The Turnbull government said it would be happy to sit down with Pauline Hanson to strike a deal on company tax cuts after the One Nation leader left the door open to renew negotiations.
Malcolm Turnbull says he will ask the Senate to vote on his stalled business tax cuts next week, the final week of parliament before the winter recess.
Fresh from securing $144bn in personal income tax cuts on Thursday, the prime minister said his government remained committed to reducing the corporate tax rate from 30% to 25% as soon as possible.
Hanson had recently declared her “final decision” on the cuts was not to support it for businesses with annual revenue above $50m.
But on Thursday she made a new overture to the government, saying she may consider them if the government cracked down further on multinational tax avoidance.
“If they come to me and say we’re going after the multinationals, we’re going to actually get, you know, heaven help us if we can get it, $100bn out of it, then we’ll sit down and talk,” she said.
“You’ve got Google, Microsoft and Apple had an $8bn turnover and they only paid $148m in taxes this country.”
On Friday Turnbull said his government was very concerned about multinational tax avoidance.
“Pauline Hanson’s concern that multinationals pay their fair share of tax is one that I absolutely share,” he said.
“Our multinational tax avoidance legislation ... was voted against by the Labor party. I don’t know why they voted against it, but they did.
“We have already brought an extra $7bn of corporate revenue back into the Australian tax net. So you know we believe in lower taxes, we do. We are delivering on that commitment. But it’s not optional. Everyone has to pay their tax according to the law.”
The government will need support from eight Senate crossbenchers to pass the company tax cuts, because Labor and the Greens oppose them.
So far it has support from four: Cory Bernardi, Australian Conservatives; Fraser Anning, Katter’s Australia party; David Leyonhjelm, Liberal Democratic party; Brian Burston, United Australia party (formerly of One Nation).
That leaves six, from which the government needs four votes: Stirling Griff and Rex Patrick, Centre Alliance; Pauline Hanson and Peter Georgiou, One Nation; independent South Australian senator Tim Storer; Victorian senator Derryn Hinch.
Storer is opposed and Hinch is not well-disposed towards it.
Turnbull said he was willing to negotiate with any crossbencher because his job was to ensure the government’s legislative program got through the parliament.
“We negotiate respectfully and constructively with the crossbench and I want to thank all the members of the crossbench who supported our comprehensive personal income tax reform,” he said.
Meanwhile, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, would not share the details of the deal the government struck with One Nation this week to secure its support for personal income tax cuts.
He was asked on Sky News why he would not make the deal public, given any spending commitments would involve voters’ tax dollars.
Cormann said the deal was public because Hanson had publicly supported the tax cuts.
“Pauline Hanson’s One Nation team decided to support our income tax package in full and everybody can see that,” he said.
“If we make decisions down the track, if we make decisions which involve the expenditure of public money, we will be making those announcements and we will be accountable for it, of course.”
