Andrew Leigh

I spoke in parliament today about some terrific Canberrans who've spent their time volunteering in developing countries.

International Volunteering, 21 March 2013

On 19 February I held a morning tea for volunteers in my electorate who have worked with various international development programs. They shared their experiences and stories of the rewards, frustrations and challenges of volunteering in a developing country.

Roger Butler worked with the National Narcotics Board in Indonesia and was involved with the health and drug therapeutic community division. An important aspect of the division was to support those undergoing drug rehabilitation programs, including many in and recently released from Indonesian gaols. He worked to reduce the prevalence of HIV and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis with this population.

Tracie Ennis worked as a data manager with Women's Empowerment, an NGO based in Jakarta, in Indonesia.

Tom Tanhchareun was based in Hanoi, Vietnam. He worked with a United Nations agency in tackling human trafficking.

Lisa Brown worked with an organisation that supported children who survived by having to scavenge from the city dump in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia. She told the group stories about the extreme deprivation of those children and how, upon her return to Australia, no smell can any longer assail her nostrils.

Edward Boydell was based in Hanoi in Vietnam. He worked on empowering Vietnamese youth on environmental issues and climate change through an NGO called Live and Learn. The aim of Live and Learn is to help create a space for Vietnamese youth to be vocal in public debate. They support movements created by young people to apply for funding with various NGOs. Edward also helped organise a youth forum discussing environmental issues.

Although each of the volunteers expressed moments that they described as 'wanting to pull your hair out', they all recommended volunteering as a positive experience, making a difference to overseas communities and in their own lives. They spoke about how their experience had broadened their world view and helped to put their own nation into a global context. They felt that the strong commitment of volunteering overseas helped them to better evaluate the views and opinions of others and to develop strong negotiation and problem-solving skills.

Over the last 45 years the Australian government has supported more than 15,000 Australians as volunteers. People intending to volunteer can now go to a single access point through the AVID program—www.ausaid.gov.au/volunteer. The smiles and laughter around the table at my volunteering morning tea were testament to the positive experiences of volunteering and I would encourage any Australian of any age who is thinking about volunteering to seize the opportunity.

To mark 'World Happiness Day', Sky News invited me to talk about the economic evidence on happiness with presenter Stan Grant. We discussed how you measure happiness, where it can be a useful tool, and why new evidence shows that the "Easterlin Paradox" doesn't hold up.http://www.youtube.com/v/FJehDJzIJuE?hl=en_GB&version=3

On ABC666 yesterday, I spoke with host Adam Shirley about the government's investment in early childhood, and why good policy is good politics too. Here's a podcast.

I spoke in parliament about changes in the media, information inequality, and the government's proposed changes to media laws.

Media Law Reform, 20 March 2013

Great journalism really can change the world. Emile Zola's 'J'accuse' letter did not just win Alfred Dreyfus his freedom; it helped to change the political character of modern France. When Woodward and Bernstein reported on Watergate, they brought down a president. In Australia, reporting by the Courier-Mail and Four Corners ended the Bjelke-Petersen government and led to the jailing of three ministers. In 2005, a newspaper article brought down New South Wales opposition leader John Brogden and probably changed the outcome of the 2007 New South Wales election.

Great reporting can shape the world for the better, but it is vital that that reporting keep pace with changes in technology, and there is possibly no industry changing more rapidly than that of the news media. We have seen a huge technological shift through not just cable and digital TV providing more channels—and, soon, digital radio having that effect for most radio listeners—but also the proliferation of new platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and other news sources. We are increasingly seeing newspapers change their format and their character.

These technological shifts, like standard technological shifts in other industries, have led to greater inequality in the news. If you are an engaged consumer, there has never been a better time to consume the news media. You can watch press conferences on Sky or ABC 24. You get transcripts straight off the internet. You can quickly get the opinions of thoughtful bloggers and sassy tweeters. But if you are less engaged then things tend to look a bit different. While the most engaged consumers have seen their news media become more abundant, more diverse in terms of outlets and more accessible, taken as a whole we have seen a rise in opinion and, I think, also a rise in nastiness and shallowness.

Those three shifts, which I talked about in a speech at the University of Canberra last year, have implications for media laws. The notion that the media laws should just stand still while the press goes through the largest shift in its history is, to me, a trifle strange. Certainly, if you were to look at the words of the member for Wentworth, you would get that sense—at least, if you looked at his words circa 2011. The member for Wentworth gave what I thought was quite a thoughtful speech on 7 December 2011 to the Advanced Centre of Journalism, noting:

‘The consequence of this decline in journalism is that too many important matters of public interest are either not covered at all or covered superficially. At the local level, there is less attention paid to local councils and even state parliaments.’

He went on to say:

‘Consider the shrinking Canberra Press Gallery—the vast bulk of its coverage of federal politics is now about personalities and the game of politics.

‘Readers seeking a better understanding of how the carbon tax or the mining tax, for example, will operate will often struggle to find much assistance in the output of the gallery—with some very honourable exceptions—compared to the millions of words written about Kevin Rudd vs Julia Gillard let alone Tony Abbott’s budgie smugglers.’

The member for Wentworth also said:

The consequence of all of this has been that what we used to call the 24 hour news cycle has become instead an opinion cycle.

He continued:

‘Over the last few decades we have seen a proliferation of mediums through which news and information can be viewed. In my youth as a reporter we were limited to the newspapers (more then than now), a few television stations, a few more radio stations and a handful of magazines.’

