Swan releases more Henry review material

The federal government has released a raft of additional material related to the
Henry tax review, although not all background papers could be made public for legal
reasons.
Releasing the information late on Thursday, Treasurer Wayne Swan said he hoped it
would "promote a constructive discussion in our community about tax reform".
It comes on top of the 1000 page final document of the review chaired by Treasury
Secretary Ken Henry that was released in May.
The additional background papers of the Henry Review - or Australia's Future Tax
System (AFTS) Review - include four academic working papers which were commissioned
by the AFTS panel, as well as costings documents.
"This government commissioned the most comprehensive review of tax in 25 years," Mr
Swan said in a statement.
"We've set out an ambitious reform program, and we look forward to ongoing debate
about the best ways to harness tax reform to further broaden and strengthen our
economy into the future."
The background papers call for a resource rent tax that would replace existing
resource taxes and royalties and a 25 per cent corporate rate, as recommended in the
Henry review.
The current planned minerals resource rent tax aims to return royalties to mining
companies, but does not replace them, while proceeds from the tax will only enable
the corporate tax rate to be cut to just 29 per cent from 30 per cent.
In forming a minority government, Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised the
independents and Greens a tax summit by July next year.
"Release of this information will be an important contribution to the debate over
tax reform in this country," Australian Greens MP Adam Bandt told reporters in
Canberra on Thursday.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said Mr Swan had provided the crossbenchers with legal
advice that many documents could not be released and that only a "small amount of
paperwork" would be made public.
But fellow independent Rob Oakeshott said the government should have provided the
opposition with the legal advice.
"If we are going to be fair dinkum about trying to get the right result on the floor
of parliament I frankly think it was unfair on (opposition treasury spokesman) Joe
Hockey that he didn't have that legal advice," Mr Oakeshott told reporters.
Mr Hockey said he was only given the advice by Mr Oakeshott.
"Even though the government says it is going release a lot of information ... it's
what they don't release that will probably matter," Mr Hockey told reporters
earlier.
"We are not quite in the new paradigm that Julia Gillard promised and they are up to
their old games of covering up information the public wants to know about."