The Tax Justice Network has criticised a Senate report on corporate tax avoidance, saying it fails to recommend the most needed reforms, such as whistleblower protection for private-sector workers and disclosure of all subsidiaries in offshore tax havens.

The report also fails to recommend a reform that would show where a company conducts its business compared to where it actually parks its profits, Mark Zirnsak of the Tax Justice Network said.

“Those being made public would be a huge step forward, that’s a huge one,” Zirnsak said.

The Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance released its interim report on Friday afternoon, a day after convening a special hearing in response to the infamous Panama Papers leak.

The tax office commissioner, Chris Jordan, gave explosive evidence at that hearing, saying the Panamanian law firm at the centre of the leak, Mossack Fonseca, was not unique and it was being used to conceal and aid criminal behaviour, as well as tax minimisation strategies.

The Senate committee was supposed to publish its final report on Friday but, after the Panama Paper revelations, it has asked for an extension until 30 September, well after the election.

Zirnsak said he thought the committee had had to rush its work, with the election looming, and he fears its will be forgotten as political events take over between now and September.

But the committee’s chair, the Labor senator Chris Ketter, said that would not happen.



“The Coalition government would be very foolish to forget about this committee and the forward-thinking reports and recommendations it provides,” he said.

The report, Corporate Tax Avoidance, Gaming the System, recommends stronger penalties for not providing information to the ATO and action on general purpose accounts reporting.

But it said it needed more time to consider the revelations from the Panama Papers leak, in which 800 Australians have been identified.

“Although the committee has delved into the use of tax havens as a means of avoiding tax, recent revelations emanating from a law firm operating out of Panama have enlivened commentary about this practice,” the report stated.



“The committee intends to consider Australians’ use of offshore facilities to avoid paying their due taxes and will seek an extension to the final reporting date in order to examine and report on this matter.

“The papers seem predominantly to involve individuals not multinationals. That said, these revelations provide additional evidence that tax avoidance and aggressive minimisation extends beyond the realm of large multinationals.”

The report was released hours after the Guardian revealed the Turnbull government plans to create a public register revealing the identities of the beneficial owners of shell companies in an effort to quell mounting public outrage about multinational tax avoidance in the countdown to the federal election.

The creation of the public register – which will be announced within weeks before an international tax avoidance and evasion summit convened by the British prime minister, David Cameron, in London in mid-May – will bring Australia into line with G20 commitments on transparency.

The independent senator Nick Xenophon said Australians ought not worry that the Senate report was less comprehensive than some people expected.

“The final report is the report that will count. People shouldn’t read too much into the fact that this is an interim report,” he said.

“Conclusions will be drawn by the time of the final report,and I for one will be pushing to make that a very strong report.”