Andrew Leigh

I have an opinion piece in today's Fairfax papers, drawing on research that I did as an ANU professor with Christine Neill, in which we looked at whether the 1997 National Firearms Agreement caused national gun deaths to trend downwards, and whether states that had more guns bought back subsequently had fewer firearms deaths.

Tougher Laws, Buyback on Target, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 January 2012
Guns Policy Saving Lives, The Age, 15 January 2012
Guns Policy Saving Lives, Canberra Times, 15 January 2012


Since the 1997 gun buyback, your chance of being a victim of gun violence has more than halved. Yet as yesterday’s Herald/Age pointed out, the number of guns in Australia has increased by nearly one-fifth over the same period. What’s going on?

The simplest answer is that Australia’s population is a fifth larger than it was in 1997. In reality, Australia has about as many guns per person as we did after the gun buyback. The only way you can conclude that the gun buyback has been undone is if to ignore a decade and a half of population growth.

Moreover, the figure that really matters is the share of gun-owning households. In 1997, many households used the chance to clean out the closet, and take a weapon to the local police station that hadn’t been used in years (the most common weapon handed in was a .22 calibre rifle). So the share of gun-owning households nearly halved, from 15 percent to 8 percent.

It’s quite possible that the new firearms in Australia are being bought by people who already have a weapon in the home. Adding a tenth gun to the household arsenal is much less risky than buying the first. Trouble is, surveys of household gun ownership are rare, so we don’t know whether the share of gun-owning households has risen.

To understand the policy success of the National Firearms Agreement, it’s important to recognise precisely what happened. Alongside the gun buyback, what had been a patchwork of state and territory regulations were strengthened and harmonised. Self-loading rifles, self-loading shotguns and pump-action shotguns were banned. Firearm owners were required to obtain licences and register their weapons.

While the changes were backed by the then Labor Opposition, political credit must go to then Prime Minister John Howard and National Party leader Tim Fischer for standing up to the hardliners in their own parties. While they may have paid a short-term electoral price, history will judge them well.

In the 1990s, some argued that the gun buyback would make no difference to the firearms homicide and suicide rates. Yet a series of careful studies have shown otherwise. In the decade prior to Port Arthur, Australia experienced an average of one mass shooting (involving five or more deaths) every year. Since then, we have not had a single mass shooting. The odds of this being a coincidence are less than one in 100.

The gun buyback also had some unexpected payoffs. As an ANU economics professor, I collaborated with Wilfrid Laurier University’s Christine Neill to look at the effect of the Australian gun buyback on firearm suicide and homicide rates. Shocking as mass shootings are, they represent a tiny fraction of all gun deaths. If there’s a gun in your home, the person most likely to kill you with it is yourself, followed by your spouse.

Neill and I found that the firearm suicide and homicide rates more than halved after the Australian gun buyback. Although the gun death rate was falling prior to 1997, it accelerated downwards after the buyback. Looking across states, we also found that jurisdictions where more guns were bought back experienced a greater reduction in firearms homicide and suicide.

We estimate that the Australian gun buyback continues to save around 200 lives per year. That means thousands of people are walking the streets today who would not be alive without the National Firearms Agreement. Other work, including by public health researchers Simon Chapman, Philip Alpers, Kingsley Agho and Michael Jones, reaches a similar conclusion.

For the United States, reform is tougher. According to the General Social Survey, 32 percent of US households own a gun, and a patchwork of city and state laws means that restrictions in one jurisdiction are often undercut by people travelling interstate to buy a weapon.

Historically, the US National Rifle Association was a moderate body, akin to some Australian shooting bodies. It supported the first federal gun laws in the 1930s, and backed a ban on cheap ‘Saturday night specials’ in the 1960s. Yet after the ‘‘Cincinnati Revolt’’ in 1977, the NRA was taken over by the likes of Harlon Carter, Wayne LaPierre and Charlton Heston. It began opposing all restrictions on firearms ownership, including bans on assault rifles and armour-piercing bullets (‘cop killers’). Members of Congress rate the NRA the most powerful lobbying organization in the nation.

The challenge for American legislators today is to stand up to these powerful extremists, and follow the example of Australia’s leaders in 1996. With 86 Americans dying each day because of gun accidents, suicides or homicides, perhaps our experience can persuade sensible US legislators that there is a better way. As in Australia, the onus is on the conservative side of politics.

For Australia, the challenges in firearms policy are more modest, but real nonetheless. All states and territories should heed the call from federal Justice Minister Jason Clare to implement a national firearms register. This will help to keep track of weapons when they are sold or their owners move interstate. And it will help to ensure that Australian firearms do not fall into the wrong hands.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and a former professor of economics at the Australian National University. His website is www.andrewleigh.com.

