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News.com.au
5 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Questions raised after ATO wiped $1m bill from Paul Keating's company
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is under pressure to explain why it wrote off almost $1 million in interest and late penalties owed by one of Paul Keating's companies. An ABC Four Corners investigation has revealed that over a decade ago the ATO wrote off the debt in 2015 after years of negotiations. The debt was owed by one of Paul Keating's companies but wiped after negotiations with the former prime minister and his financial advisers. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mr Keating or his advisers. Instead, the focus of the investigation is on why the ATO took the steps it did, given the fact that for most taxpayers formally challenging such a decision would require them to contest the matter in the Federal Court. However, the ABC reports in this instance, a payment notice was cancelled after a negotiation, raising questions about how the ATO chose to handle the matter. At the time, the Liberal Government was led by Tony Abbott and the Treasurer was Joe Hockey. There's no suggestion however that the Abbott Government was briefed on the decision to wipe the tax cut given the sensitivities around privacy and the ATO. The ATO and Mr Keating's office have been contacted for comment. The ABC's report states that the investigation raises 'questions about a lack of transparency in how the tax office conducts confidential settlements.' According to the ABC, an interest and penalties bill was issued after the ATO discovered in 2012 that Mr Keating's company, Brenlex Pty Ltd, had not reported profits from an earlier share sale. After Mr Keating was audited by the ATO in 2010 an agreement was struck according to the ABC for Mr Keating to settle tax liabilities of more than $3 million involving another of his companies, Verenna Pty Ltd. According to the ABC, Mr Keating was questioned about his other companies, including Brenlex, and his advisers confirmed it had paid a significant amount of tax relating to the sale of shares and was up to date with its tax liabilities. However, two years later the ATO discovered in 2012 that Paul Keating's company had not reported profits from a 2004 share sale. While Brenlex agreed to pay the tax debt, the ATO demanded the company pay more than $600,000 in interest and penalties which had accrued in the years since Mr Keating sold the shares. Mr Keating's advisers asked the ATO to write off this debt entirely via an ATO rule known as a 'commissioner's discretion'. The ATO commissioner at the time was Chris Jordan AO, who was appointed as the 12th Commissioner of Taxation on 1 January 2013. Mr Jordan led the ATO during the tumultuous pandemic period and during scrutiny of the ATO's role in the PwC tax leak scandal. does not suggest he was involved or aware of the decision to cancel the debt. According to the ABC, the argument over the tax debt went back and forth until the debt had grown to $904,000, at which point the ATO sent a formal notice to not waive the interest and penalties charge. 'Your request has been fully considered and it has been decided that on this occasion the circumstances detailed do not warrant remission of the GIC,' the notice said according to the ABC. 'There is a clear acknowledgment that the Company should have accounted for the disposal of shares in the relevant financial years returns and did not.' In 2015, Mr Keating's advisers became involved in the correspondence arguing the ATO should waive the bill because it was an honest mistake. As a result, 'the lodgement and payment of the Company returns were overlooked' but the tax office said 'This is not a valid justification'. In July 2015, 'a last-ditch letter from Brenlex was sent to the ATO requesting a meeting' Ten days later, the tax office sent a four-line email writing off the almost $1 million debt. 'I am able to confirm that the GIC and Late Lodgement Penalties … have been remitted in full,' the email said. 'Consequently the balance of the account has been reduced to nil and the amount payable as stated in the Creditors Statutory Demand is no longer owed.' Accounting experts have told the ABC that such negotiations are unfair because the only recourse available to taxpayers to challenge this kind of decision was an appeal to the Federal Court. This is a 'lengthy and complex process that is out of reach of most taxpayers'. The ATO's own website states 'Taxpayers should be aware that remission requests are carefully assessed to ensure a level playing field for those taxpayers who pay on time.' In a statement, the ABC told Four Corners that 'inadvertently overlooking' the need to pay tax was generally not valid grounds on which to cancel GIC. 'However, there may be instances where GIC is remitted when a taxpayer inadvertently overlooks the requirement to lodge a form or make a payment, depending on the individual circumstances of the taxpayer,' the ATO said.
