Big tech companies such as Meta and Facebook that shift profits offshore should be forced to pay billions of dollars more in tax, a coalition frontbencher says.
In a wide-ranging address in Canberra, Andrew Bragg freelanced on policies outside his remit - from migration, multinational tax and the NDIS - as well as in his own housing portfolio, including a plan to slash the National Construction Code to 80 pages.
Senator Bragg said the Liberal Party had contributed to Australia's economic malaise and the demise of the two-party system by failing to develop enough alternative policy and wear political risk for two decades.
"Consequently, Australian politics is now fragmented," he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
"I understand that people are over the two-party system and it is a tough ask to say to Australians, 'we buggered it up, but please vote for us again'.
"As someone who was a backbencher in the Morrison government, I wish I'd done more to stop the madness."
To get the punters back onside, Senator Bragg proposed standing up to vested interests such as tech companies, banks and superannuation funds.
He would wind back Labor's curbs to property investor tax breaks and drop the top income tax rate from 47 per cent to something with "a three in front of it".
To offset the reduction in revenue, Australia could get billions more dollars out of global tech companies, which generate large revenues in Australia but pay minimal tax by shifting profits offshore, Senator Bragg said.
This could be done by reducing their allowance for intellectual property deductions or by subjecting them to a minimum tax rate on revenue collected onshore, he offered.
"We've got to be prepared to fight these these tech companies and get more money," he said.
Senator Bragg's proposal would not work because international tax rules allocate taxing rights to countries where value-adding activities such as manufacturing and marketing are performed, not where end users are located, University of Sydney tax expert Fei Gao said.
To get more tax out of big tech, Australia would have to renegotiate its double tax agreements with other countries or work around them with some form of a digital service, similar to those imposed by other countries, she told AAP.
Australian National University tax law professor Michael Kobetsky said the idea that billions more tax dollars could be extracted out of big tech companies was "not going to happen".
Senator Bragg also proposed freezing the NDIS to help pay for the coalition's promises.
On the housing front, he proposed bringing down net overseas migration from the annual level of more than 300,000 to under 180,000 to make up for a shortfall in homes.
Senator Bragg promised to slash the National Construction Code from more than 2000 pages to a slimmed down document dictating standards around "basic amenity".
The Housing Industry Association welcomed Senator Bragg's contribution, but argued it was more important to disentangle layers of complexity than target a specific size of the code.
"Whether the final residential code is 80 pages, 100 pages or another number is ultimately less important than the principle behind the proposal," HIA chief policy executive Simon Croft said.
Housing Minister Clare O'Neil said Senator Bragg's speech was "genuinely unhinged".
"I think Andrew Bragg is a really good person and he is trying hard to reform a broken Liberal Party but the fact that this is seen as housing policy by the Liberals, it scares me," she told ABC TV.
