By simply tacking the word "reform" onto the end of their self-serving agendas, the business lobby is coming very close to what Orwell described as "defending the indefensible", writes Ian Verrender.

What would George Orwell have made of our "reform" agenda?

The British author who railed against language abuse would be part appalled but possibly greatly amused at how Australia has come to represent everything he despised.

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible," Orwell wrote in the most celebrated passage of his famous essay Politics and the English Language.

That was England more than six decades ago and it was a concept he expanded upon in his famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

These days in Australia, every self-serving lobby group that punts up an idea, regardless of how inequitable or outrageous, legitimises their claims simply by tacking on the word "reform".

Want to propose raising taxes for those who can least afford it while cutting imposts upon multinationals that refuse to comply with tax laws? Call it tax reform.

The same goes with arguments about cutting wages and conditions at a time when wages growth is the lowest on record without considering the impact on the broader economy. That's now called workplace reform.

The Macquarie Dictionary's definition of reform is thus: "The improvement of, or amendment of, what is wrong, corrupt, etc."

When it comes to tax, the business lobby appears to believe that reform involves reducing the amount of tax it should pay while shifting the tax burden onto someone else, with consumers the easiest and obvious target via an increase or a broadening of the Goods and Services Tax.

It is the kind of self-interested argument you would expect from a lobby group. So why does anyone take them seriously?

Eschewing any form of empirical evidence, the rationale normally employed to justify the shift away from a progressive tax system to a highly regressive one is wonderfully simplistic: everyone else is doing it, so we should too.

Australia, we constantly are told, has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world, making us hugely uncompetitive as an investment destination. And that is why so many multinational corporations use tax havens because, without them, they simply wouldn't bother coming here.

It's a line that is swallowed by the media, regurgitated by commentators, and that remains largely unchallenged. The only problem is that it simply isn't true.

Australia has a dual regime when it comes to corporate tax. Former treasurer Joe Hockey introduced a 28.5 per cent tax for small business while maintaining the 30 per cent rate on major corporations.

While there are a bunch of tax havens such as Singapore and Bermuda that charge significantly less, it may come as something of a shock to discover that America - the world's biggest economy by far - has an official corporate rate of 40 per cent. Canada's is 35 per cent. Germany charges 29 per cent.

Comparing tax rates can be hugely deceiving, primarily because governments routinely offer discounts and credits to big corporations.

We do the same. Once you take dividend imputation into account, the effective rate of tax Australia charges business is 22 per cent, according to Forbes. We rank below France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States on the corporate tax front. But, hey, why bother with facts?

It is worth noting the subtle and heartening shift in language from the Government regarding its tax plans with the new Treasurer, Scott Morrison, articulating the broader impact of tax changes rather than simply parroting the latest lines from the Business Council of Australia.

It is also worth remembering that five years ago, the Henry Tax Review recommended the corporate tax rate be cut to 25 per cent; to be paid for by the introduction of a Minerals Resources Rent Tax.

It was a proposal that tore at the heart of the BCA, as service and industrial companies reeling under the weight of a surging currency lobbied against their mining counterparts.

They lost, the BCA remained strangely silent on the proposed cut, and the miners instead waged a hugely successful war against the mining tax, neutering it in the political upheaval of the Gillard ascendancy and culminating in its abolition courtesy of Tony Abbott.

The idea of a resources rent tax - whereby excessive profits from non-renewable resources belonging to the Commonwealth are subject to a special tax - has been accepted by both sides of politics for a quarter of a century.

Paul Keating introduced the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax. It was extended to onshore oil and gas projects under Julia Gillard, a decision ratified by Abbott.

But in the negotiations to extend it, Gillard naively accepted crucial changes to the way it was calculated so that, just like its minerals cousin, the expected revenue windfall has failed to materialise.

The end result? Australia within the next four years will be the world's biggest exporter of gas. But the PRRT will deliver only slightly more than the $1.2 billion it yielded in 2004, courtesy of aggressive tax planning by the energy giants. That's despite a 12 fold increase in the size of the industry.

Last week, Chevron boss Roy Krzywosinski put up a valiant defence of his company's tax policies before a Senate hearing. But he struggled to explain why his company had 400 subsidiaries in Bermuda and Delaware and how it managed to avoid paying tax in Australia despite its enormous revenues.

Then there was the tricky issue of a massive fine by the Australian Tax Office - $250 million in back taxes and $60 million in fines - and the embarrassing recollections of promises it made back in 2007 that its Gorgon project in Western Australia would supply enough tax under the PRRT that every Australian would get a tax cut.

Deftly avoiding the issue, Roy complained that it was all a nasty plot by the unions to discredit the company.

But it's not just foreign multinational resource houses that spend a fortune to ensure they legally minimise their tax here. Our very own BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto were exposed back in April for shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings via the Singapore sling.

Despite all the embarrassment and exposure, the relentless campaign continues uninterrupted.

Back in June, BP provided a helpful solution to Australia's revenue shortfall in a submission to the government's tax white paper. Why not raise the Goods and Services Tax, it suggested.

Reform? Or could it be what Orwell considered as "defending the indefensible"?

Ian Verrender is the ABC's business editor and writes a weekly column for The Drum.