The Guardian
18-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Liberal party hardliners are on the back foot – but while Tony Abbott is around, the right will fight
Four days on from the Liberal party's worst federal election defeat in its 80-year history, Tony Abbott sought to explain the wreckage. Peter Dutton, Abbott argued, put the Coalition in the 'box seat' to beat Labor with his opposition to the Indigenous voice to parliament, nuclear power ambitions, refusal to stand in front of the Aboriginal flag and warnings about 'indoctrination' in schools. That was at the end of 2024. Then something changed. 'This year, really from January on, we failed to pick fights,' the former Liberal prime minister told a podcast by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the rightwing thinktank of which he is a distinguished fellow. 'And when we did pick fights on, for argument's sake, trying to get public servants back into the office, as soon as we came under a bit of pressure, we pulled back. We kind of lost our mojo a bit; we lost direction a bit.' The explanation from Abbott – who was close to Dutton – reflected a popular counter-narrative pushed by hardline conservatives in the election postmortem. The Coalition didn't lose, and lose badly, because Dutton had dragged it too far to the right, as most commentators concluded. It lost, Abbott was suggesting, because Dutton pulled back. As Sussan Ley tries to reposition the Liberals to the political centre in response to Dutton's catastrophic defeat, the new leader will face resistance from conservatives, inside and outside the party, who are adamant it must remain on the right. This latest chapter in the party's enduring internal conflict is expected to flare during debates over whether to dump the target of net zero emissions by 2050, adopt gender quotas and embrace or shun culture wars. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Conversations with Liberal MPs and insiders suggest that more than six years after losing his seat in federal parliament, Abbott remains arguably the most powerful conservative in Australian politics. One senior Liberal source said Abbott was as influential as he has been since he was dumped as prime minister in 2015. The 67-year-old is entrenched in the ecosystem of rightwing media, thinktanks and lobby groups that shape conservative thinking. He sits on the board in charge of Fox News (Donald Trump's favoured cable news channel), appears regularly on Sky News, often with his former chief-of-staff Peta Credlin, and has ties to the IPA and the rightwing campaign group Advance. Overseas, Abbott advises the rightwing political forum Alliance for Responsible Citizenship and is a senior visiting fellow at the Danube Institute, a Hungary-based thinktank supportive of the country's far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán. In a revealing insight into his worldview, Abbott used a recent speech to the Hungarian Conservative Political Action Conference to urge western countries to have the 'cultural self-confidence' to resist the 'the politics of climate and identity' and the 'false doctrine of multiculturalism'. One Liberal source suggested Abbott's endgame was to transform the Liberals – the supposed 'broad church' accomodating moderates and conservatives – into a rightwing party. 'He [Abbott] wants to be the major power behind the throne. He's not driven by money; he's driven by power,' a Liberal source said. Abbott helped orchestrate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's post-election defection from the Nationals to the Liberals to run as Angus Taylor's deputy, two sources familiar with the covert plot confirmed. He actively campaigned for fellow anti-voice campaigner Warren Mundine in his preselection tilt for Bradfield. He publicly put pressure on Ley to extend the Dutton-backed intervention into the troubled NSW Liberal division. The three cases are evidence of Abbott as an active player internally. But they are instructive for another reason: in each, he failed to achieve his ultimate outcome. The Taylor-Price leadership team never materialised while Mundine lost preselection in Bradfield to Gisele Kapterian. The NSW intervention was ultimately extended but in a vastly different form after Ley secured support for an all-NSW administrative committee to run the branch, effectively sacking the two controversial Victorian figures installed under Dutton with Abbott's support. An 11th-hour push from right faction powerbrokers to secure Abbott a seat on the new committee failed. Some Liberals view the sequence of setbacks, each at the hands of Ley and her allies, as signs of the waning influence of Abbott and the conservatives over the party. Others aren't so sure. Under Dutton, the conservatives ruled the Liberal party in Canberra. After the teal independents all but wiped out the Liberal moderates in 2022 and Scott Morrison's exit diminished the centre-right group that had expanded around him, Dutton and the right faction assumed both numerical and ideological control of the federal party. Dutton's dramatic downfall at the 3 May federal election set in train a realignment of the internal power dynamics. With more than 20 members, the right is still clearly the largest faction in the 52-member federal Liberal party room. Yet it was unable to install Taylor as Dutton's successor after surviving moderates, centre-right and unaligned MPs combined to make Ley the federal party's first female leader. Taylor and senior rightwingers Michaelia Cash, James Paterson and Andrew Hastie have retained senior roles, but other conservatives were dumped or demoted, including Sarah Henderson, Claire Chandler, Tony Pasin and Price, who abandoned plans to run for deputy leader after Taylor lost the ballot. The right was surprised and concerned at how far Ley went in rewarding backers and punishing internal rivals in her shadow ministry, particularly given she won the leadership by just 29 votes to 25. 