The member for Wentworth also quoted the late US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: 'Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.' He noted one of the changes that I think is of greatest concern to many of us:

‘… the whole edifice of our fifth estate, of our journalism, has been built on a foundation of newspaper journalism and … that foundation is crumbling.’

My largest concern about the changes in the news media is not about slant towards left or right. Media slant will come and go. When I studied media slant with Joshua Gans, looking at the Howard government period 1996 to 2004, we found that most of the outlets adopted centrist positions. But I am concerned that the rise of opinion, the trend that Laura Tingle has described as 'Australia's politics and our public discourse have become noticeably angrier' or that Annabel Crabb describes as 'a hostile, scratchy feel to politics at the moment'. That rise of nastiness and the rise of shallowness with its emphasis on one-liners rather than thoughtful commentary are of concern. The increase in poll-driven journalism—focusing on the horse race rather than the issues of the day—is one to which the member for Wentworth referred in his 2011 speech.

You can get a sense of how unusual the current laws are by simply looking at the regulation of smh.com.au and ninemsn.com.au. They are two of Australia's most popular news websites, but content on the Sydney Morning Herald's website is created by a newspaper and so it operates under a voluntary code of conduct regulated by the Australian Press Council. The ninemsn website is created by a broadcaster and so its content must have complaints directed to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, a statutory authority, and ACMA can consider the suitability of a person who seeks to hold a broadcasting licence. I do not think anyone would argue that, were we starting from scratch today, we ought to regulate the SMH website and the ninemsn website in utterly different ways.

This regulation is outdated and the member for Wentworth acknowledged in 2011 that was a concern. Prominent journalists have themselves also acknowledged that changes in the shape of the media are a significant challenge for good public policy. George Megalogenis argues that the 1970's saw the media emerge as perhaps the only institution that played a constructive role, but he argues that the media is today 'an intrinsic part of the problem'. They are George Megalogenis's words. These changes are happening rapidly. Ray Finkelstein’s review—ably assisted by Matthew Ricketson at the University of Canberra and Rodney Tiffen, who was my original politics and media lecturer when I was a whippersnapper at the University of Sydney, Francesco Papandrea, Denis Muller, Kristen Walker, Christopher Young, Graeme Hill, Jack Bourke and Mansa Chintoh—recognised that it is important to look at how the industry has changed. It noted, for example, the significant change in the number of daily metropolitan newspapers in Australia. If we go back to Federation, Australia had 21 metropolitan or national daily newspapers belonging to 17 owners. The number of newspapers increased to 26 in 1923, but that number has since fallen. In 1985 there were 18 of these newspapers; now we are down to 11.

The Australian newspaper industry is shrinking not only in the number of newspapers, but also in concentration. We have three major owners and that makes our newspaper industry perhaps the most concentrated in the developed world. Other speakers in this debate have noted these facts. Our top newspaper group controls 58 per cent of circulation; our top two control 86 per cent of circulation; our top four control 99 per cent of circulation. All of those numbers exceed the other countries that are surveyed in the International Media Concentration Research Project: Switzerland, Israel, Ireland, Portugal, France, Turkey, South Africa, United Kingdom, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Russia, Korea, Germany, India, Mexico, Japan, Spain, Italy, the United States and Poland all have less concentrated newspaper industries than Australia.

Ensuring that we have a healthy newspaper industry is absolutely fundamental. It is fundamental to our democracy and it is fundamental, frankly, to freedom of speech. It is within that framework that the government brings these laws before the House. These laws are nowhere near the extreme imposition that the member for Wentworth would now have you believe. Let us recall that, when the Leveson inquiry began, when allegations of phone hacking were first aired in 2011, there were those in Australia who argued that we should have a 'fit and proper person' test applied, that we should curtail foreign ownership of the press, that we should put in place strict licensing regimes. Instead, what the government has put in place are much more modest and careful reforms that indeed I suspect are entirely in keeping with what the member for Wentworth spoke about in 2011—this great challenge that faces our society in which it is important to ensure that we have a proliferation of thoughtful voices in the media.

It is because newspapers journalists are fundamental to the media that we need to make sure that we have diversity of voices within the newspaper market. And we need to recognise that newspapers are important not only for their readers, who are indeed a declining group in Australian society. The Finkelstein report noted, for example, that in 1977 there were 29 newspapers sold for every 100 Australians; now we are down to 10 newspapers sold for every 100 Australians. But, while newspaper circulation is falling, newspapers retain their influence through agenda setting, their impact on talkback radio and their impact on television. Newspapers have also had a disproportionate influence on breaking news stories and on bringing about in-depth analysis of issues. I am thinking of some of the thoughtful reporting carried out, for example, by Neil Chenoweth of the Australian Financial Review. The degree of scrutiny that comes through high-quality press is enormously important to the strength of our democracy.

I rise to speak on these bills because of my passion for the journalism industry. I believe that we have great journalists in Australia at the moment and that it is important that that situation continue. It is important that the government and the opposition are held to account by the press and by a diversity of views. But we have to recognise in this debate that changes in technology bring with them inequality. It is a mistake to view changes in the media through the lens only of the most engaged news consumers. If you think about the current availability of news sources only from the perspective of being plugged in 24 hours a day, constantly updating yourself with tweets and reading the latest government reports, you have to realise that you are not a typical consumer. We have to recognise that the rise of opinion, of nastiness, of shallowness, does affect the way in which many Australians view the press. It has to be recognised that there are possibly more Australians interested in reading about Lara Bingle than reading Laura Tingle. But it is important that we have a set of news media laws that sustain great journalists like Ms Tingle. Such journalists will continue to keep governments accountable under these laws.

