Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

MELBOURNE

WEDNESDAY, 6 MARCH 2019

SUBJECT: The Morrison Government asking the Tax Office to enforce an unlegislated tax amnesty to benefit dodgy bosses.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Last year, the Liberals introduced a bill into Parliament that would give a 12 month amnesty to employers who hadn't paid their employees superannuation. Let's be clear what this means. If you're a boss who failed to pay your required superannuation obligations to your workers, you wouldn't face any penalties. Those penalties are significant. They can be up to 200 per cent of the amount unpaid, reflecting the fact that when an employee doesn't get superannuation then they miss out not only on the money but also on the earnings – the compounding returns.

Labor didn’t back that bill. We said we didn't believe that employers who had failed to live up to their obligations to their workers should get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. We said that it wasn't appropriate to be letting dodgy bosses off scot free at the same time as the government came down like a ton of bricks on any welfare recipient who did the wrong thing. Yet the Liberals went ahead and asked the Tax Office to enforce the amnesty. It turns out from reports today that hundreds of applications rolled in and the Tax Office continued to process them. Now, recognising that the bill won't pass parliament - it's been languishing in the Senate since June last year - the Tax Office is going to use its discretion to waive penalties against these employers.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW        

5AA MORNINGS

WEDNESDAY, 6 MARCH 2019

SUBJECT: The Morrison Government asking the Tax Office to enforce a tax amnesty on dodgy bosses that had not passed Parliament.

LEON BYNER: There’s $6 billion – yes, billion with a ‘b’ - outstanding of unpaid super. Now the Tax Office has admitted that it will waive penalties for hundreds of businesses that have admitted failure to pay super in the wake of what was an amnesty. Now the amnesty didn't get through the Parliament. It’s a year later that the policies being dumped and the Coalition have done a press release recently saying the 12 month amnesty will run from today. But it's not actually happening. So let's talk to the Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Andrew, thanks for joining us today.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, Leon.

BYNER: When this went through up into the Senate, didn’t you guys reject this?

LEIGH: Absolutely. We have said from the moment that the government announced this legislation, Leon, that we didn’t think it was necessary. There are penalties in place for not paying superannuation, as there should be. Just as an employer who chooses not to pay wages to their workers suffers penalties, so too there are penalties for not paying superannuation. And this bill said that employers wouldn't cop those penalties, which could be up to 200 per cent of the unpaid amount, going back 25 years. Of course, when they told the Tax Office to start enforcing the unlegislated bill, people came forward. But the government should never have been getting the Tax Office to do something that the parliament hadn't agreed to.

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

MEMBER FOR FENNER

CLARE O’NEIL MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES

SHADOW MINISTER FOR JUSTICE

MEMBER FOR HOTHAM

LIBERALS PROTECTING DODGY BOSSES WHO DON’T PAY SUPER

The Liberals are letting dodgy employers off the hook for failing to pay workers’ superannuation.

Last May, the Liberals introduced a bill to Parliament to give a 12-month “amnesty” to employers who pay superannuation guarantee payments that they have failed to pay since 1 July 1992. Labor opposed this amnesty, because dodgy employers shouldn’t get away with failing to pay their employees’ super.

Employers must obey the law. There are penalties in law which remain for ripping off workers and not paying superannuation – which is a fine equal to up to 200 percent of the amount of superannuation owed. These have remain in force and have not changed.

SUBBIES WILL GET BEST DEAL WITH LABOR GOVERNMENT

Courier Mail, 6 March 2019

Queensland One Homes collapsed in 2017, owing more than $5 million. Fencers, roofers, electricians and painters were left out of pocket. The liquidator’s report detailed debts of $380,000 to the federal government, $90,000 to the Queensland government, and millions of dollar of debts to Gold Coast small businesses.

Allegations of “phoenixing” have also been referred to the corporate regulator, ASIC. Phoenixing is defined by the Australian Taxation Office as when a new company is created to continue the business of a company that has been deliberately liquidated to avoid paying its debts. The practice is not illegal.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NT DRIVE

MONDAY, 4 MARCH 2019

SUBJECT: Labor’s Tradie Pay Guarantee.

LIZ TREVASKIS: Are you a tradie or perhaps you live with one or play sport with a tradesman. You probably know - I'm going to say you've definitely heard them complain that so-and-so was late paying them for a job that they've done and maybe that's why they can't buy the next round. But in the worst cases, you or your tradie friend may not have been paid at all because the company went bust. It's a serious problem in the construction sector and the Small Business Ombudsman says insolvencies are becoming more frequent, having a greater impact on family budgets. Federal Labor thinks it has the answer - a tradie guarantee, making companies who win Federal Government construction contracts put aside the money they owe their subcontractors in a trust. Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh drafted the policy. I spoke to him earlier and asked him to explain the plan for cascading statutory trusts.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: It's a complicated legal construct which delivers a very simple outcome. It means if you do to work on time, you get paid on time. It doesn’t how far down the food chain you are – whether you’re a contractor or a subcontractor or sub subcontractor - if you do the work on time, you'll get paid on time. We know, as you said, that this is a massive problem in the construction sector. We have people not only having struggling to pay the bills, but also then the cascading effect on their health, there’ll be stress on their relationships - sometimes marriages will breakdown as a result of this. Around half of the construction invoices don't get paid on time. We want to start with big federal contracts, and then work with states and territories to roll out the system of cascading trusts for state and territory projects and then onto private projects ultimately.

