PM says investments are taxed in Australia

The attack was launched by Labor senator Sam Dastyari who used parliamentary privilege to accuse the prime minister of inappropriate investments, even though he acknowledged they were legal.

Senator Dastyari said it wasn’t fair or right for a prime minister to have investments registered in a tax haven.

Turnbull’s statement on his financial affairs followed Labor senator Sam Dastyari raising in the Senate Turnbull’s investments in several funds domiciled in the Cayman Islands.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended himself against Labor accusations regarding his alleged tax avoidance in the Cayman Islands.

The Cayman Islands-based funds include the 3G Natural Resources Offshore Fund, Bowery Opportunity Fund, CVC Global Opportunity Fund and Zebedee Growth Fund.

“There is one reason people invest in the Cayman Islands – so they don’t have to play by the same rules as the rest of us”, Senator Dastyari said in a short speech to the Senate.

US President Barack Obama once described Ugland House was “either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record”.

He said it was “one of the pre-eminent addresses in the world for tax minimisation”. You have to ask, who invests in the companies that claim to be headquartered in this house?

According to the Australian Financial Review, he has an investment portfolio estimated to be worth around $200 million.

We also know that the Australian Greens are on board, which would make it easy to push reform through the upper house.

All these Turnbull investments were legal and disclosed on the register of interests, Dastyari said.

“All of my and Lucy’s income from investments, including funds registered in the Cayman Islands is taxed in full in Australia”, he said.

“The outcome of that arrangement is that all of that income that accrues to my share of the investment is brought to account fully – and tax is paid on it – fully in Australia”, Mr Turnbull told Parliament.

Mrs Turnbull said they had “pivoted our investments away from Australia over the past couple of years” to help avoid “conflict with Malcolm’s government role”.

Turnbull accused Burke of a remarkable “inability to understand the way in which thousands of managed funds with worldwide investors – by which I mean investors outside of the United States – use the Cayman Islands”.

He also said that anytime in future, if Liberty Party votes against tax transparency, it must remember Malcolm’s money is there in the Cayman Islands.

“Why is it we have seen Coalition senators refuse to ask companies earning over $100 million to declare how much these companies pay in tax?”

All Mr Turnbull’s investments, and those of wife Lucy, have been listed in his member’s declaration of interests.