I spoke in parliament today, presenting to the House the report of the National Capital and External Territories' visit to Antarctica.

Antarctica, 20 March 2013

On 12 and 13 December 2012, it was my pleasure to fulfil a lifelong dream and travel to Antarctica. With me as part of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories were Senators Crossin, Humphries and Parry and the member for Maranoa. We were accompanied by the environment committee and by the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke. We were also accompanied by a range of expert scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division including Tony Fleming, Nick Gales, Rob Wooding and Tas van Ommen.

The visit consisted of a kit-out and a tour of inspection and briefing at the AAD headquarters in Kingston in Tasmania on 12 December and a return flight to Wilkins on 13 December. During the briefing, we were shown the AAD's ice-coring equipment, through which, by digging a 400-metre ice core, they can observe 4,000 years of temperature data. Seeing such high-quality research being conducted and the hockey-stick graph shown in the AAD could leave no-one in any doubt that climate change is occurring and rapidly.

The Australian Antarctic Division, established in 1948, has around 300 staff in Tasmania and between 70 and 200 staff in Antarctic stations. The four permanent stations are at Macquarie Island, Mawson, Davis and Casey. The air link is via the Wilkins runway, which became operational in January 2008, where an Airbus A319 can land. The pilots said on our return to Hobart, 'We know you have no choice in air travel, but thank you for flying with us all the same.'

The ice-coring science is just one part of the research being done in Antarctica. There is research on the development of contaminant metal removal systems, remediation of petroleum contaminants and on benchmarking ice-coring records against climate records so we can do a better job of understanding climate change.

One of the early explorers to Antarctica, Louis Bernacchi, said: 'Life in the Antarctic is one of hardship, privation, monotony and isolation, but it has a subtle charm which is indefinable, and you look back with a vivid and lingering recollection to those days spent in geographical and scientific research near the South Pole.'

The committee, on our visit, got firsthand experience of the sheer logistical effort required to do anything in Antarctica. Our report notes the importance of maintaining high-quality transport options. I am pleased to report to the House that, on 9 January, the environment minister announced that the government is taking initial steps to a new Antarctic icebreaker to replace Aurora Australis, which is an ageing vessel.

We are also concerned about Australia's need to maintain our Antarctic and Southern Ocean research effort. The report urges the government and the opposition to maintain funding in real terms, if not increase it. I was pleased, in this vein, to note the environment minister's announcement on 15 December of a new Antarctic ice core project, which through our research in the Antarctic will help us understand more what is happening with dangerous climate change.

I commend the report to the House and in doing so acknowledge Thomas Baker, an intern in my office, for his assistance in preparing these remarks.

I spoke on the adjournment debate about how to have less crime and less punishment.

Crime and Punishment, 19 March 2013

The issue of reducing crime and incarceration is one that is close to my heart. Shayne Neumann, the member for Blair, and I moved a motion in 2011 in this House aimed at reducing crime and incarceration. The motion pointed out that over recent decades Australia has invested in prison building at an astonishing rate. The national imprisonment rate in 1991 was 117 prisoners per 100,000 adults. By 2007 it had risen to 167 prisoners per 100,000 adults. Over the same period, a period which began with the royal commission into black deaths in custody in 1991, the level of Indigenous incarceration went up from 1,739 prisoners per 100,000 adults to 2,248 prisoners out of every 100,000 Indigenous adults. In Western Australia, four per cent of all Indigenous adults are currently in jail. Even adjusting for the age structure of the Indigenous population, Indigenous Australians are still 14 times more likely to be jailed than non-Indigenous people. By their mid-20s, 40 per cent of Indigenous men have been charged by police with a crime.

It was my pleasure, with the support of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, to host a lunchtime event in Parliament House on 26 February with UCLA professor Mark Kleiman. Prof. Kleiman is the author of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment. The event brought together a range of criminologists and social policy researchers from the ACT and beyond. I would like to acknowledge Don Weatherburn from the New South Wales the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research who bought Prof. Kleiman to Australia. I would also like to acknowledge Michael Thorn and Glenis Thomas from FARE for their support of the event.

Prof. Kleiman's clear message is that punishment is always a cost and never a benefit. He points out that too much emphasis among policy makers over recent decades has been on the duration of the sentence, the severity of the punishment and not enough on the issues of certainty and swiftness. Particularly when you are dealing with young men who are living day-to-day, the notion that increasing sentences from 10 to 20 years will have a major impact on behaviour does not take into account the population with which we are dealing. Policies such as Western Australia's three strikes law simply do not take into account the importance of certainty versus severity.

I commend many of those policy makers who are thinking rigorously about this issue including the Attorney-General, who happens to be in that chamber at the moment; Western Australian MLA Paul Papalia; New South Wales Attorney-General, Greg Smith; South Australian Attorney-General, John Rau; and ACT Attorney-General, Simon Corbell.