Note to the curious: Yesterday's Fairfax report by Nick Ralston implied that Australia had imported 1 million guns since 1997. In fact, the research (here) shows that the figure of ‘1 million more guns’ is from 1988/89 onwards (not 1997). If you look at post-buyback imports, there have been about half a million guns imported into Australia since 1997/98. Off a firearms base of 2½-3 million, that’s approximately a 20 percent increase. Over the same period, Australia’s population rose from 18½ to 22.9 million (24 percent).

On the first AM Agenda for the year, I spoke with host David Lipson and Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield about how the declining tax/GDP share affects the government’s bottom line, why a profits-based mining tax beats royalties, and the complexities of providing arms to Syrian rebels.http://www.youtube.com/embed/ccBATNXvEPk?list=UUlVptSw61_R-JruxdSWQtTw

My column in the Chronicle this week is on local Canberra history, and a chance to get to know your neighbours a little better.

A good year to have a street party and make new friends, The Chronicle, 8 January 2013

January in Canberra. The cicadas in the Northbourne Avenue eucalypts are singing by 9am. Lakeshore paths are pounded with the determination of many new year’s resolutions. Most of us are heading back into the office (hopefully a bit more relaxed than when we left, and perhaps gently sunkissed).

I’m particularly excited for 2013 to get underway, because – as you would no doubt know – this year marks the Centenary of Canberra. It’s a great chance to learn more about the city’s past, to experience all the wonderful things it has to offer, and to have conversations about its future.

Centenary Director Robyn Archer and her team have a splendid variety of celebrations mapped out, from competitions to exhibitions, musical events to street theatre. As northsiders would’ve seen from the ‘Andrew Leigh’ fridge calendar that recently landed in your mailbox (please phone my office on 6247 4396 if you didn’t get one), many of the festivities will culminate on Canberra Day: 11 March 2013.

As part of reconnecting with our city’s history and stories, the centenary organisers are encouraging Canberrans to learn about the person after whom their street is named. I live in a suburb where the roads recall famous scientists, and our street is named after a man who apparently had a ‘hasty temper’, but whose 19^th century geological survey of Victoria was considered one of the best of its time.

Behind the hundreds of leafy streets of the Bush Capital lie hundreds of fascinating stories. In checking out the history of your street’s namesake, you might be surprised at what you find. The ACT Government’s place name search is an easy place to start, and can be found at http://goo.gl/TGk1u. If your research goes further, you can upload what you find to www.portraitofanation.com.au.

While you’re finding out more about your street name, why not get to know your neighbours better? Between my personal life of raising a young family and my public life of holding street corner meetings and community forums, I know for a fact that ours is a welcoming city with a strong sense of camaraderie.

Holding a street party is a brilliant way to get to know your neighbours better. Name your time and place, ask people to bring their favourite refreshment, and drop a photocopied invite into letterboxes: it couldn’t be easier. All you need to foster a greater sense of community is to make that first move. It’s also a lovely way to spend those long, warm Canberra evening hours while waiting for the cool evening breezes to blow in.

The Centenary of Canberra gives us all the opportunity to find out more about our history – those little stories that contribute to the bigger story of our beautiful city. While learning about our past, we can also reconnect with our current surrounds and maybe look at them with a new perspective, and maybe even with some new neighbourhood friends.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and a patron of the ‘Portrait of a Nation’ project. His website is www.andrewleigh.com.

I have an opinion piece in the Australian today, continuing to prosecute the case that Labor is the true party of small-L liberalism in Australia (on the same theme, see also my first speech, this Global Mail article and this speech to Per Capita).

Liberals are conservatives while Labor is the true party of Alfred Deakin, The Australian, 10 January 2013

In the United States, if you want to insult a right-winger, call them a ‘liberal’. In Australia, if you want to insult a left-winger, call them a ‘Liberal’. In both countries, liberalism has become detached from its original meaning.

It’s time to bring Australian liberalism back to its traditional roots. Small-L liberalism involves a willingness to protect minority rights (even when they’re unpopular) and a recognition that open markets are the best way to boost prosperity.

In Australia, Alfred Deakin is the politician most closely associated with liberalism. As a Victorian legislator, Deakin supported the rights of trade unions to organise, and campaigned for better factory conditions. After Federation, his party was closer on many issues to the Labor Party than the conservatives. Yet there was little desire among Labor members to make common cause with Deakin, so when Fusion took place in 1909, it was a marriage between liberals and conservatives.

Today, we’re seeing the divorce. On many issues, the modern Liberal Party of Australia has lost its commitment to minority rights. The Howard Government could not bring itself to apologise to the Stolen Generations. Liberal frontbenchers today routinely describe asylum-seekers as ‘illegals’ and ‘boat people’. No Liberals in the House of Representatives voted for same-sex marriage last September.

