Friday, October 16, 2015

Corporate Culture – Bypassing Democracy

From GetUp!

The wealthy and powerful just got their way in the Senate, without even needing a proper vote. 

The Turnbull Government just passed a law to hide the tax secrets of major private companies, owned by the likes of Gina Rinehart and James Packer. 

What's worse, it passed without a formal vote, because not enough Labor, Greens and crossbench senators were even in the room (did you know that could even happen?!). It's a sneaky move from the Coalition, and poor form from the rest for dropping the ball so badly.

The ATO recently revealed that 1 in 5 of these major companies paid no tax last year – but we won't know who, thanks to this shambles of democratic process.2 

Tax dodging that we'll 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.

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. So watch this space.

But in the meantime, let Prime Minister Turnbull know he might be able to dodge the Senate, but he can't dodge us. 


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