I think it is high time that we took the lesson from economist Thomas Schelling, who has pointed out that the perfect threat is one that you do not carry out. We could make greater use of GPS monitoring to ensure that offenders are monitored but not incarcerated because the cost of incarceration is now nearly $300 a day—the price of a nice hotel room in the CBD. We might make better use of curfews, a punishment which not only hurts offenders but also ensures when the young man looks at his watch at nine o'clock at night and says he has to go home from the party that other partygoers get the message too. We need to have more evidence based policy making in criminal justice. Mark Kleiman talked about Project HOPE, Hawaii's Opportunity Program with Enforcement. In Australia we have the New South Wales Drug Court trial as almost the sole randomised controlled trial of a criminal justice program.

We know it is important to raise the evidence bar. There is clear evidence that jails are expensive and that they are unhealthy. The drivers of increased incarceration have not been greater crime in Australia -- in fact, crime on many indicators has fallen -- but changes in the law, tougher bail conditions, mandatory non-parole periods and longer sentences. It is not beyond the wit of parliamentarians on both sides of politics to find solutions to reduce crime and reduce punishment. I thank Prof. Kleiman and those who brought him here for adding to the quality of the debate.

I moved a private member's motion in parliament today about the importance of properly costed policies.

Parliamentary Budget Office, 18 March 2013

The House
1. Notes:
(a)    That a bipartisan parliamentary report recommended the creation of the Parliamentary Budget Office, which is now operational having passed Parliament;
(b)   That the Australian people deserve a proper policy debate in 2013, with all parties presenting properly costed policies;
(c)    That the updated information contained in the Pre-Election Economic & Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) will not affect the cost of most policies, and therefore release of fully costed policies should not be delayed until then; and
2. Calls on all parties to have their policies costed consistent with the Charter of Budget Honesty, and release them to the Australian people in enough time to have a well-informed debate.

Transparent, costed policies are fundamental to trust, to honesty and good public debate. The Parliamentary Budget Office was created in this spirit. It was created following a bipartisan parliamentary report agreed to by members from both sides of the House, including the member for Higgins, who is here in the chamber, and Senator Joyce.

The coalition support for the Parliamentary Budget Office however did not extend beyond that bipartisan report. By the time that the Parliamentary Budget Office came to be considered by parliament it had become apparent that the coalition's costings hole was far bigger than had been thought at the time the report was written. The coalition then stepped back from their support for the Parliamentary Budget Office.

This is a pity for Australian politics in general. Australian politics has always depended on a robust opposition which presents alternative ideas for the governance of Australia. That is critical to the operation of our great democracy. The coalition's tepid attitude to the Parliamentary Budget Office and the increasing suggestions that they will not place their costings before it, is deeply concerning to me and I think to many Australians regardless of their political views. I often meet people in my electorate who are Liberal Party voters—who have voted for the Liberal Party all their life and intend to do so at the next election—but they still say to me, 'I wish they would be a bit clearer about what they want to do; I wish they would be a bit clearer about their policies.'

The Labor Party in government have put in place significant saves. Since the global financial crisis, all of our new spending has been offset by savings. We will now spend less than 24 per cent of GDP over the forward estimates—something not achieved since the 1980s. This $154 billion of savings over five budgets has not been easy to achieve. To take one example: when we said that the Baby Bonus would be reduced from $5,000 to $3,000 for second and subsequent children, the member for North Sydney compared it to the one child policy. When we have made targeted saves, such as getting rid of the out-dated Dependent Spouse Tax Offset—a measure that deterred secondary earners from working—we have been attacked by those opposite.

The opposition have, as a result of saying yes to every special interest but saying no to sensible revenue measures, got themselves into a substantial revenue crater. As a result, for example, of saying that they will repeal the price on carbon and repeal the minerals resource rent tax, they have around a $70 billion costings gap. That is not my figure. Anyone who thinks that this figure is a Labor figure simply needs to go to the transcript of Joe Hockey, the member for North Sydney, on Sunrise on 12 August 2011. That is where the $70 billion figure comes from. Seventy billion dollars is equivalent to stopping Medicare for four years or stopping the pension for two years. It is a huge amount of money. Where will the opposition get that from? We know a few things about what they will do. They have said they will get rid of the Schoolkids Bonus, a measure which is designed to help families with children at the times of the year when they have those education expenses.

We know that they are going to scrap income tax cuts for around seven million Australians. Recently the member for North Sydney has tried to hide that. He carried out a doorstep with the Liberal candidate for Parramatta, who said that the benefit of the tax cuts would be $3 a week. But that is a figure that applies to a tiny fraction of those eligible. For the vast majority of Australian taxpayers, their benefit from these tax cuts—and the pain that they will endure if the coalition is to increase income taxes on seven million hardworking Australians—will be much bigger. Most receive at least $300 a year. Many part-time workers receive up to $600. The member for North Sydney was so embarrassed by that that he edited his own transcript to remove the reference to a $3 a week tax cut.

We know too that the Liberal Party would, if it were to attain office, establish a commission of audit. That is a well-worn Liberal tactic, used on attaining office by Premier Newman, Premier Baillieu, as he then was, and Premier O'Farrell. It is simply a way of failing to come clean with the Australian people about what you will do.

