government wants to make the tax treatment of those investments more generous. Let us be clear about who benefits.

This is not primarily a tax break for an Australian family trying to get ahead. It's not a tax break for a local farmer or a small Australian business. It's a tax concession specifically designed to encourage investment in large renewable energy assets, including investment by foreign interests.

An Australian investor selling an ordinary asset remains subject to the applicable tax rules, but an eligible foreign investor selling a qualifying renewable asset can receive a 50 per cent CGT discount. This is a remarkable proposition! At a time when the government is changing capital gains tax arrangements affecting ordinary Australians, it is creating a special concession for eligible foreign investors in renewable energy.

So I ask the government why a 50 per cent CGT discount is too generous for Australians but appropriate for foreign investors in renewable energy. That is the question Labor needs to answer. Labor tells Australians that the tax system needs reform, Labor tells Australians that the capital gains tax needs to be treated differently, Labor tells us that difficult decisions have to be made to repair the budget and Labor tells us that foreign investors should pay their fair share of tax on Australian assets.

Those principles may sound reasonable, but schedule 3 undermines them, because schedule 3 gives selected foreign investors a substantial tax concession when they realise capital gains from qualifying renewable energy assets. Labor is tightening the rules in some areas while simultaneously creating a special concession in another. It is one set of rules for everyone else and another set of rules for the renewable energy industry.

That is not tax neutrality, that is not consistency and that is certainly not fairness. The government tells Australians that revenue is tight. It tells us the budget needs repair.

It tells Australians that everyone has to contribute. But, when wealthy international investors and global corporations come looking for a concession in renewable energy, suddenly there is room for a special tax deal. Australians are entitled to ask: where is the fairness in that?

This is a subsidy. The government may prefer to call this an 'investment incentive', but let us call it what it actually is: a tax concession is a form of subsidy. If the government changes the rules so that an investor pays substantially less tax than it otherwise would, the government has provided an economic benefit.

The Treasury receives less revenue. The investor keeps more of the capital gain. The Australian public carries the costs through forgone revenue.

The money does not magically disappear. It remains with the investor rather than being collected by the Australian government. When that investor is a foreign corporation or global investment fund, we have to ask whether Australian taxpayers are getting a sufficient return for the concession they are providing.

Then, there is the political deal behind this legislation. The original proposal was supposed to end in 2030. The Greens demanded more, and Labor gave in.

The concession has now been extended to 2040. That is not a short transitional arrangement; that is 14 years of preferential treatment to eligible renewable energy investors. And that tells Australians something important about how the Labor government and Greens arrangement works.

The Greens like to present themselves as opponents of big business. They talk about corporate power and wealth inequality. But, when it comes to large renewable energy projects, suddenly they are advocating for the interests of the global capital.

They want more projects built faster with more investment, and they are prepared to support special tax treatment to make it happen. At the same time, these projects can require enormous amounts of land, transmission, infrastructure and government support. Regional Australians are often the people who have to live with the consequences—more transmission lines, more infrastructure, more industrial-scale development, more pressure on land use, more disruption to regional communities—yet the financial returns can ultimately flow to large corporations, international investors and investment funds.

That is the contradiction. Who carries the risk? The government wants Australians to believe these projects are private investment, but increasingly the public is being asked to carry more and more of the risk.

Government subsidies, government backed schemes, government contracts, government funded infrastructure, government mandates and now preferential tax treatment—at what point does the taxpayer stop being the taxpayer and become the venture capitalist? If the project succeeds, the private investor receives a return. But, if the government has guaranteed the conditions around that investment, the Australian public carries much of the risk.

That is not the free market; that is government intervention dressed up as private investment. If renewable energy is competitive, let it compete. Let me be clear: One Nation is not saying renewable energy should be banned.

If a company believes that a wind farm is profitable, it should build it, but not if the community doesn't want it. If a company believes that a solar project is profitable, it should build it, but not on our valuable farmland. If a company believes that a battery project is profitable, it should build it, but not where there is a risk of fire.

But let the investors take the risk. If the project succeeds, they receive the reward. If it fails, they bear the loss.

That is how investment is supposed to work. What we should not do is manipulate the tax system to guarantee that a particular class of investment receives preferential treatment. If renewable energy is genuinely competitive, it should not need a special CGT deal.

