By Joyce MOULLAKIS from The Australian

Australia urgently needs to boost transparency requirements for mining and energy companies to ward against tax avoidance, offshore secrecy and businesses seeking unfair tax breaks, as government coffers are hit by COVID-19, new analysis has found.

Ethical Partners Funds Management in partnership with Publish What You Pay Australia — a coalition of 30 anti-corruption, human rights, environmental, union and faith-based organisations — will release the new report on Monday. The research, undertaken in the three months to June 23, bench-marked the top 20 ASX-listed companies across the mining and energy sectors. It found just five — BHP, Fortescue, Rio Tinto, Iluka and Woodside Petroleum — had renounced the use of “artificial arrangements” for tax optim­isation.