The opposition frequently say that they have had their policies costed. The member for Goldstein, Andrew Robb, will frequently say that he has policies in his desk drawer which have covers on them—it's great that they've designed those covers; I'm very happy about that!—and that they have been costed. But it is not clear by whom those policies have been costed. Have they been costed, as they were at the last federal election by a team of dodgy accountants who were subsequently fined for saying that they had carried out an audit when in fact they had not? Have they been costed by a catering company such as the catering company that did costings for Scott Morrison on immigration? We know that the coalition have costed policies, but we also know that those policies are sitting in a desk drawer. You have to ask yourself: if these policies were so good for the Australian people, would they be sitting in the member for Goldstein's top drawer or would they be in the full glare of public scrutiny? I think Australian families know the answer.

We have some hints as to what the opposition would do from their statements on the goods and services tax. The opposition have said they are going to provide a larger share of GST to some states, which inevitably means they will have to provide a smaller share to others. So my colleagues in Tasmania and South Australia have raised concerns about the impact on their share of GST revenues if the opposition were to attain government.

We know also something about what the opposition might do as a result of two recent reports by Australia's two leading right-wing think tanks. The Institute of Public Affairs has put out a list, and Alan Moran of the IPA was quoted in the Australian on 16 March 2013 as saying:

'Some items have been discussed with Coalition politicians, many of whom are in the agreement with the principles against which list has been developed.'

Those cuts include cancelling the first stage of the NDIS and abolishing the FaHCSIA division implementing the NDIS; abolishing Fair Work Australia and Safe Work Australia; cutting the general research budget by 40 per cent; cutting all Commonwealth housing programs; cutting all foreign aid, excluding emergency aid; abolishing the agriculture, forestry and fisheries programs; and privatising the ABC.

They sound like savage cuts to me, but according to Senator Wong they amount to only $23.5 billion, so they are less than half of what the opposition would have to make in order to fill its costings gap.

Similarly savage cuts have been put forward by the Centre for Independent Studies. The Centre for Independent Studies have a TARGET30 report, suggesting that Commonwealth, state and local government spending should not amount to more than 30 per cent of GDP. That means significant decreases in the tax share for the Commonwealth government. The report is honest enough to note that Australia is now the third-lowest spending country in the OECD. Thirty per cent would make us the lowest spending country in the OECD.

How would the Centre for Independent Studies reduce our expenditure? They would do so by cutting back on health, education and welfare. The Centre for Independent Studies want insurance vouchers in our healthcare system rather than the world-beating Medicare system. They want cutbacks to compulsory superannuation. They want to abolish family tax benefit part B and they want to stop the Gonski reforms. These are significant cuts.

Meanwhile, you have the Leader of the Opposition, with his DLP tendencies, going about the place talking about what he will spend. He said at a Brookvale Oval function, for example, that he wants to redevelop Brookvale Oval at a cost of $70 million. No-one knows where this money will come from.

I hope that the Parliamentary Budget Office can contribute to a more transparent and open costings debate in Australia. Australians deserve no less.

I spoke in parliament about the Prime Minister's statement on Closing the Gap.

Prime Minister's Statement on Closing the Gap, 12 March 2013

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Hasluck in this important debate on closing the gap. He is the only Indigenous member of the House of Representatives and the Senate, which is an indication of one gap that we need to work to close. Were Indigenous Australians to be represented in this place in proportion to the number in the Australian population there would be at least five Indigenous members in parliament and many debates, this one included, would be richer for that. I hope we will see Nova Peris joining the next Senate, but we still will have further to go. It is an indicator of how many of these gaps take too long to close.

I am proud to represent an electorate which is the home of the Ngunnawal people. Often when I am looking for stories of Indigenous Australia I turn to Stories of the Ngunnawal, an excellent book which discusses some of the stories of the Ngunnawal elders. One story by Dorothy Brown Dickson reminds us of how tough it was for some of the Ngunnawal people. Ms Dickson grew up in an Aboriginal reserve in Yass. She refers to how tough life was for the young men. She says:

‘They couldn't have a drink in peace. They had nowhere else to have a drink and socialise as they weren't allowed in the pubs. People would come up there all the time arresting them, and taking them down to the lock-up. When the police needed slave labour to look after their yards and cut wood, there always seemed to be someone in jail to do it.’

She goes on to say:

‘Even the shop-keepers were prejudiced. You had to wait until the white people were served first in the shops. When Aborigines went to the picture theatre they had to sit down the front by themselves. And the welfare would come up there all the time, checking on people.’

She goes on to talk about her friend Betty Russell, who she used to walk to school with. She says:

‘One afternoon I went to Betty's place. Betty was quiet and her mother was sad. I asked What's the matter?' Betty said the welfare was sending her mother and brothers and sisters to Walgett. I was really sad. It really broke my heart but nothing could be done. I never saw Betty for years after that.’

It is vital that we report to parliament on progress on closing the gap. Progress on closing the gap is a multi-faceted challenge. It involves issues of the heart, such as the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the Constitution; symbolic acts of recognition, such as our existing practice of acknowledging traditional owners of the land in formal speeches; and perhaps in the future other practices, such as that adopted across the ditch, of dual naming of places. Today being Canberra Day it is appropriate to note that Canberra is the only Australian city that carries an Indigenous name rather than the name of a European. We ought to have more cities in Australia carrying traditional Indigenous names.

