Christine Milne takes a swipe at News Corp boss Julian Clarke

Greens leader Christine Milne accused News Corp of generating a tax benefit from The Australian newspaper.

Christine Milne in Sydney yesterday at the Senate inquiry she initiated into the tax affairs of overseas tech giants operating in Australia. Picture: Britta Campion

Greens leader Christine Milne launched a bizarre attack on The Australian in yesterday’s Senate inquiry by accusing News Corp of generating a tax benefit from the newspaper.

Senator Milne, who initiated the inquiry into the tax affairs of overseas tech giants such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, made The Australian the focus of her opening questions to News Corp Australia chief executive ­Julian Clarke. “Can you tell me what are the tax benefits that you get from running The Australian at a loss?” Senator Milne asked.

Rejecting the suggestion, Mr Clarke pointed out The Australian was run on a for-profit basis.

“If it’s a choice that I make ­between making a profit on a newspaper and paying tax or on the other side getting some tax benefit, the preference is always to make a profit,” Mr Clarke said.

“With due respect, I probably don’t expect you to agree with this, but I consider The Australian newspaper to be the finest nat­ional newspaper operating here in ­Australia.”

“You’re right, you and I won’t agree on that,” Senator Milne said.

“The issue here is that you run The Australian at a loss and I’m asking why do you continue as a business when it’s not profitable?”

Mr Clarke hit back with a passionate defence of The Australian’s values.

“It’s a very important part of our total business, and I make no apologies for the fact The Australian is actually a very important part of our total newspaper operation and, journalistically, I think it’s very important inside Australia, very important,” he said.

“You won’t necessarily agree with the reasons we give for this, but we think Australia, this nation of ours, needs a very strong national newspaper like The Australian to do exactly what it is doing.

“Well, senator, we’ve got a difference of opinion as to why we’re doing it.

“And for every time you tell me we’re trying to do this to run tax losses I’ll tell you that we’re not.”

Senator Milne replied: “I ­accept you’re doing it for an ideolog­ical purpose” — to which Mr Clarke responded: “OK, I’m happy with that.”

Committee chairman Sam Dastyari applauded News Corp’s submission as one of the most frank and detailed disclosures after the bosses of Google, Apple and Microsoft were unable to ­answer basic questions on the Australian tax affairs of their ­companies.