Andrew Leigh

Sir Tony Atkinson: The Economist who had the measure of inequality,                Canberra Times, 4 January 2017

If you've ever referred to ‘the 1 percent’, you're using the work of Tony Atkinson. Tony, who died on 1 January, aged 72, contributed as much as any modern economist to the study of poverty and inequality.

When I first met Tony in the early-2000s, I was struck by the contrast between his exalted status and his willingness to engage with a mere PhD student. He was the head of Oxford's prestigious Nuffield College, and had recently been knighted by both the British and French governments. It always made me smile when I thought that the only ‘Sir’ I knew was my inequality coauthor.

Trained originally as a mathematician, Tony could crunch numbers with the best of them. But like Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, he recognised the importance of economics being grounded in history and politics. He was generous to intellectual predecessors like his Cambridge teachers James Meade and Joan Robinson. When we worked together on the antipodes, he made sure that our articles acknowledged the groundbreaking work of Australian researchers like Timothy Coghlan and Colin Clark.

Tony's interest in poverty and inequality was piqued in the 1960s, when he worked with deprived children in Hamburg, Germany. Over the next five decades, there was virtually no aspect of the field that he left untouched. He created his own inequality measure (the Atkinson Index), devised a novel technique for estimating wealth inequality from inheritance data, and shook up public finance through his work on optimal taxation with Joseph Stiglitz (who would go on to win the Nobel Prize).

JOB CUTS AT THE TAX OFFICE LEAD TO A SURGE IN COMPLAINTS

Since coming to office, the Abbott-Turnbull Government has cut more than 3300 jobs from the Australian Taxation Office, while at the same time complaints about the Agency have risen by more than 40 percent. 

The number of staff cut from the tax office by the Abbott-Turnbull Government has been revealed in the government's answer to Labor’s question on notice. Since July 2014, the tax office has lost 3,347 employees to the Abbott-Turnbull axe. 

Off with her head (on our coins)! The case for an aussie republic in 2017, crikey.com.au, 22 December 2016

This week, the Australian National University published its ‘Trends in Australian Political Opinion 1987-2016’. The document compiles the results of the Australian Election Study surveys, which have been undertaken after every election to gauge political opinion.

Among the fascinating findings is the percentage of Australians who favour a republic. After the 2013 election, with a monarchist Prime Minister, support for a republic had ebbed to 53%, its lowest level in nearly three decades. In 2016, with the Australian Republican Movement's former leader as Prime Minister and an Opposition that had made achieving an Australian republic a key part of its 2016 election platform, support for a republic was unchanged, at 53%.

Could this be spun positively? Perhaps. It is the first time since 1996 (when support was at 66%) that support for a republic has not fallen in the Australian Election Study surveys. Yet the brutal reality is that even if 53% support carried through to referendum day, there is little likelihood that a referendum would carry the required four out of six states. Despite the barnstorming efforts of Peter FitzSimons and the Australian Republican Movement, support for having one of our own as head of state is as low as it's been in a generation.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS ON THE HOUR WITH ASHLEIGH GILLON

TUESDAY, 20 DECEMBER 2016

SUBJECT/S: MYEFO 2016; economic forecasts; China’s economy

ASHLEIGH GILLON: Joining us live now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, just a few minutes ago we did hear Labor's response when it comes to the budget update. Penny Wong – who's Acting Opposition Leader today – said, 'Well, Scott Morrison is weak, he missed an opportunity to lock in Australia's AAA credit rating.' But the government did improve by its budget position by $2.5 billion, it did manage to hang onto that AAA credit rating, for now at least. You wouldn't really suggest would you, that now is the time for the government to be making too many dramatic cuts at this point with the economy as it is, would you? Isn't this a good balance that the government has managed to strike?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Ashleigh, we've had an improvement in iron ore prices, entirely due to circumstances outside the government's control. It's got to do with what's happening with steel production and demand in China. But the opportunity right now is for the government to make decisions that not only add to the budget bottom-line but also help young Australians. So many of your viewers – whether they're young Australians, whether they've got kids, whether they're aware of the pressures in the housing market – will know that the home ownership rate in Australia is the lowest it’s been in 60 years. Increasingly we're becoming a nation that can't afford to house our children. If we make adjustments to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount in the way Labor's proposed – grandfathered so existing investors aren't affected – then not only can we lock in the AAA, and lock in the lower mortgage rates that come with that, but also we can deal with one of the central economic challenges for Australia – that of declining home ownership. 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS, AM AGENDA WITH TOM CONNELL

MONDAY, 19 DECEMBER 2016

 SUBJECT/S: MYEFO 2016

TOM CONNELL: You're watching AM Agenda and joining me now in our Canberra studio is Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Andrew Leigh thanks for your time this morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure Tom.

CONNELL: Now, we don't quite have the full picture yet but it's pretty clear we're going to see company income tax revenue down, deficit up – sounds a lot like the annual Wayne Swan MYEFO doesn't it?