I wanted to speak today about a number of pieces of work being done to close the gaps. They are not all directly connected with one another, but I do not think many of these efforts to close the gap are directly connected with one another either. One issue that I have been active on as a member representing a large number of public servants is ensuring that the Australian government meets its target of 2.7 per cent Indigenous employees in the Australian Public Service. This is of particular concern to me as a result of an issue raised by the CPSU here in the ACT recently—that the share of Indigenous public servants in the Australian Public Service has not been increasing but in fact declining, falling from 2.4 to 2.1 per cent. In an effort to work out what we can do to increase the share of Indigenous employees I wrote to all ministers asking what strategies they are employing to improve the share of Indigenous employees in their departments, and I thought I might share some of those strategies with the House today.

Several departments have structured mentoring, leadership or buddy programs for Indigenous Australians, focusing on career development and ensuring retention. Other departments hold national conferences for their Indigenous employees as an opportunity to share ideas and experiences. Some departments have Indigenous apprentice, cadet and graduate programs as well as particular Indigenous strategy teams within their human resources divisions. In certain cases those human resources divisions have developed memoranda of understanding with Indigenous studies centres at universities as a way of partnering with those centres to get talented university graduates. There are departments that already exceed the 2.7 per cent target and are aiming higher. They have set aspirational targets for 2015. One minister has an Indigenous advisor working on his staff and has had that advisor for a number of years. Several departments participate in the Learn Earn Legend! Work Exposure in Government program, administered by DEEWR. It is a program that aims to give Indigenous Australians exposure to work in the offices of parliamentarians and in the Australian Public Service.

There is also work being done across the APS through its Diversity Council to make diversity issues visible, and there have been efforts to make sure that public servants are offered leave for cultural and ceremonial purposes which are appropriate to the needs of those employees. Those include up to two days leave with pay for participation in NAIDOC Week activities and cultural and ceremonial events.

The targets are 2.7 per cent for departments that were below that threshold as at 2009, or a 20 per cent increase for departments that were above the threshold. I do hope that we will see the share of Indigenous employees in the public sector track upwards; perhaps even through use of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recruitment agencies, better working with existing Indigenous staff to design and deliver cultural appreciation training and through identified Indigenous positions—meaning not that the person who is successful in getting the position need be Indigenous but that they must understand Indigenous issues and take responsibility for communicating effectively with Indigenous people. Such positions may well be an important step towards increasing the share of public servants who are from an Indigenous background.

A second issue to which I want to draw the attention of the House is work being done by Canberra public servant, Daniel Billing, which has been publicised in the Canberra Times by their excellent education editor, Emma Macdonald. Mr Billing is working to provide home Kindles to Indigenous students. He noticed how his own seven-year-old took to the Kindle intuitively and enthusiastically, and so came up with a plan to fund Kindles for Indigenous students in an effort to boost their interest in reading. The ACT's only participant is Forrest Primary School sixth grader, Yulcailia Hoolihan-Mongta. At the time she received her Kindle, the 11-year-old had a reading age of nine and spent just 45 minutes a week reading. After 12 weeks with the Kindle she has increased her weekly reading to two hours and 20 minutes and gained about a year's worth of reading activity—a year's worth of reading activity just in that three-month period, according to her teacher, Gemma O'Brien.

I commend Emma Macdonald for her work in publicising the Indigenous Reading Project and Daniel Billing for his activism, as well has the many generous philanthropists who have donated towards it. But one philanthropic body is notably absent, and that is Amazon.com. Amazon.com has Australian sales, I would estimate, of around $1 billion a year. Based on the available estimates, they hold about one 10th of the $13 billion online sales market. And yet Amazon.com pay no GST, they pay no company tax and they make no charitable donations to a single Australian charity. A billion dollars in sales, and not a cent in charitable donations. I asked Amazon.com how they could defend this, but I got no comment. I think this is unacceptable; I think Amazon ought to recognise its duty to Australia to behave as a good corporate citizen. And I cannot see a better charity for Amazon to support in Australia than the Indigenous reading project. So as a Kindle user and a keen consumer of their products, I do encourage Amazon.com to become a better Australian corporate citizen.

Third, I wish to draw the attention of the House to the July 2012 report Evaluating new income management in the Northern Territory: First evaluation report by J Rob Bray and co-authors. This is an important report because it cuts through much of the ideology that has surrounded new income management in the Northern Territory. It focuses on the empirical evidence relating to income management.

It notes that there are few consistent impacts of new income management. Instead, there have been diverse outcomes. The report notes wide and inconsistent views and experiences of income management. There are many who wish to remain on the program, which has had a positive impact on their lives. There has also been a statistically significant improvement in the ability to afford food among those in the treatment group relative to the control group. There were other positive and negative aspects noted. The Basics card has been valued, but the loss of autonomy resented. Some subject to income management have noted that they find it restrictive or frustrating. There is a sense of a disempowerment.

We need more empirical evidence of this type. I commend Minister Macklin for commissioning this important research. It is only through taking a clearheaded look at the empirical data that we will be able to craft better policies. If closing the gap were easy, it would have been done by generations past. It is because that this is a difficulty task that we set ourselves to it.

Finally, let me acknowledge the Indigenous softball program, which I had the pleasure to be engaged with at the Hawker Softball Centre at an event last year. Softball has been a leader among sports in engaging with Indigenous Australians, particularly women's softball. There are Indigenous softball clubs springing up across urban, regional and remote Australia. I commend the work of Softball Australia in this area. Sport can help change lives and provide a sense of self-esteem and an enthusiasm to be involved in the community. Sport will play an important part in helping to close the gap.