'She overextended in the reshuffle and that could come back to haunt her,' one Liberal insider says. For now, senior conservatives are supporting Ley after a tumultuous first two months in the role, which included navigating the brief split with the Nationals while grieving over her mother's death. Taylor, now the shadow defence minister, has not been agitating behind the scenes and has been dissuading others from doing so, sources say. The open hostilities in the run-up to the leadership vote, which included the distribution of a scorecard mocking Ley's closeness to centre-right numbers man Alex Hawke, her past support for Palestine and her alleged faith in 'numerology', have stopped. There is a widely held view among Liberal MPs that Ley's fledging leadership is not under threat and undermining her serves no one's interest. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion Conservatives are wary, though, of the new leader's early, deliberate steps to distance herself from Dutton, such as opening her speech to the National Press Club with an acknowledgment of country to traditional owners. '[Sussan] is a completely different leader to Dutton and that is a good thing,' a senior Liberal source says. 'She does need to be careful in navigating her way. Her acknowledgment to country at the Press Club and standing in front of three flags during her press conference did not go down well with the base. 'The Liberal party is the main centre-right party in Australia and we cannot forget that. If we do, we will lose our base.' The right secured a small win ahead of parliament's return, with the faction's pick, Slade Brockman, defeating the Ley-backed candidate, Andrew McLachlan, in an internal ballot for the role of deputy Senate president. Liberal MPs acknowledge conflict is inevitable and even necessary after internal contest was sacrificed for discipline under Dutton, a trade-off many MPs blame for the threadbare agenda it offered on 3 May. But some fights are expected to extend well beyond the bounds of robust debate, descending instead into open political warfare. 'Everyone will behave themselves in the short term, but whenever something comes up, people will seek to use that to litigate their personal grievances,' one MP said. 'Things like net zero, for example, will really ramp up.' Climate change is ground zero for the Liberal party's internecine conflicts. The latest battle – whether to abandon a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 – shapes as a defining contest for Ley's leadership and the future of the Liberal-National Coalition. The hard-won but fragile consensus that allowed Morrison to sign up the Coalition to the emissions target in 2021 has fractured, exposing deep divisions over what has become a totemic issue for the political right. Ley immediately put net zero up for debate after agreeing to review the opposition's entire policy agenda. The shadow energy minister, Dan Tehan, is leading an internal policy working group that will report to Ley and the Nationals leader, David Littleproud. The Nationals will conduct a separate review, to be jointly led by parliament's loudest net zero critic, Matt Canavan. Liberal MPs are not optimistic a consensus position can be achieved as they brace for a divisive and damaging brawl. 'I'm a bit worried about it,' one says. 'The issue was settled at enormous cost [under Morrison]. No person in their right mind should open it up again.' One option discussed among some Liberal MPs would involve abandoning 2030 and 2035 targets – a position that would be incompatible with the Paris agreement – but retaining the 2050 ambition. Even that compromise would struggle to placate a growing number of sceptical colleagues, who believe net zero proponents have failed to explain the case for climate targets to rightwing voters. 'The mods say we need net zero to win,' one such MP says. 'That is the most facile, self-serving reason – it's exactly why people hate politicians.' Pressure to dump net zero is also coming from the party's state branches and grassroots members. Alex Antic's SA Liberal division, Price's NT Country Liberal party and the NSW Nationals division have all passed motions since the federal election rejecting net zero. The branch members, who are responsible for selecting election candidates, tend to skew older and more conservative than the average Liberal supporter. They tend to get their news and opinions from Sky News, Liberals say, making the conservative figures who appear on the channel's evening programs hugely influential over the 'base'. Figures such as Tony Abbott.
The Age
16-07-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Tony, Peta and the gang gather for solidarity supper at Israeli restaurant
A crack squad of political operatives were spotted at newsworthy Miznon restaurant on Tuesday night. The gang consisted of ex-prime minister Tony Abbott, former Labor MP Michael Danby, Abbott's former chief of staff and Sky News host Peta Credlin, ex-Liberal Party federal director and Credlin husbo Brian Loughnane and former Victorian Liberal president and man about Melbourne Michael Kroger. The diners were seated upstairs at a big table near the balcony, which is pretty much top desk. The Israeli restaurant has been at the centre of a new storm in recent weeks. As this newspaper has reported, the Hardware Lane venue is part-owned by Shahar Segal, who until recently was spokesman for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The foundation, an Israel and US-backed aid distributor in Gaza, has been widely criticised after hundreds of Gazans have died while trying to collect food. On July 4 the restaurant was stormed by activists who turned over tables, scuffled with staff and caused alarmed diners to flee. This led to four arrests and widespread condemnation, not least as it happened on the same night as an arson attack on a synagogue and cars being torched at a company that forms part of the supply chain for Israeli fighter jets. Loading Since that night, it appears bookings for Miznon have swelled. 'The restaurant was buzzing, it's full,' one source told us. Danby, who's spent much time lately whacking Labor over its treatment of Israel, organised the shindig as a show of solidarity with the restaurant. At one point he proposed a toast, while the conversation – no prizes for guessing here – ranged from Israel to the Middle East and the Orange One.
