Andrew Leigh

Bend back Ag's U-shaped employment curve, The Land, 15 November 2016

Five years ago, a family in NSW took the plunge and started a company called Rise Above, which specialises drone technology, including precision agriculture, farming and crop management. This technology is an example of where innovation in agriculture has made it in practice, cutting the cost of jobs such as spraying and data collection. Taking innovation through to implementation, including as new businesses, is an area in which Australian agriculture can perform much better.

However, one innovator’s disruption is another person’s job loss. One of the most common questions politicians like us are asked is “where will the jobs of the future come from?” While all of us welcome the prospect of increased crop yields, greater productivity and improved efficiency in our agricultural sector, they create inevitable pressures on farm employment.

As a share of total employment, agricultural work has halved during the past 20 years. Not only is this a worse result than manufacturing, it also bucks the trend that we normally see across the Australian economy. A recent study by economists Roger Wilkins and Mark Wooden looked at employment changes across 43 Australian occupations and found a ‘U-shaped’ outcome: employment has grown in the low-paid and high-professions, but contracted in the middle-paid professions. Not only are farm workers relatively poorly paid – the number of these jobs on offer is shrinking rapidly.

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

BRYAN GREEN

LEADER OF THE TASMANIAN OPPOSITION

MEMBER FOR BRADDON

SCOTT BACON

TASMANIAN SHADOW TREASURER

MEMBER FOR DENISON

LIBERAL GOVERNMENTS IN HOBART AND CANBERRA ARE NEGLECTING TASMANIA

Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh has today met with Tasmanian Labor Leader Bryan Green and Tasmanian Shadow Treasurer Scott Bacon to discuss the importance of federal and state collaboration on crucial regional development and infrastructure projects.

Andrew Leigh said the Federal Government had neglected Tasmania when it came to budget priorities.

“The Liberals failed to address Tasmania’s infrastructure needs in the lead-up to the last election and paid the price by losing all three of their lower house seats,” Mr Leigh said.

“In contrast, Labor committed $75 million to water and sewerage upgrades in Launceston, $150 million for the redevelopment of UTAS and a to $44 million tourism infrastructure fund.

“In government, Labor would work collaboratively to deliver Tasmania’s infrastructure, creating much needed employment across the state.”  

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

ROSS HART MP

MEMBER FOR BASS

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

LAUNCESTON

MONDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2016

SUBJECTS: Turnbull Government’s lack of investment in Northern Tasmania; inequality; backpacker tax; education

ROSS HART, MEMBER FOR BASS: Welcome everybody. It's a great pleasure to have here in Northern Tasmania Dr Andrew Leigh, who's the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, talking to people in the community about the importance of investment in jobs and infrastructure in the north of the state. I've taken Andrew up here to Ravenswood to show him the fabulous child and family centre, and to stress the importance of embedding these wraparound services into communities. If we're serious about creating jobs in a community like Northern Tasmania we really need to invest in people as well as infrastructure. Unfortunately, the Turnbull Government doesn't get the fact that you need to invest over a long period of time in order to see meaningful results in a community like Northern Tasmania.

Welcome Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks very much, Ross. Since Ross's election I've been asking him when I'd have the opportunity to come and spend some time in Launceston. Seeing the facility here in Ravenswood and speaking with Ross about the challenges in the community really does remind you that in the age of Trump, Brexit and Le Pen, the conversation around inequality needs to be richer and deeper.

Labor firmly believes that we need to do more to create more jobs. The unemployment rate in Launceston is now nine per cent. Many families are experiencing the frustration of teenagers leaving school not able to find a job. Labor wants investments that will ensure we have well-paying jobs now and into the future. We want to ensure we have a better healthcare system, that we have a better education system which provides opportunities in school, vocational training and universities.

In Ross Hart, the community of Bass has a fantastic local member. Somebody who understands deeply the challenges of inequality and who's committed in his heart to doing as much as he can to create a more cohesive community. Australia does benefit from our engagement with the world and Tasmanians know that – through exports of salmon and milk, and through the overseas students who come to study at the University of Tasmania.

But we need to make sure that globalisation works for everyone. That globalisation includes the wraparound social supports that ensure that the benefits of growth that flow from globalisation are fairly shared across the community. Labor doesn't believe that sharing is as fair as it could be. We believe that inequality is a signal challenge of our age that needs to be tackled and they're the issues that we need to be focused on today.

We're happy to take questions.

LOCKING SOMEONE UP COSTS AROUND $300 A DAY OR ABOUT $110,000 A YEAR,         The Canberra Times, 14 November 2016

You might not know it to watch the news, but on many measures, Australia is becoming safer. In the past two decades, the murder rate has fallen by one-third. The rate of armed robberies has dropped by one-third. Car theft is down by two-thirds.