I commend the statement to the House with a sense of optimism about the goals but also with clear-eyed realism about how far we have to go.

I spoke in parliament today about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS).

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 14 March 2013

I rise to speak on a petition scheduled to be tabled by the chair of the Petitions Committee on Monday. The principal petitioner is Ms Ariette Singer, a constituent of mine, who is concerned about funding for Myalgic-Encephalitis and its accompanying illness Multi-Chemical Sensitivities. The petition notes that ME/CFS has been classified as a neurological disorder by the World Health Organisation since 1969, but there are not currently universally recognised treatment protocols. Many sufferers are still undiagnosed or, as the petition argues, misdiagnosed. I was fortunate to meet in my electorate office with Ms Singer, who spoke with me about the challenges that ME/CFS and MCS presents her. She spoke to me about her hyper sensitivities to the extremes of temperature, chemicals, light, noise and smells, frequent migraines and the fact that other sufferers have even attempted suicide. I draw the House's attention to her concerns and those of other sufferers.

A terrific volunteer in my office, Samm Cooper, has also recently been diagnosed with CFS and so it is a condition of which I am well aware and one to which more attention should be paid.

I spoke in parliament today about a bill that will help counter tax avoidance and multinational profit-shifting.

Tax Laws Amendment (Countering Tax Avoidance and Multinational Profit Shifting) Bill, 14 March 2013

A strong tax system is fundamental to driving innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth, because it is only through a strong tax system that we are able to provide the infrastructure that business needs to thrive; it is only through a strong tax system that we are able to fund high-quality education and the research and development we know business depend on. So, making sure that we have a strong tax system with good anti-avoidance provisions is a pro-business measure. Those who oppose it—those who say that we ought to have a tax system with loopholes in it—are not pro-business; they are pro-loopholes. They are standing up for those who believe that there ought to be loopholes that those with cunning lawyers can use to avoid paying tax.

This bill puts in place measures that will counter tax avoidance and multinational profit-shifting. It will, as the speaker before me reluctantly acknowledged, protect significant amounts of revenue. Over $1 billion of revenue will be protected by these measures. That is what these measures are about. They are about ensuring that our tax system follows the values that Australians hold dear: the values of equality and fairness; the value of opportunity; the values that say that, just because you can hire the best lawyer in town, you should not be able to get an unfair advantage with our tax code. That is all this bill is about.

If you listen to those opposite, you might think that this bill has been cooked up in a Treasury dungeon somewhere and thrust upon the parliament, but nothing could be further from the truth. Treasury went through a normal public consultation process, as they do with tax reform bills of all types. But beyond that, in the case of this bill, the Assistant Treasurer set up an expert roundtable and Treasury used that expert roundtable extensively. So the views of those affected by these changes have been thoroughly canvassed.

As the member for Throsby acknowledged, there was a willingness on this side of the House to hold a parliamentary inquiry to look into this bill, but when the availability of members was canvassed it was found that, while government members were available in abundance—I cleared the day in my diary—opposition members were nowhere to be seen. So, when the member for Dunkley talks about courtesy, fundamentally the courtesy is of those in the opposition to be willing to attend an inquiry. When we found that there was not a single member of the opposition willing to turn up to this inquiry, we took the view that fundamentally the opposition were not particularly interested in holding a parliamentary inquiry. Had the members for Higgins, Wright and Moncrieff been willing to attend that inquiry, it might well have gone ahead. Had even one of them been willing to attend that inquiry, it might well have gone ahead. But all of them had more pressing concerns.

You would not have known that by listening to the member for North Sydney; you would not have known that from listening to the member for Dunkley. For them, this is just a big story about a government conspiracy. But, when it actually comes to making time to hold a parliamentary inquiry, opposition members were unable to do so. Now they have the temerity to turn up in the parliament and attack the government for failing to hold that inquiry. That is just not good enough. If you cannot make yourself available for a parliamentary inquiry, you forego the right to come into this parliament and claim that that inquiry should have gone ahead.

Let me go to some of the measures before speaking about the context in which they are being implemented. These amendments will maintain the effectiveness of the general anti-avoidance rule to counter tax avoidance. The role of part 4A is exposing the substance or reality of what taxpayers have done to the ordinary operation of the tax law. Taxpayers should not be able to avoid the tax consequences of what they have actually done by arguing that they would have done something completely different or nothing at all. They should not, in colloquial language, be able to have their cake and eat it too. In putting together this bill, with consultation with the public and the expert panel, we received legal advice from senior counsel with expertise in part 4A. So this is a balanced response to address problems without interfering with ordinary commercial activities. That is schedule 1.

Schedule 2 deals with multinational profit shifting. It is about bringing Australia's transfer pricing regime into line with OECD best practice. It is one of the reasons we have the OECD. It is aimed at sharing best practice, particularly in the area of taxes but also in areas like education and health. Here, we have looked to best practice across OECD countries and we have put in place these reforms to make sure that we do not have the tax base eroded and we do not have profits shifted. In doing that, we will protect a significant amount of revenue.

