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

Senator WHITTEN (Western Australia) (17:15): by leave—I move amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 4000 together: (1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 2), omit "Schedules 1, 2 and 3", substitute "Schedules 1 and 2". (2) Schedule 3, page 42 (line 1) to page 46 (line 14), to be opposed. Once again, we see the poison pill tactics of the Labor government.

This bill is ostensibly about bringing dodgy tax advisers into line in the wake of the PwC tax adviser scandal, and One Nation has no issue with those parts of the bill. Tax advisers who do the dodgy should be punished. White-collar crime is not dealt with harshly enough in this country.

But, instead of getting to focus on what works in this bill, Labor, with their coalition mates the Greens, have buried a 50 per cent capital gains tax concession for foreign owned renewable energy projects in this legislation. Labor must stop this practice. Stop the poison pills.

Let us debate the core issue of your bill separately. If you're so proud of your swindle factories, set aside these tax changes in a separate bill. We're moving to strike out schedule 3 so that you can bring it back for debate honestly.

I'll even give Labor the title: 'Treasury laws amendment (tax cuts for foreign investors and swindle factories) bill 2026'. Let's look at the schedule in isolation. Labor is handling foreign swindle-factory owners a CGT discount that was too generous for your everyday mum-and-dad investor or for struggling small businesses.

That includes foreign owned renewable companies getting a 50 per cent discount. But hardworking Australians are paying the full tote. Labor is ripping Australians off while looking after foreign shell companies.

It is a testament to their unwavering commitment to the green energy transition at the expense of the Australian people. Schedule 3 was originally drafted by Labor to apply until 30 June 2030. That was until their favourite coalition partner, the Greens, stepped in and had it extended out to 2040—more votes-for-sale shenanigans.

This is at an estimated cost of around $325 million to the taxpayer. But what do Labor and the Greens care? They removed the CGT discount for individuals precisely to pay for this kind of spending—to prop up their failing, faltering transition.

Our amendment would remove schedule 3 from this bill, removing this ridiculous CGT concession for foreign owners, and reinstate fairness for Australians. But the Labor-Greens alliance is more interested in looking after offshore companies than the Australian people. Labor told Australians that its changes to negative gearing and CGT would level the playing field and help young Australians buy their first home.

Instead, it is tanking the housing market, with no evidence that first home buyers are having any more luck—probably because they're also fighting against the inflation and collapsing real wages that are part and parcel of this Labor government's economy. This schedule of the bill is only going to make life harder as more public money is tipped into the renewable energy black hole.

If these swindle factories were worth a damn, they wouldn't need to be propped up by tax concessions. Labor is more interested in driving our electricity prices sky high and looking after the needs of foreign owned wind turbine outfits. They continuously tell you that they are lowering the wholesale price of electricity, but Australians are paying retail prices, and they feel the pain every time they open their power bill.

Every Australian household, pensioner, school and hospital is paying the retail price—the price that includes the ideological green fantasy, the network and transmission costs and the endless subsidies. One Nation is going to scrap net zero. We are out of the Paris Agreement.

The climate change department will be gone—no more of Minister Bowen's secret Capacity Investment Scheme. We will save the budget billions every year. If their spending isn't enough, let's shed some light on these foreign companies that will benefit from the 50 per cent CGT concession from Labor.

Foreign owned wind farms are set up as special purpose vehicles. If the wind farm owned by the foreign SPV fails, goes bankrupt or becomes legally liable for noise nuisance and fire damage to neighbouring farms, the creditors in many cases cannot seek reimbursement from the foreign parent company. The Labor government is already pouring subsidies into these SPVs through renewable energy certificates, carbon credits and the Capacity Investment Scheme at a cost of who-knows-what.

Much of this spending is shrouded in the commercial-in-confidence mist. What are we paying for each of these turbines? There are estimates of up to $1 million a turbine, so, if a wind farm has 100 turbines, these foreign owned SPVs could pocket tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds every year, and now the government is giving them a 50 per cent CGT concession when they change hands as well.

The Labor government is quite happy to crash the housing market with tax grabs while keeping the renewable gravy train going. On top of the trillion-dollar transmission upgrade required to reach net zero and the 35,127 wind turbines spread over four million hectares of our country, foreign companies responsible for the destruction of our forests and farmland are getting a 50 per cent concession.

What is Labor doing to this beautiful country? What are you smoking over there? I implore everyone in this chamber to use our review powers properly.

We should not be passing consequential legislation as an add-on to a completely unrelated bill. Separate the bill, debate it and vote on it in its own right on its own merits. Our amendment to this bill will remove schedule 3, thereby ensuring that foreign companies pay their CGT and levelling the playing field for Australians.

Remove this schedule and let us debate it separately. Give it the light of day that Labor has so desperately starved it of. Come on, 'party of transparency'.

You can do it.