Where is the promised benefit? This is the question that is almost never asked. What does Australia actually get in return?

We are told that these projects represent billions of dollars of investment. Fine, but investment alone is not the objective. The objective should be economic benefit.

Do electricity prices fall? Does reliability improve? Does productivity increase?

Do Australian manufacturers become more competitive? Do households become better off? Does the taxpayer receive a return greater than the cost of the subsidy?

Those are the questions that matter, because spending billions of dollars does not automatically make Australia billions of dollars richer. Schedule 3 is therefore not just a tax provision; it is part of a much larger policy direction. Labor has committed Australia to net zero.

That commitment requires enormous changes to our energy system, which in turn requires enormous amounts of investment, and government increasingly has to intervene to make that transition happen: subsidies, targets, mandates, investment schemes, infrastructure and tax concessions. It becomes a cycle: the government sets an expensive target, the target requires expensive investment, the investment requires government support, and taxpayers are asked to pay.

We should stop that cycle, scrap net zero and leave the Paris Agreement. Scrapping the net zero target does not mean abandoning environmental responsibility or refusing to invest in innovation. It means refusing to cripple Australian households and industry in pursuit of a political target regardless of the cost.

Energy policy should focus on what Australians actually need: affordable energy, reliable energy and secure energy. If a technology delivers those things, let it compete. If it does not, taxpayers should not be forced to prop it up.

Australia should also withdraw from the Paris Agreement. We should be able to determine our own energy policy based on Australian circumstances and choose technology based on cost, reliability and security. We should be free to change direction when policies fail, rather than allowing international communities to become a permanent justification for increasing costs for Australian households and businesses.

This brings us back to schedule 3. The fundamental issue is fairness. The government is changing the CGT arrangements that apply to Australians, yet it is proposing a special 50 per cent CGT concession for eligible renewable energy investors.

This is not some temporary measure lasting a year or two. After pressure from the Greens, the concession has been extended to 2040. That should concern every Australian taxpayer.

If the government believes that tax concessions are necessary to encourage investment, it should be able to demonstrate exactly what Australians receive in return. If the project is commercially viable, why does it need the concession? If it is not commercially viable, why are taxpayers being asked to make it viable?

And if foreign investors are already willing to invest billions in Australian renewable energy, why should they receive a special tax advantage when they eventually sell? These questions have not been adequately answered. This bill may be presented as a bill about tax adviser misconduct.

One Nation supports holding dishonest tax advisers to account. But Australians should look beyond the bill's title. Look at schedule 3 because schedule 3 is where Labor's real agenda becomes clear—a 50 per cent CGT discount for eligible foreign investors in renewable energy assets, a special tax treatment for an industry already receiving substantial government support, a concession extended to 2040 following the Labor-Greens deal and a policy that risks leaving Australian taxpayers carrying the cost while foreign corporations and global investment funds receive the benefit.

At the same time, Labor is changing the CGT arrangements applying to ordinary Australians. So again I ask: why is 50 per cent too generous for hardworking Australians but appropriate for foreign renewable energy investors? That is the question Labor must answer.

One Nation believes the rules should be fair, the tax system should be predictable, investors should take their own risks, businesses should compete on their merits and Australian taxpayers should not be forced to subsidise investments simply because the government has decided those investments fit its preferred energy policy. We should reject schedule 3, we should stop using the tax system to pick energy winners, we should end the endless cycle of subsidies and mandates, we should scrap net zero, we should withdraw from the Paris Agreement and we should allow every form of energy technology to compete on a level playing field.

If renewable energy can deliver cheaper, reliable and secure electricity, let it prove it in the marketplace. If it can, it will succeed. But, if it needs subsidies, mandates, government backed schemes, taxpayer funded infrastructure and a special 50 per cent capital gains tax concession to make the investment attractive, Australians are entitled to ask: where is the gain for us?

The Australian taxpayer should not be the investor of last resort, the Australian electricity consumer should not be the customer of last resort and Australian families should not be expected to pay more so that foreign investors can receive a better tax deal. One Nation will not support that. Australians deserve better, and Australia deserves an energy policy built around affordability, reliability, security and economic growth, not subsidies, special tax deals and political targets.