LABOR PROMISES FAIRER FEES FOR MONEY TRANSFERS

Australian Muslim Times, 4 March 2019

Every year Australians send billions of dollars overseas to family and friends. This might be taxi drivers working an extra shift to help out somebody who’s fallen on hard times back home. It could be someone who’s working a bit extra in a pharmacy in order to help put a nephew through school. 

Right now the pricing of remittances is bamboozling. It’s too confusing and it means you get an incredible spread of prices. Australians pay more for remittances than do people in the United States or in Korea.

Just to give you some sense of the size of what the fees look like, an Australian who wants to send $1000 overseas will pay according to the World Bank $77 in exchange rate mark ups and flat fees. 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

3AW WITH NEIL MITCHELL

MONDAY, 4 MARCH 2019

SUBJECTS: Labor’s fairness fund; Banking Royal Commission; Labor’s support for domestic violence survivors; Labor’s plans to tackle tax havens and multinational tax avoidance; dividend imputation.

NEIL MITCHELL: On the line, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning, Neil. Great to be with you.

MITCHELL: Thanks for talking. We don't want Rupert Murdoch, what about a tax on him?

LEIGH: Neil, this is coming on the back of the Hayne Royal Commission which as you know has exposed some extraordinary behaviour. You've got the fees for no service scandal, you've got people losing their homes, you've got dead people being charged for financial advice-

MITCHELL: So how much of this fund will go to those victims?

LEIGH: Well, we've ensured that we're going to boost financial counsellors. We're going to put money into these flexible support packages for victims of family violence, but we've also announced-

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

MEMBER FOR FENNER

NADIA CLANCY

LABOR CANDIDATE FOR BOOTHBY

ADELAIDE RECONNECTED ROUNDTABLE A SUCCESS

Today, we held a successful ‘Reconnected’ forum with Adelaide charities and not-for-profits, exchanging ideas to boost social capital and community engagement.

Over the course of the last generation, there have been some worrying trends. Australians are less likely to join community organisations or play organised sports. Australians have fewer close friends, and are less likely to know our neighbours.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW        

5AA MORNINGS

TUESDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2019

SUBJECTS: Franking credits, Labor’s Tradie Pay Guarantee. 

LEON BYNER: Let's bring in the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, thanks for coming on. What do you say to what Gottliebsen had to say?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Australia is unusual in the world - in fact, unique in the world - in having a system of refundable franking credits. It's not the way franking credits worked when Paul Keating introduced it in 1987. It was changed in 2001. So there’s a group of taxpayers - 8 per cent of taxpayers - who don't pay the Tax Office, they get paid by the Tax Office. And at a time when we want to invest in solving the crisis in aged care, to put more money into schools and invest in reducing those hospital waiting lists and extend early childhood the three year olds, we have to look at tax concessions like this one. You have to ask yourself: if this is such a great tax arrangement, why are we the only country in the world doing it this way? More than half the benefits go to people with more than two and a half million dollars in their superannuation account. I don't deny that they worked hard and saved hard, but the question is whether they should be getting a cheque from the government at a time when the government says it can't afford to put in place enough home care packages for our older Australians.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

TOWNSVILLE

TUESDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2019

SUBJECTS: Labor’s plans to protect our tradies; Snowy 2.0; AAT appointments. 

CATHY O'TOOLE, MEMBER FOR HERBERT: It's great to be here today at the Oonoonba State School with the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, the Dawson candidate for Labor, Belinda Hassan and our candidate for Queensland Senator, Nita Green. We're here today to look at the school and the result of what's happened at the floods.

But what I would like to say to the people of Townsville, on top of these dreadful floods, we have had an incredibly horrible tragedy happen overnight with the loss of two little children - a three year old and five year old from one family. I am sure I can say on behalf of this whole community, our hearts go out to that family. And I would ask our community in the spirit of resilience and cooperation that we have seen throughout the floods, that we think about this family, and we do what we can do in our own communities to be as supportive as is humanly possible for this family at such a dreadfully difficult time.

But from that moving to our purpose of being here today, the announcement that Bill is going to make just folds in beautifully into the fact that our city is literally being rebuilt. That's what's happening now. The contractors and workers who are here are doing a magnificent job - as they are all over the city, and we just need to ensure that we protect them into the future. And I'll just hand over to Bill.