The same is true of markets. Liberal Party members criticise market mechanisms to deal with climate change and salinity in the Murray-Darling. They now oppose fuel tax reforms introduced by Peter Costello in 2003. Many Liberal politicians criticise the foreign investment that brings jobs to Australia.

The shift can be seen in Liberal leaders’ speeches. Robert Menzies described his party’s philosophy simply as liberalism. John Howard said he led a party animated by liberalism and conservatism. Tony Abbott now says that his party’s philosophy is liberalism, conservatism and patriotism. Liberalism’s share in the Liberal Party is 33 percent and falling.

Since the Liberal Party leadership has shifted from Malcolm Turnbull to Tony Abbott, theirs is more a party of Edmund Burke than John Stuart Mill. Everyone knows what the Liberal Party stands against, but what does it stand for? As political commentator Peter Van Onselen argued recently, ‘It is high time the Liberal Party changed its name to the Conservative Party’.

This creates a new – and surprising – opportunity for the Labor Party. Ours has always been the party of egalitarianism. Labor is the party that believes too much inequality strains the social fabric. Labor introduced Medicare, universal superannuation and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. But there is now the chance for us to meld this with a commitment to social liberalism.

Surprising as this may sound, there is much in modern Labor that draws on small-L liberalism (Deakin minus the racism and protectionism). Labor is the party that introduced laws to ban discrimination by race and sex. Native title laws came about under a Labor Government – and despite fierce opposition from the other side. Only Labor is fully committed to the liberal notion that our head of state should an Australian: against the conservative position of ‘it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. My friend Macgregor Duncan likes to say that ‘Labor is Australia’s true liberal party’.

On markets, Labor’s commitment is a practical one. Where markets improve wellbeing, we should use them. Where they don’t, we shouldn’t. To borrow a phrase from the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, Labor believes in a market economy, not a market society. When Whitlam, Hawke and Keating brought down the tariff walls, they did so because they knew it would make products cheaper for consumers, and spur innovation as firms engaged internationally.

In the realm of social policy, liberalism is the belief that tax cuts are preferable to middle class welfare. It’s also an acceptance of good policy evaluation. Many of Australia’s greatest successes in fields such as farming, sport and medicine have been grounded in practical experimentation and rigorous evaluation. There’s something very Australian about being willing to try new things, honestly admit failure, and learn from our mistakes.  I’d like to see more randomised trials in Australia – testing policies using the same tools we use to evaluate new pharmaceuticals.

Good policy evaluation isn’t just a better feedback loop, it’s fundamentally about a more modest approach to politics. As judge Learned Hand once noted, ‘The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right’.

Labor will never abandon its passion for egalitarianism. A belief in a means-tested social safety net, a healthy union movement, and a great education system are central to Labor. But the question today is whether we should seize the opportunity presented by our opponents’ abandoning social liberalism. A century on, is it time to redo Fusion: making Labor the party of egalitarianism and social liberalism?

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.

Update: My friend Dennis Glover responds.

In today's Punch, I have an article on the debate over a budget surplus.

The deficit chicken littles ignore the numbers, The Punch, 7 January 2012

Rarely have economic commentators been so united on an issue arguing that the Australian Government should not aim for a budget surplus this year. From John Quiggin to Warwick McKibbin, the OECD to the IMF, respected economists across the political spectrum have taken the view that the best economic approach is not to try and fill the 2012-13 government revenue shortfall by making further budget cuts.

From a macroeconomic standpoint, there’s barely any difference between a $1 billion surplus and a $1 billion deficit. Far more important is the fact that when the Global Financial Crisis hit, we increased spending: supporting jobs through household payments and infrastructure programs. In the past five years, we’ve found savings that total $138 billion. We boosted government spending when private demand fell, and cut spending as private demand recovered.

Cutting spending isn’t easy. When we means-tested family tax benefits and the Private Health Insurance rebate, the Coalition said we were playing ‘the politics of envy’. When we phased out the outdated Dependent Spouse Tax Rebate (a measure that discourages secondary earners to work), we were accused of attacking the family. When we reduced the Baby Bonus for second and subsequent children, Joe Hockey drew comparisons with China’s One Child policy.

One marker is whether spending falls in real terms (that is, adjusting for inflation). As economic commentator Stephen Koukoulas has observed, during their combined total of more than twenty years in office, the Fraser and Howard governments never once cut their real spending. By contrast, Labor governments have cut real spending on five occasions since the mid-1980s. Painful as it is to admit, aiming for a surplus in 2012-13 probably instilled some additional discipline into the budget process – even if we don’t end up achieving the target.

