The Morrison Government crossed the line and was caught out

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics was charged by Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on 19 September 2018 with conducting an Inquiry into the implications of removing refundable franking credits.

The Standing Committee is composed of:

Liberal MP for Goldstein Tim Wilson (Chair)

Labor MP for Kingsford Smith Matt Thistlethwaite (Deputy Chair)

Along with committee members

Liberal MP for Brisbane Trevor Evans

Liberal MP for Mackellar Jason Falinski

Liberal MP for Hughes Craig Kelly

Liberal MP for Reid Craig Laundy

Labor MP for Freemantle Josh Wilson

Greens MP for Melbourne Adam Bandt

And supplementary member

Labor MP for Hotham Clare O’Neil.

The Inquiry has received approximately 1,000 submissions and by 8 February 2018 will have held 11 public hearings.

To date no transcripts of those public hearings have been published, just partial lists of those giving 'evidence'.

On 31 January 2019 The Sydney Morning Herald noticed the structure of these public hearings:

With no formal witnesses scheduled for any of the 12 special economics committee hearings to be held across the country before May, Coalition MPs appear set to continue to use the meetings to rally against the Labor policy. At one recent hearing an MP went so far as to hand out Liberal Party membership forms to the audience.

The Standing Committee has issued a total of 5 media releases, 4 of which contained details of where and when Inquiry public hearings would be held.

However, this particular Standing Committee dominated as it is by Liberal Party MPs decided to go one step further.

Its Chairman began to advertise public hearings on social media by directing interested persons towards a privately owned website created in October 2018 which deliberately conceals ownership by using My Private Registration to block full details appearing on its Whois entry.

This is one such invitation on Twitter:

Now a number of people have attempted to take up this irregular invitation to register in order to obtain a seat at a public parliamentary committee hearing and found that registration could only be completed by having their name attached to an anti-removal of funding credits petition.

It should be noted that this privately-owned website carries no visible link to a privacy policy. So users of this site receive no undertakings that any personal information they divulge, such as name, gender, postal address. telephone number and address will be protected from exploitation.

One Twitter user remarking on the situation 0nn2 February 2019:

This petition text reads as follows:

Attention: Tim Wilson MP (Chair) & Committee members,

I want to formally register my opposition to scrap refundable franking credits and the attack on full tax refunds.

This policy will:

- Unfairly target retirees who have worked hard and sacrificed for their retirement.

- Unfairly hit many people on low incomes, including hundreds of thousands of retirees that receive full tax refunds and with 97% of people who receive these refunds having incomes below $87,000.

- Unfairly target retirees on low incomes who will now face double tax, while those on higher incomes will be able to reduce their tax bill by the full value of overpaid tax.

The impact of the retirement tax has not been thought through. It will directly harm my financial security. It should be abandoned.

Right at the bottom of the website’s home page is this alleged authorisation:

The placement of this authorisation appears to authorise both the website and the digital petition and, the individual doing the authorisation is Tim Wilson in his role as Chair of the Standing Committee on Economics Inquiry into the implications of removing refundable franking credits.

Under the leadership of the Member for Goldstein this parliamentary inquiry has lost what little legitimacy its Terms of Reference bestowed and it has been turned into a public manifestation of taxpayer-funded Liberal Party political campaigning against one of the Labor Opposition's current policy positions.

The political dishonesty of the Standing Committee on Economics and this blatant attempt to deceive the general public, stack the hearings with people who support the Liberal Party's position and deny registration to those that didn't, cannot be ignored.

It is my honest opinion the Chair of the Standing Committee on Economics by his actions may be guilty of contempt of parliament, and therefore may be liable to be prosecuted under the provisions of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987.

Wilson may have shrugged off comment by mainstream media, but he reacted to Twitter (and the fact that at least one person appears to have approached the Australian Parliament to express concern over the Standing Committee's actions).

Here he is alleging an error had occurred when setting up the digital petition which supposedly remained undiscovered for about three months:

UPDATE

An IT savvy journalist Richard Chirgwin has tweeted that the stoptheretirementtax domain is registered to BERFAWN PTY LTD, an  ATO Regulated Self-Managed Superannuation Fund first registered by ASIC in 1993. 

This super fund is possibly associated with Lawrence Gerard Mccrossin.

The Conversation, 8 February 2019:

On Monday, a page for the inquiry was added to the Australian Parliament’s website describing itself as the “the official page of the committee”. It states that submissions to the inquiry can be made via the Parliament’s submission system or by email. It also explains that “pre-registration is not required to participate” in the hearings.

The Guardian, 8 February 2019:

The fund manager Geoff Wilson has admitted to part-funding the website through which the Liberal MP Tim Wilson has coordinated opposition to Labor’s franking credit policy, while chairing an inquiry into it.

Late on Friday Geoff Wilson issued a statement clarifying his involvement in stoptheretirementtax.com.au, after a growing controversy over whether the pair – who are first cousins once-removed – have inappropriately politicised the parliamentary inquiry.

On Friday Labor asked the Australian federal police to investigate whether Tim Wilson inappropriately shared electoral roll information for commercial purposes while campaigning against the opposition’s franking credit policy.

The referral was based on a Fairfax Media report that a constituent of Wilson’s received material both from the Liberal MP and from Wilson Asset Management, the funds management company chaired by Geoff Wilson, after responding to a robopoll.