The Aussie Sex Party Takes On Church Over Taxes

By Samuel Leighton-Dore

The Australian Sex Party has waged an “all-out war” against the Catholic Church in an attempt to gain a seat in federal parliament.

“The Australian Sex Party are the only party with the guts to stand up for issues that matter to the majority of Australians — and up to the religions who stand in the way of changes to the law,” Sex Party President Fiona Patten wrote in an email to supporters last week.

And while tax avoidance by large multi national companies remains a high priority for the Australian Tax Office, Australian Sex Party’s Queensland Senate candidate tells Heaps Gay there is a far bigger fish to fry – and that taxpayers want something to be done about it.

Robin Bristow, who is up against Pauline Hanson’s One Nation for the QLD independent vote, says Queensland’s religious organisations avoid paying taxes on the spurious grounds that they ‘promote religion’.

“The ATO should change the rules to get rid of this silly caveat”, he says.

“The attention given to corporate tax avoiders is a clever smokescreen which the church hides behind, when in reality the church and church-based businesses avoid millions, if not billions of dollars worth of tax every year”.

Mr Bristow also pointed out the fact that not for profit charities have to get their accounts audited every year to show that their money is spent responsibly.

“The churches don’t have to pay a cent for rates and taxes”, he tells us.

“They have been free to buy and sell land, trade shares, own poker  machines, wineries, insurance companies, hotels, breakfast cereal companies etc and still pay zero tax all under the meaningless clause in the tax Act that says they ‘promote religion’”.

Despite facing an uphill battle, Mr Bristow readily takes aim at Treasurer, Scott Morrison, who is a regular worshipper at the Pentecostal Hillsong Church, asserting that Hillsong has recently been embroiled in child sex abuse allegations along with many other Australian religious creeds.

“Hillsong, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Roman Catholics are all allowed to compete on an unlevel playing field with their business empires just because the Treasurer and the government of the day supports the notion that anyone who ‘promotes religion’ is entitled not to pay tax. It’s an incredible rort that 64% of Australians do not support.”

“If the Church wants to stick its head up and interfere in secular government the way it does, then it also needs to do what is expected of the rest of us who have this right and pay their taxes!”