LEIGH: Well, there was a Global Financial Crisis in that period, Tom -- the biggest downturn since the Great Depression. All the Australian economy has been hit with in recent years is Scott Morrison. I mean this is a government that said, in 2013, they would have the budget in surplus in their first year and in every year after that. They ran on campaigns of debt and deficit disasters – driving debt trucks around the country. Yet we've seen this year’s deficit eight times larger. We've seen net debt blow out to the tune of thousands of dollars for every Australian, under a government that said they would have the budget under control.

TIM HAMMOND MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSUMER AFFAIRS

SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING FOR RESOURCES

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR PERTH

DR ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR FENNER

INCREASED FEDERAL COURT PENALTY FOR MIS-SELLING NUROFEN SHOWS NEED FOR CONSUMER LAW PENALTIES REFORM

Federal Labor welcomes the decision of the Full Federal Court to uphold an appeal by the ACCC against the penalty imposed on the manufacturers of Nurofen, Reckitt Benckiser, for misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL).

Nurofen marketed products claiming to target "specific" types of pain, and charged extra for these products, despite the fact that the active ingredient and dosage was exactly the same in each product.

The Federal Court agreed with the ACCC’s claim that the practise represented misleading conduct, but initially only awarded a penalty of $1.7 million. On appeal to the Full Federal Court the penalty has now been increased to $6 million.

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

STEVE GEORGANAS

MEMBER FOR HINDMARSH

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

FIVEAA MORNINGS WITH LEON BYNER

FRIDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2016

SUBJECT/S: ATO website failure

LEON BYNER: How on earth has this happened? I've got two people today – one the Adelaide tech guy in the studio and we'll talk to him in a moment, Richard Pascoe –  the other is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, Merry Christmas. What's your understanding of what's happened here?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks Leon and Merry Christmas to you and your listeners as well. My understanding is that the government's looking for everyone to blame but themselves. It's a bit like – as you said – the census debacle a couple of months ago when the ABS website went down on Census Night. Meaning that millions of Australians lost millions of hours of their time trying to fill in the census forms. We were told that we would have the techspert-in-charge in Malcolm Turnbull, but yet we seem to see website stuff-up after website stuff-up. The census website going down. Now the Tax Office website going down at a time when small businesses are completely under the pump. If you are a small business in retail you just want to be out there serving your customers, not fighting the ATO website.

With the Australian Taxation Office website outage now stretching into its second day, the Turnbull Government must explain why it is unable to provide basic online services to Australians.

The tax office site outage is inconveniencing taxpayers and tax agents alike. This comes just four months after the Turnbull Government stuffed up the 2016 Census and wasted millions of hours of Australians’ time.

As with the Census, no doubt the Turnbull Government’s first instinct will be to blame a public servant. Australians deserve a government that will take responsibility, not point the finger.

If they can’t do something as basic as keeping key government websites online, how can the Turnbull Government run the country?

TUESDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2016

MEDIA CONTACT: TAIMUS WERNER-GIBBINGS    0437 323 390

Why You Should Host December Drinks, The Chronicle/The Queanbeyan Age,                   Tuesday 6 December 2016

The other day, I was thinking about the many ways our neighbours have helped us. They’ve loaned us lawnmowers and camping tents, looked after a child when another suddenly had to be taken to the emergency room, and helped locate our dog when he snuck under the fence.

But as a society, we’re less likely to know our neighbours than in the past. One survey asked people to count the number of neighbours of whom they could ask a small favour. The average answer given in the 2000s was 1½ fewer people than when a similar survey was done in the 1980s.  Another question asked people how many neighbours they had on whom they could drop in uninvited. This time, respondents reported an average of three fewer close neighbours than in the 1980s.

What can we do about it? For the past decade or so, our family has organised December drinks for our local street. We pick a date, type up a simple invitation, and invite people to join us in our backyard for drinks and nibbles.

As it happens, we quite like our neighbours. But December drinks would be worthwhile even if we didn’t. A friendlier neighbourhood is a safer and happier place to live. Reuniting with old-timers and getting to know the new arrivals is an activity that pays off for the rest of the year.

So why not consider inviting your neighbours over for a summer drink? Tis the season – to get connected.

Andrew Leigh is the Federal Member for Fenner, and the author of Disconnected. 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA
MONDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2016

SUBJECT/S: Climate policy; Infrastructure spending.

KIERAN GILBERT: With me on the program now to discuss other issues today is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Let's turn our attention first of all to the issue of climate and climate policy. The Financial Review reports today a billion dollar price tag for the need to increase and enhance energy infrastructure. Most notably those interconnectors between states like Tasmania, South Australia to other eastern seaboard states. Does Labor support that initiative even though the cost is quite large and could be made redundant in terms of advances made elsewhere in terms of energy technology.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Kieran it depends on the particular proposal coming forward but certainly there is a history of the Commonwealth contributing towards interconnectors. The big picture here Kieran is that the Government has now decided that the Government is going to reject the cheapest way of dealing with climate change, an internal energy market recommended by the Australian Energy Market Commission, and a policy that the Government's Chief Scientist said would save the taxpayer $15 billion. So Malcolm Turnbull wants Australians to spend more on electricity and do less to reduce emissions.