The Turnbull government is creeping closer to clinching a deal on its big business tax cuts, with One Nation securing a $60m concession on apprenticeships – but Victoria’s Derryn Hinch says he won’t make his final position known until next week.



Assuming the support of One Nation’s three Senate votes, the government can already count Fraser Anning, Cory Bernardi, David Leyonhjelm and Steve Martin in the yes column – but the Coalition will also need the votes of Hinch and newly sworn-in South Australian senator Tim Storer to pass legislation cutting the corporate rate from 30% to 25% by 2026-27.

Pauline Hanson, whose support has been courted by mining chief executives, including Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, has been signalling publicly for a couple of days she is inclined to do a deal and has secured government agreement to fund a pilot program for 1,000 taxpayer-funded apprentices in private business.

Hanson told the ABC the deal she had struck would “open up apprenticeships for young people, especially in rural and regional areas”.

“I’m for helping the kids. Getting them off welfare. Getting them off drugs. Getting them into jobs,” she said.

Hinch remains at the table, but has publicly flagged conditions the government won’t accept. On Sky News, the senator suggested the big four banks should be exempted from the tax cut in order to win his support, an idea that was flatly rejected by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, later in the day.

Turnbull noted the government had already imposed a levy on the banks in last year’s budget.

If the government carved out the banks, it would lose the support of some of the cross-benchers who signed on to the plan early, including Leyonhjelm. “I would never vote for legislation that did that,” the Liberal Democratic party senator said on Thursday.

The government brought on the company tax debate in the Senate on Wednesday and wants a vote on the measure before it rises next week for the Easter break.

With big business involved in a major duchessing exercise and the government pushing a sense of urgency while cutting deals to sign up cross-benchers, progressive groups have rallied to try and stop the measure from clearing the Senate.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions on Thursday joined the progressive push against the bill on Thursday, writing to cross-bench senators urging them to block the tax cuts.

“These cuts are a taxpayer-funded handout to some of the most profitable companies, 732 of whom paid no tax in 2015-16,” the ACTU said.

It labelled Business Council of Australia claims that tax cuts would trickle down to workers “a fantasy” and “a con”, noting that workers’ wages had flatlined despite improved corporate profitability.

With the Hinch and Hanson votes in the balance, the BCA on Wednesday issued a public statement signed by 10 prominent chief executives indicating that companies would invest in Australia “as the tax cut takes effect” – which is over a period of 10 years.

“If the Senate passes this important legislation, we as some of the nation’s largest employers, commit to invest more in Australia, which will lead to employing more Australians and therefore stronger wage growth as the tax cut takes effect,” the chief executives wrote to senators.



The ACTU noted on Thursday that half the signatories to the BCA letter did not even pay tax. The peak union body targeted Qantas in particular for paying no tax from 2013 to 2016 at a time when it laid off 5,000 workers and 15,000 others had their pay frozen.

“These tax cuts will transfer wealth from working people to CEO bonuses,” the ACTU said. “These cuts will take money that should be going to schools and hospitals and pump it into the hands of wealthy shareholders, the majority of whom do not live in Australia.”

The progressive thinktank the Australia Institute is also working the Senate corridors as the deliberations approach crunch point. It produced a new brief on Thursday making similar points to the ACTU.

“Half of the CEOs that were prepared to make the [investment commitment] did not pay company tax last year,” the new brief says.

“The majority – four out of five – of those CEOs lead companies that also did not pay company tax the year before that. Despite this, eight of the commitment CEOs collectively received $73.2m in remuneration last year”.

The brief says the BCA commitment did not specify how much investment will increase by, how that will be guaranteed to lead to jobs and wages growth, or what the consequences for breaching it would be.

“In addition, it is not clear how many CEOs will still be with their companies in 10 years’ time, when the full tax cut would come into effect. The commitment is a non-binding statement of intent from a small minority of CEOs, calling for a tax cut that did not affect half of them last year”.