The wealthy and powerful have just got their way in the Australian Senate, without even needing a proper vote. The right-of-centre Turnbull government has just passed a law to hide the tax secrets of major private companies, owned by the likes of Australia's richest woman, mining giant Gina Rinehart and gambling mogul James Packer. The law passed without a formal vote, because not enough Labor, Greens and other opposition crossbench senators were even in the room. It was a sneaky move by the coalition government, and poor form from the rest for dropping the ball so badly.
The Australian Taxation Office recently revealed that 1 in 5 of these major
companies paid no tax last year – but the public won't know who, thanks to this
shambles of democratic process.
Tax dodging that the public will never know about, because of a vote that never
happened and that the opposition parties are now too embarrassed to talk about.
“Looks like it's up
to us to make sure this doesn't go down quietly,” the GetUp! activism platform wrote to its
members. “Even if our house of review in the Senate was caught asleep
at the wheel, we're not going to let this rest. We're reaching out now to
allies to see if we can launch our own investigation into the tax arrangements
of some of these companies and report them ourselves.”
“Let Prime Minister Turnbull know he might be able to dodge the Senate, but he can't dodge us.”