Peter Khalil.

Victorian MP Peter Khalil, a former security adviser to ex-prime minister Kevin Rudd, urges imposition of either a tax on the revenue companies earn from selling personal data, a digital services tax ,or a tax on cashflow to force multinational corporate giants to pay more to the Australian government.

“A Labor government should have the guts and ambition to do something like this,” Khalil said.

In a speech to be delivered at the Victorian Trades Hall, the Labor backbencher said he will lobby for new local taxes on multinationals to return “hundreds of millions of dollars back into our coffers”.

But Professor Robert Breunig, director of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Australian National University, said a digital services tax would be inefficient.

“The tech firms would pass the cost on to local people: they’ll make Australian businesses who want to advertise pay more,” Breunig said.