Ms GILLARD (4:26 PM) —It is with pleasure that I second this motion moved by the member for Rankin—as desirable as it may be to have an electorate named Emerson. This was, of course, moved by the member for Rankin. It is a motion that actually deals with the tax avoidance crisis that this government is facing and is absolutely in denial about. I listened with interest to the contribution of the member for Deakin. Obviously, the watchword now on the back bench of the government is `listening'. They have all suddenly discovered that they are supposed to be out there listening. The problem with this issue is that the people whom they are listening to are at the top end of town. Where there is something that might affect the top end of town, like the family trust proposals, they dance around, consult, get out an exposure draft and cannot take too much care to make sure that they accommodate those interests. But when it comes to the other end of town, when it comes to imposing a GST on people, when it comes to imposing a business activity statement on businesses that almost drives them broke, when it comes to imposing a complicated instalment activity statement on people, there is not much listening until you actually get dragged, kicking and screaming, into a backflip or a forward flip or whatever the Treasurer is calling it today. They are listening to the big end of town. You do not want to offend them on tax avoidance questions, do you? I would like to say to the members opposite, particularly to the member for Deakin, with regard to the merriment that erupted when the member for Rankin suggested that businesses had closed as a result of the business activity statement: if he is unaware in his electorate of businesses that have closed due to the business activity statement, he is not looking hard enough, because there are hairdressing shops and food shops all around this country that have closed because of the business activity statement.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)—The honourable member will resume her seat. The honourable member for Deakin on a point of order.

Mr Barresi —Mr Speaker, we are debating a motion on tax avoidance and not the business activity statement.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —The honourable member will resume his seat. The honourable member for Lalor will continue.

Ms GILLARD —I will continue directly on the motion. Whenever we have raised the issue of tax avoidance using employee share schemes in this House—and we have raised it in question time and said to the Treasurer, question time after question time, `What are you going to do about this huge revenue problem?'—what do we get from the government? We get the smirk and the snarl—I understand that they are trying to train him out of it but they have not quite succeeded—and we are told in patronising tones that we do not understand the nature of the Westminster system, that there is a law that prohibits these schemes, the part IVA anti-avoidance provision, and that the tax commissioner says that all of this is before the courts; and that it is going to be fixed up in the courts.

Quote after quote we have the Treasurer in Hansard—in fact, the Hansard is littered with them—saying that all of these problems will be fixed in the courts. I have a problem with that, because if that is actually true then you would think that this Treasurer, who would be desperate to have a success, I would have thought, against the litany of failures he has chalked up lately, would be dancing into this House in question time, responding to dorothy dixers from government backbenchers and telling us all about these very successful court cases. If they are there, I would have thought that that is what the Treasurer would be doing. But when you actually ask him about these successful court cases, when you try to get him away from the general flourishes, `We are going to fix this all in court,' and ask, `What are the details of these court cases?' you get, very surprisingly from this Treasurer, deafening silence as a reply. For example, the shadow Treasurer asked him about this issue on 6 September:

With his great faith in court cases you would have thought that the Treasurer would either know those figures or would be desperately sending a runner from the advisers box to get them. But no, he says that he does not have the figures and does not produce them. He is then asked the same question on notice and comes back with the endearing:

He does not tell us whether a court case has succeeded; does not tell us whether any revenue has actually been produced out of these court cases that he is vaunting all the time. Then, his Assistant Treasurer, in an answer to a question from Senator Cook in the other place, basically says the same thing:

Frankly, that sort of bureaucratic speak, those sorts of attempts to obscure what is going on, is not good enough. We know that, two years ago, there was $1.5 billion in these schemes. Tax is due on them and tax should be paid. (Time expired)