Had revenue as a share of GDP been at the same level as in the early-2000s, these spending cuts would easily have ensured a 2012-13 budget surplus. Yet company tax revenues have recently been hit by a double-whammy: lower commodity prices (caused by a softening of world demand for our minerals), but a high dollar (due to a demand for our AAA-rated government bonds). Revenue for 2012-13 is $20 billion down from what Treasury projected back in 2010.

To understand the recent announcement by Wayne Swan that a surplus will be difficult to achieve, it’s worth comparing taxes as a share of GDP with the Howard Government. If we had Howard Government revenue today, the current budget would easily be in surplus. Conversely, if the Howard Government had today’s revenues, many of their budgets would have been in deficit. From an international perspective, Australia’s economic performance remains in the top tier, with better growth and unemployment numbers than almost any developed country. But overseas problems have directly hurt Australian government revenues through an unexpected channel: as European demand for our government bonds drives up the Australian dollar, company tax receipts fall.

The debate over the 2012-13 surplus risks obscuring the bigger picture, which is that sensible Keynesian fiscal policy means more government spending in bad times, and less in good times. That’s why we boosted spending to save 200,000 jobs in the Global Financial Crisis, and it’s why we’ve cut spending in recent years. The essence of good fiscal policy is a willing to switch tack if the economic outlook changes. Given the $20 billion shortfall in revenue this year, it may not make sense to aim for the same target. As Keynes himself said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?’.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.

I was excited to be at the Gungahlin Library this morning for testing of the ACT’s first public connection to the NBN. The Library forms part of the Gungahlin Digital Hub where residents will be able to learn more about how to access the exciting features of the NBN. Free training sessions will be available from early next year and will cover a range of computer basics, everyday online activities, and online safety and security, and connection options.

Senator Kate Lundy encouraged local businesses to imagine the possibilities of their future activities in a super-connected city like Canberra. She encouraged them to think creatively and strategically about the opportunities available to them through the NBN. By mid-2015, fibre construction will have commenced or be completed to 135,300 homes and businesses across the ACT beginning with the whole of Gungahlin Town Centre going live in January 2013.

[caption id="attachment_3674" align="alignleft" width="1024" caption="Kate Lundy, Andrew Barr and myself checking out the download speed"][/caption]

On the Today Show, I discussed my academic paper (coauthored with Christine Neill) on the effect of the Australian gun buyback on reducing firearms deaths.



I also spoke on The Drum about the economics and politics of gun law reform.



And on A Current Affair about the fact that a culture of sports shooting can co-exist with laws that restrict the number of guns in Australian homes.



Here's the podcast of a 12min interview on ABC774 with John Morrison, and shorter interviews on 2cc with Mark Parton and ABC666 with Ross Solly (a caller to that program questioned the US gun ownership rate - here's the data).

Other coverage in the Canberra Times, SMH, ABC, Quartz and Washington Post.http://www.youtube.com/v/-UTvn6qfLFA?version=3&hl=en_GB

I’m writing a short book on income inequality for Black Inc. It will cover the long-run data on inequality (going back to the late-18th century), at the lifestyles of the rich and poor today, and at the extent of social mobility. It'll also look at what drives inequality, and why inequality might be good or bad.

What do you think the title should be?

On 13 December, I visted Antarctica on a parliamentary delegation. It's an astonishing spot, and we were fortunate to have two hours on the ground speaking with the scientists. We even got to get a short ride in "Priscilla" (the snowbus, so named for its ability to navigate this snow-covered desert), to see ice drilling, snow camping, and some of the accommodation. We'd had a full-day briefing the previous day at the Australian Antarctic Division base in Hobart, talking with researchers about their ice core program (drilling down hundreds of metres to look at changes in greenhouse gas concentrations over thousands of years), their marine biology program (better understanding how krill respond to environmental changes), and their non-lethal whale reserach program.

I left with a strong sense of the value that comes from our Antarctic research program, and a sense of the research potential of this extraordinary part of the world. The following two videos give you some sense of the local environment.





More from the Canberra Times (plus a terrific new announcement on Antarctic ice cores from Environment Minister Tony Burke).http://www.youtube.com/v/4jdEO2Ro3C4?version=3&hl=en_GB

Many older Canberrans and their loved ones are thinking about their aged care options. In my second aged care forum in as many months, I outlined Labor's plans to reform the sector and heard from those who will be directly affected by these reforms.


If you'd like more detail, check out the Australian Government's 2012 Living Longer, Living Better policy statement and the Productivity Commission's 2011 Caring for Older Australians report.http://www.youtube.com/embed/tw1YBH1dbb8