ABC News
11-07-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Albanese's China mission - managing a complex relationship in a world of shifting alliances
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leaves for China on Saturday, confident most Australians back the government's handling of relations with our most important economic partner and the leading strategic power in Asia. Mr Albanese's domestic critics have lambasted him for meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping before United States President Donald Trump. They are also aggrieved at his refusal to label China a security threat. But neither criticism really stacks up. An Albanese-Trump meeting would have happened last month on the sidelines of a G7 gathering in Canada. It was Mr Trump who left early, standing up more leaders than just Albanese. Nor is Mr Albanese the first Australian prime minister to meet a Chinese president before an American one. His predecessor Tony Abbott caught up with Mr Xi a few weeks after coming to office in 2013, before he had a chance to meet President Barack Obama. 'Friends, not foes' Meanwhile, polling indicates just one in five Australians see the relationship with China first and foremost as 'a threat to be confronted'. Rather, a clear two-thirds majority see it as 'a complex relationship to be managed'. Mr Albanese is also regarded as more competent than his opposition counterpart in handling Australia's foreign policy generally – and better at managing the China relationship specifically. The prime minister's Chinese hosts also have an incentive to ensure his visit is a successful one. In the past fortnight, China's ambassador in Canberra, Xiao Qian, has penned opinion pieces in two of Australia's biggest media outlets, insisting Australia and China are 'friends, not foes' and touting the 'comprehensive turnaround' in bilateral ties since Labor won government in May 2022. Beijing and Washington view each other as their geopolitical priority. Beijing can make it harder for Washington to enlist security allies such as Canberra in this rivalry by maintaining its own strong and constructive bilateral ties with Australia. And quite apart from the competition with the US, China relied on Australia last year as its fifth largest import source. Plenty of complaints None of this is to say Mr Albanese's visit will be easy, because Australia-China relations are rarely smooth. Anthony Albanese will visit China for the second time in his tenure. ( Reuters: Athit Perawongmetha ) Canberra continues to have many complaints about China's international behaviour. For example, Foreign Minister Penny Wong recently signed a joint statement with her counterparts in Washington, Tokyo and New Delhi expressing 'serious concerns regarding dangerous and provocative actions' by China in the East and South China Seas, and the 'abrupt constriction […] of key supply chains'. Ms Wong has also said the government remains 'appalled' by the treatment of Australians imprisoned in China, including Dr Yang Jun, who is facing espionage charges he strongly denies. Defence Minister Richard Marles has voiced Canberra's alarm at Beijing's 'no limits agreement' with Moscow, and claimed China has engaged in the biggest conventional military build-up since the end of World War II. However, this assessment is contested by independent Australian analysts. Beijing also has plenty of complaints. They include Canberra's ongoing pursuit of closer military cooperation with the US and UK through the AUKUS pact. There is also the commitment to forcing the sale of the lease to operate the Port of Darwin that is currently held by a Chinese company. Reliable trading partner Mr Albanese has already made clear his visit to China will have a strong economic focus. While grappling with security challenges, any Australian government, Labor or Coalition, must face the reality that last year, local companies sold more to China – worth $196 billion – than our next four largest markets combined. China is also, by far, Australia's biggest supplier, putting downward pressure on the cost of living. China is Australia's largest supplier, and the fifth largest buyer of Chinese goods globally. ( Reuters: Chalinee Thirasupa ) Research produced by Curtin University, commissioned by the Australia-China Business Council, finds trade with China increases disposable income of the average Australian household by $2,600, or 4.6 per cent per person. In an ideal world, Australia would have a more diversified trading mix. But again, any Australian government or business must grapple with the reality that obvious major alternative markets, like the US, are not only less interested in local goods and services, but are walking away from their past trade commitments. Under the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement signed two decades ago, Australian exporters selling to the US faced an average tariff of just 0.1 per cent. But nowadays Washington applies a baseline tariff of 10 per cent on most Australian imports. Meanwhile, owing to the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement struck in 2015, Beijing applies an average tariff of just 1.1 per cent. This also explains Alabanese's response when he was asked in April if he would support Trump's trade war against China: "It would be extraordinary if the Australian response was 'thank you' and we will help to further hurt our economy." Likewise, Trade Minister Don Farrell is adamant Australia's interests will determine the Albanese government's choices, not 'what the Americans may or may not want'. "We don't want to do less business with China, we want to do more business with China." Deeper trade ties with Asia, including China, are not just about making a buck. Wong has stressed the national security implications of a strong economic relationship: "[It is] an investment in our security. Stability and prosperity are mutually reinforcing." All of this means Albanese's six-day visit to China is shaping up to be time well spent. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
Sky News AU
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Tony Abbott calls for police crackdown on anti-Israel protests
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called for a major police crackdown on protests following an attempted arson attack at a Melbourne Synagogue. Mr Abbott says Jewish Australians have been under relentless attack since October 7, 2023. 'There's nothing to stop them [police] cracking down hard on these pro-Hamas, Jew-hatred protests,' Mr Abbott said.