These powers directly reflect the OECD guidelines. There is not a broad new power. They have what is known as a ‘reconstruction power’ and they are an essential feature of a modern transfer pricing regime. The notion behind a reconstruction power is that it helps you tackle an artificial structure, not just an artificial price in an isolated transaction. It is no surprise that there are some who are at the moment using these loopholes and benefiting from the avoidance measures and multinational profit shifting, but they will not be able to do so under this bill. Those of us on this side of the House believe that it is fundamental to a fair go and fundamental to equal treatment of firms that they not be allowed to erode the revenue base in the process. If we are to fund the services that the social sector demands and that I know from my conversations with business people that they are keen to see then we need a strong revenue base. Less tax from one company just means more taxes that have to be paid by other companies and other individuals across the economy.

We know there is a strong demand for infrastructure spending. That is why this government has doubled the road budget and quadrupled the rail budget and spent more on urban public transport than all other governments since Federation combined. But we know there are still calls from business to spend more on infrastructure. Routinely, when business groups survey their members, infrastructure spending stands out as a key priority. Why wouldn't it? We had a period under the Howard government when the pause button was pressed on infrastructure spending and infrastructure decisions were made not based on the national interest but based on sectional political interests. One of my academic papers looked at the Roads to Recovery program. There you could see, even taking into account the population density of an electorate, that coalition electorates were receiving significantly more Roads to Recovery funding than were Labor electorates. That was because under the coalition infrastructure spending was too low and was not targeted to the areas most in need and not driven by cost-benefit analyses. That is not true under this government. But in order to maintain strong infrastructure spending we need a strong tax system to back it up.

A lot has been said in this debate about the general issue of tax reform under this government, so let me address directly some of the statements that the shadow Treasurer and the member for Dunkley have made about tax reform under this government. We have a proud record of tax reform. As economists and environmentalists alike have urged, we have put a price on carbon pollution, the most efficient way of addressing dangerous climate change. We have moved from a royalties regime to a profits based mining tax which make sure that when the world price goes up through luck rather than ingenuity the tax share goes up commensurately. We have put in place an instant asset write-off. We have tripled the tax-free threshold. Those opposite will sometimes ask, 'We had a low-income tax offset there; what do you mean you have tripled the tax-free threshold?' Let me be very clear: what I mean by that is that we have taken one million Australians out of the tax-filing system.

The member for Dunkley likes to talk about reducing red tape. One of the big forms of red tape for low-income Australians is filing an annual tax return. If those opposite were to get into power, they would put the responsibility for filing a tax return back onto a million Australians for no additional benefit to those individuals. We know from surveys that they take a day a year to file a tax return. So that would be an extra day a year gone for a million Australians were the coalition to come to office.

Mr Billson:  Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am enjoying the member for Fraser's contribution, but there are about 4½ minutes left for him to actually deal with the bill before the House. I encourage—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr S Georganas):  The member will resume his seat. The member for Fraser will continue.

Dr LEIGH:  I am addressing directly some of the statements made by the member for North Sydney and the member for Dunkley on the issue of tax reform and the suggestions that have been made that this reform to counter tax avoidance and multinational profit shifting has somehow come out of the blue. It is important to understand the context of tax avoidance and multinational profit-shifting laws. Their broad context is a Labor legacy of tax reform.

We have been committed to good tax reform, guided by the experts. We, for example, followed through with fuel tax reforms that were brought into parliament by Peter Costello in 2003, supported by the opposition right up until the last minute when they realised they could get some political mileage from backflipping on a Peter Costello reform—extraordinary stuff!

The reason we are committed to this bill to counter tax avoidance and multinational profit shifting is that we realise revenue must be raised as fairly as possible and must be spent as fairly as possible. That is why we have means tested the baby bonus, the private health insurance rebate and family tax payment part B. When the member for North Sydney went to London he talked about ‘The Age of Entitlement’. When he came back to Australia he said that reducing the Baby Bonus for second and subsequent children was like China’s one-child policy.

We need a bill to counter tax avoidance and multinational profit shifting because a strong tax system is essential to a fair society.

We have to protect that revenue because if we do not then that means increasing taxes in other places. That is fundamentally the problem that the coalition has in so many of these areas. They are constantly saying that there are taxes they are going to reduce, that there are revenue measures they are going to oppose. The effect is that they now have a $70 billion hole in their costings—not my figure, a figure of the member for Goldstein, subsequently backed in a few days later by the member for North Sydney, who said, 'well, $50 billion, $60 billion, $70 billion', as though there really was not much difference. What is a spare $20 billion between friends? Let me be clear as to the implications.

Mr Simpkins:  Where's your surplus?

Dr LEIGH:  I did look over because I thought briefly that the interjection might be the member for Wright turning up to this debate to explain where he was when we had the parliamentary hearing that was scheduled. But let me continue.

The bill before the House ensures that we protect revenue, because if we do not protect revenue then we get into the problem the coalition find themselves in. The problem the coalition find themselves in is a massive costings gap. That is because, if you are a special interest, the coalition welcomes you with open arms; but, if you are a struggling Australian family, the coalition puts up their hand. They want to cut the schoolkids bonus, which is $410 for primary schoolchildren and $820 for secondary schoolchildren. They want to take that away. They want to increase taxes on low-income Australians by bringing down the tripling of the tax-free threshold. They want to cut pensions, because they have to do that once they have gotten rid of the carbon price, that most efficient way of dealing with dangerous climate change.

This bill is part of a set of Labor reforms concentrating on making sure our tax system is as fair as possible. On this side of the House we will not be driven by special interests. We will be driven by the Australian national interest. We will be focused on the interests of Australians and on making sure our tax system is fair and equitable.