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

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (12:41): The Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Accountability for Tax Adviser Misconduct and Other Measures) Bill 2026 is being sold as legislation to strengthen accountability for tax adviser misconduct and hides a poison pill that will hurt everyday Australians. One Nation supports holding dishonest tax advisers to account.

I'll say that again. One Nation wholeheartedly supports holding dishonest tax advisers to account. Australians have every right to expect that people who exploit the tax system face consequences.

Sadly, though, this is another Labor-Greens omnibus bill. Labor has bundled together unrelated measures and buried a very different agenda in schedule 3. Schedule 3 is not about dodgy tax advisers; it is about giving foreign investors a special capital gains tax deal for so-called renewable energy projects like solar and wind—parasitic projects.

This is more Labor-Greens deceit, waste and hypocrisy. It is a Labor-Greens deal asking Australian taxpayers to subsidise the profits of foreign corporations, global investment funds and billionaire backed trust structures. One Nation will oppose that measure.

So what does schedule 3 do? Schedule 3 gives eligible foreign investors a 50 per cent discount on capital gains tax when they sell certain renewable solar and wind energy assets in Australia. It applies to assets including wind turbines, solar factories, battery projects, hydro projects and related renewable energy infrastructure.

Let us be clear about who benefits. This is not a tax break for an Australian family trying to get ahead. It is not a tax break for a local farmer.

It is not a tax break for a small Australian business. It is a tax break targeted to advantage foreign companies and foreign trust structures—foreign!—and an Australian investor selling an asset pays the ordinary tax rate for capital gains. Under this bill, a foreign corporation selling a qualifying renewable energy asset can get a 50 per cent capital gains tax discount—half!

This is a better deal for foreign interests than it is for Australians—a much better deal. Labor says it wants foreign investors to pay their fair share of tax in Australia. Deceit!

You don't want that; your actions show otherwise. The Treasurer has repeatedly argued that foreign investors should not be able to avoid taxes on Australian assets, yet schedule 3 does exactly that. It gives a selected group of foreign investors a generous discount when they cash out of solar and wind energy assets.

Labor is tightening rules for foreign investors generally while creating a special escape hatch for foreign renewable energy investors—solar and wind. It is one rule for everyone else and another rule for the so-called energy industry—the parasitic solar and wind industry—because it cannot survive without subsidies and favours and because, without these, possible investors are walking away from investing in parasitic solar and wind projects.

They're already walking away. The Albanese government is telling Australians that revenue is tight, the budget needs repair and difficult decisions must be made. Yet, when wealthy solar and wind energy investors come knocking, Labor finds hundreds of millions of dollars for a special deal.

Consider the Greens's deal. The original proposal was supposed to end in 2030. The Greens demanded more.

As usual, Labor gave in. The concession has now been extended to 2040—another 10 years of parasitic behaviour on Australian taxpayers. This is not a short transition period; this is a 14-year tax entitlement thieving from taxpayers.

It shows exactly how the Labor-Greens arrangement works. The Greens posture as opponents of big business and defenders of ordinary Australians, everyday Australians. Yet, when it comes to wind factories, solar factories and battery projects, they become the advocates for global investment funds.

They want the projects built faster. They want more land cleared. They want more transmission lines pushed through regional communities and native bush.

And now they want foreign investors to receive a tax break when they sell out. Australians should ask why Labor and the Greens are so determined to protect the profits of foreign solar and wind investors—parasites. The cost to taxpayers is huge.

The original concession was estimated to cost taxpayers $425 million over the forward estimates. That was before Labor extended the policy another decade. The government has not properly explained what the extended concession will cost.

They're not accountable to the Australian people, they think. Australians deserve to know how much revenue is being handed away to foreigners. Every dollar lost through this tax break is a dollar that cannot be spent on hospitals, aged care, roads, regional services, policing, defence, cost-of-living relief or infrastructure for future projects.

Labor tells Australians, 'There's no money,' but there is always money when the beneficiaries are big solar and wind projects and foreign investment funds and trusts. This is not responsible economic management. It is not honest economic management.

It is corporate welfare. It is handing foreigners a gift. Regional Australia pays the price.

The renewable energy projects, solar and wind, that this concession covers are not abstract figures on a Treasury spreadsheet; they are projects being imposed on regional communities with government might. They are wind turbines across productive farmland. They are solar factories swallowing up agricultural land.

They are thousands of kilometres of transmission lines cutting through farms, bushlands and communities—28,000 kilometres. They are projects that divide neighbours, create uncertainty and place enormous pressure on local roads, services and infrastructure. Regional Australians are told they must carry the burden for the national interest.