And yet while crime is falling, our prison population is rising at an alarming rate. In June, 38,685 people were in jail. At the current pace, the prison population will soon pass 40,000. If our jail population were a city, it would be the 36th-largest city in Australia – larger than Albany, Bathurst or Devonport.

As a share of population, I estimate that Australia now jails 207 in every 100,000 adults. That's a higher incarceration rate than in most other nations. To take just a few examples, imprisonment rates in Australia are higher than those in Canada, Japan, France, India, Germany, Indonesia or Britain.

Curious to know how the current lock-up rate compares with Australia's past, I dusted off some old statistical volumes and started comparing the figures. I was shocked to discover that the last time our incarceration rate was this high was 1901. 

Representatives from the local community today met Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, and Member for Bass, Ross Hart, to discuss their concerns that Northern Tasmania is missing out on local jobs while the tax system continues to favour multinational companies and wealthy individuals.

“People in the Launceston community are really feeling the Turnbull Government cuts to childcare, aged care and education. Along with cuts to welfare and job-training programs, all of these decisions will increase inequality in Northern Tasmania,” said Mr Hart.

“They hear the government beat its chest every week about creating jobs­ ­– and they want to know why so many people in their community can’t find any work. 

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

 THURSDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2016

Those of us who sit in this House are here because people put their faith in our undertaking to represent their best interests. This bill, the Migration Legislation Amendment (Regional Processing Cohort) Bill 2016, would permanently exclude any person who comes here by boat from ever entering Australia. In proposing this measure, the government has made a political gesture that is in no-one's best interests—not those sitting in Manus and Nauru, not those refugees who have come to Australia in the past and not those Australians who are concerned to see that our tax dollars are spent wisely and our migration program is an orderly one.

This is gesture politics at its worst, with all of the effectiveness of the pledge by candidate Trump to build a wall along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. That is how effective this proposal would be. It asks people to make peace with the pettiest and meanest instincts, by dressing up those instincts as strength and certainty. It trades on fear and demonisation of the other, aiming to set up a dichotomy between us and them, hoping that Australians will forget the refugees who have come here in the past, who have helped to make Australia richer, more diverse and more interesting; refugees—from Anh Do to Frank Lowy to Les Murray—who have enriched our country.

It is a bill that demeans the elements of the coalition who have instigated it, and it is a bill that has incensed my electorate. As one of my electors wrote to me:

"I was so disheartened today to read of Mr Turnbull's plans to introduce legislation to the Parliament in the next session that any person seeking asylum who has travelled to Australia via a boat will be banned from ever entering this country...One of our dearest friends, who sadly died last year, was a boat person. He, with his family, escaped Hungary in the 1950s and made his way to Australia...Please do not bend to the far-right bigotry that is holding this government to ransom and do not vote for this ghastly piece of legislation." 

The Turnbull Government has broken its promise to Australian small business owners to hold an independent review into a key automotive repair industry agreement within three months of the 2016 federal election.

It has been reported today that independent car service and repair businesses are complaining that they get limited access to standard servicing information from car manufacturers, despite the 2014 Agreement on Access to Service and Repair Information for Motor Vehicles.

As a result, their ability to offer competitive or even cheaper car servicing prices to consumers faces significant restrictions. 

Today the Turnbull Government has taken its attack on the public servants at the Australian Bureau of Statistics to the next level.

Agency management have just announced to its staff that up to 150 jobs need to be cut in the next few months.

The ABS is announcing these job cuts just two weeks after admitting to a Senate Economics Committee that it will be spending an extra $30 million trying to fix the 2016 Census – the worst census ever and one of Malcolm Turnbull’s biggest stuff-ups.

Now the very public servants who have worked so hard to rescue the census disaster are being forced to pay the price for the Turnbull Government’s mismanagement with their jobs. 

WHEN BUSINESS DOESN'T PAY ITS BILLS, The Daily Telegraph, 3 November 2016

Yesterday, I rang my supermarket. It was just a courtesy call, letting them know that from now on I would be paying for my groceries 60 days after scanning them at the checkout. I assured them it was nothing personal – simply a matter of improving my cash flow.

Alright, I’m pulling your leg. But you can only imagine a company’s reaction to getting such a call from a regular consumer. Yet this is exactly what many large Australian companies are doing to their suppliers right now.

Earlier this year Rio Tinto told many of its suppliers that, with no compensation, it would now pay its bills after 90 days instead of 45 days (in 2014  it was 30 days). This followed BHP’s decision last year to pay its suppliers after 60 days instead of 30 days. Woolworths is also reportedly increasing its payment terms from 30 days to 60 days. Mars, Kellogg, Procter & Gamble and Heinz are also pushing for more generous payment terms. In April, Murray Goulburn retrospectively cut the price it paid to farmers, then asked them to pay back the difference.