WHAT WAS CLAIMED
The Australian government is a corporation.
OUR VERDICT
False. The Australian government is not a corporation.
AAP FACTCHECK - The Australian government is not a US-registered corporation, despite a statement made in the Senate by independent Lidia Thorpe.
While governments use forms of financial registration for operational purposes, they are not privately owned corporations.
The claim is a common conspiracy theory among the sovereign citizen movement.
Senator Thorpe referenced the theory in a speech to the Senate (18:18:40) on February 11 when she was tabling documents referring to totems of First Nations people being co-opted by the Commonwealth.
"We know the government, which is a corporation, is registered in the US through an ABN," Senator Thorpe said according to Hansard (page 68).
"This whole parliament has an ABN, and the government has an ABN, and it's somewhere overseas."
The clip of Senator Thorpe's speech has been spreading on social media.
When contacted for evidence to support the claim, Senator Thorpe told AAP FactCheck she was tabling documents on behalf of constituents and did not endorse the claims.
"I acknowledge these claims are false," Senator Thorpe told AAP FactCheck.
"I do not support or align with right-wing sovereign citizen movements, which misrepresent legal and historical facts and distract from the legitimate struggle for First People's sovereignty and self-determination."
AAP FactCheck has debunked this theory several times and explained that while governments can and do use forms of financial registration, that does not make them privately owned corporations.
Many government departments and agencies do have Australian Business Numbers (ABNs).
Adam Steen, an accounting expert and adjunct professor with the University of Adelaide, previously told AAP FactCheck that government entities use ABNs for operational activities such as ordering and invoicing or registering an Australian government domain name.
Australian tax law states that a government entity is entitled to register for an ABN "as if it were an entity carrying on an enterprise in Australia".
The Corporations Act specifically states government entities are not corporations.
Section 57A of the act states a corporation can be "a company", a "body corporate" or "an unincorporated body that … may sue or be sued, or may hold property", but not "an exempt public authority".
The act defines an exempt public body as a public authority or a Commonwealth, state or territory agency.
The specific claim that Australia is registered as a corporation in the US relates to the government's registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC regulates US financial markets for the purpose of selling bonds to American buyers.
AAP FactCheck previously explained that the government's SEC registration is a routine process governments go through when selling bonds and other financial instruments to US buyers.
In a separate AAP FactCheck debunk, University of Sydney constitutional law expert Anne Twomey said one SEC document in particular is often used by sovereign citizens to claim Australia is a corporation.
"If you read the document, there is nothing in there that classifies the Commonwealth of Australia as a corporation," Professor Twomey said.
"On the contrary, it was registered as a foreign government."
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