They are told to accept the towers, the access roads, the clearing, the noise, the visual impact, the health impact, the mental health impact, the smashing of the environment, the smashing of community. They are told their concerns are simply the price of the transition, yet the people carrying that burden are not receiving special tax deals. The tax deal goes to the foreign corporation that owns the project.

The profit can be sent offshore and is being sent offshore. The community is left with the disruption, the division, the disorder. That is the real Labor-Greens deal, the real Labor-Greens model.

Local communities carry the costs and the burdens while foreign investors collect the tax concession. There's no guarantee for Australians. There is nothing in schedule 3 that guarantees lower power prices.

There is nothing that guarantees reliable power. There is nothing that guarantees Australian ownership of projects. There is nothing that guarantees local manufacturing.

There is nothing that guarantees jobs for local workers. There is nothing that guarantees compensation for host communities. There is nothing that guarantees agricultural land will be protected.

There is nothing that guarantees native habitat will be protected. There is nothing that says the tax break must be passed on to Australian families already struggling with electricity bills. Labor and the Greens are asking Australians to give foreign investors a 50 per cent discount without demanding any real return for the country, to cut it in half—stealing from the Australian taxpayers.

If the government wants to subsidise an industry, it should at least be able to explain what Australians get in return. On this measure, the answer is clear: foreign investors get the benefit while Australians get the bill. Australians get the burden.

The government claims this measure will attract investment. Yet the tax concession is triggered when an investor disposes of an asset. It rewards selling.

It rewards cashing out. It rewards the transfer of Australian solar and wind assets from one investor to another. It does not guarantee the construction of a single new project.

It does not require a single additional megawatt of reliable power. It does not guarantee one lower power bill for an Australian household—none. If Labor wants to make the case for investment, it should address the real barriers: planning failures, grid constraints, connection delays, community opposition from poor consultation, lack of reliable transmission and uncertainty created by governments making policy on the run.

These are facts. Instead, Labor has chosen the easy option: give a tax break to foreign investors, call it 'energy policy' and wipe your hands of it. One Nation supports genuine accountability for tax advisers who break the law, mislead clients or abuse the system.

We do not support hiding a foreign investor tax concession inside a bill about tax adviser misconduct, and we will not support that provision. These measures should have been separated and put to the people honestly, not deceitfully. The Senate should be allowed to vote clearly on tax adviser accountability.

We support that. The Senate should be allowed to vote clearly on whether foreign investors in solar and wind energy deserve a special capital gains tax discount—making the parasites even fatter. Labor has bundled the measures together because it knows schedule 3 cannot stand on its own, and the Greens support that.

If this was such a good policy, the government would proudly put it in a separate bill. It would tell Australians exactly what this provision costs. It would explain why foreign corporations deserve a better tax deal than Australians do.

It would explain why regional communities should accept industrial-scale renewable solar and wind projects while the profits and tax concessions go offshore—money being transferred from the Australian taxpayer to foreigners. But Labor can't do that, because this deal is not defensible. It cannot explain itself.

Australians are doing it very, very tough. In every major provincial city in Queensland—Cairns, Townsville, Bowen, Whitsundays, Proserpine, Mackay, Rocky, Gladstone, Maryborough, the North Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, Brisbane itself, Ipswich, Beaudesert, Boonah—there are homeless people sleeping in cars. There are whole families sleeping in cars.

There are good working families sleeping in cars, sleeping under bridges, sleeping in tents and sleeping in caravans. Since 1996, families and small businesses have been paying more for groceries, mortgages, rent, insurance and electricity due to Uniparty Liberal and Labor policies based on climate fraud. Small businesses are struggling with power bills needlessly.

Farmers and regional communities are being asked to absorb the consequences of Labor's reckless solar and wind rollout needlessly. Yet Labor and Greens have found room in the budget for a tax break for foreign renewable energy investors—inexcusable. Australians pay full freight, as always.

Foreign funds get half-price capital gains tax—inexcusable. Regional communities get the wind factories, the solar factories, the transmission lines and big batteries. Offshore investors get the profits—not the definite profits but the conjured profits, through parasitic subsidies and tax breaks.

One Nation says enough. We've had enough. The Australian people have had enough.

This has been going on since 1996. We support accountability. We support fair taxation.

We support Australian ownership and Australian jobs. We do not support taxpayer funded concessions for foreign billionaires and global investment funds. One Nation opposes Labor-Greens deceit, waste and hypocrisy.

That hypocrisy, deceit and waste carry over from them both pushing net zero and the Paris Agreement—as do the Liberal-National coalition. Dishonesty, deceit, waste, hypocrisy—One Nation opposes schedule 3. We make that very clear.