Andrew Leigh

ARE BELCONNEN DELAYS A SIGN OF MORE PAIN ON THE WAY?

The Abbott Government has let another week go by without word on the future of the Department of Immigration in Belconnen.

Instead of announcing a decision on this drawn-out procurement process, this week Public Service Minister Eric Abetz floated the idea of slashing the Australian Public Service even further.

Connected communities: how Australia’s social capital declined, and what we can do to rebuild it

Address delivered to the Municipal Association of Victoria’s ‘Future of Communities: Power to the People’ National Conference

Melbourne

Manal Kassem had chosen the inner city of Sydney for her wedding photoshoot, but she was a little hesitant. It was Saturday 20 December 2014, and during the week a lonely gunman, brandishing an Islamic flag, had taken eighteen people hostage in a nearby café. After a lengthy standoff and a final gunfight, two were left dead.

In the wake of the Martin Place siege, Manal Kassem feared she would be judged. A Muslim bride from Punchbowl in Sydney’s West, she would be wearing a white hijab at her wedding and inner city photoshoot.

Rather than cancelling or relocating the big day, she chose to offer a gesture of respect to the country in which she hoped to raise her children.

As soon as the wedding ceremony finished, she and her groom ventured to the Martin Place memorial, where she laid her wedding bouquet alongside the other floral tributes.

As the onlooking crowd applauded, Martin Place – not long earlier the site of one of Sydney’s greatest tragedies – seemed to transform into a symbol of our connectedness. A multicultural Australia was united to collectively mourn the loss of lives in Martin Place.

But was this scene unusual? Are we always this connected? Our sense of community spirit is strengthened in moments of tragedy or triumph, but does it also exist in the trivial? 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE

TUESDAY, 25 AUGUST 2015

SUBJECT/S: Share market turmoil; Income tax; Industry assistance to BlueScope Steel; Australian involvement in Syria.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Markets have been on a rollercoaster today, recovering slightly after heavy falls yesterday and in early trading. The Australian share market's benchmark ASX 200 has jumped 2.7 per cent, defying further steep falls in China and across Asia. Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh joins me now. Hi, welcome back.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: G'day Patricia, good to be with you.

KARVELAS: Have share markets bottomed out? What do you think?

LEIGH: Share markets are notoriously tough to forecast, Patricia. But certainly we've seen some huge falls over the last few days. We've seen this 8 per cent fall from the Shanghai Composite, the Nikkei in Japan is down 4 per cent, European stocks are down about 4 per cent. The Australian stock market yesterday fell back down to where it was in 2013. So these are pretty troubling developments and certainly speak to some of the concerns in the global economy. The first of those is the Chinese stock market and the devaluation there, and the second is the end of very low interest rates in the United States, which investors know is coming.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 24 AUGUST 2015 

SUBJECT/S: Taxation reform; China free-trade agreement; NDIS; Canning by-election

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda. Thanks for your company this Monday. With me now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, and in Melbourne we've got the Assistant Social Services Minister, Mitch Fifield. Thanks for your time gentlemen. Mitch Fifield, first to you: more calls for tax cuts from the Treasurer but how are they going to be paid for? He's got the idea but not necessarily the solution here.

MITCH FIFIELD, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Kieran, as you know we are for lower and simpler and fairer taxation in Australia. We've demonstrated that with the abolition of the carbon tax and the mining tax. We will have more to say in the future about personal income tax through the taxation white paper process. But we're not hearing any talk from the other side about how to reduce Australia's levels of taxation. Labor still want to bring back the carbon tax, they want to call it a different name, they want to call it an ETS. So I think the people of Australia really have two competing visions when it comes to taxation.

GILBERT: But I guess the question is, Senator Fifield, how do you fund this when it would run into the billions to bring the Australian marginal tax rate down to, say, a nation's like New Zealand for example.

FIFIELD: Kieran, I'm not here today to announce a Coalition taxation policy. We have the tax white paper process which is there for a reason. It's meant to gain views from the Australian community and Australian business as to how they think our taxation system can be more competitive. There are a number of stages to that tax white paper process and we will have more to say about personal income tax as part of the process.

GILBERT: Well it's a starting point I guess. Andrew Leigh, the point is that compared to other nations our marginal tax rates are not competitive, are they?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Well Kieran, if you look at what they call the tax wedge across the OECD, Australia is below average for income taxes. Our total tax take puts us in the bottom handful of countries in the advanced world. 

We should always be trying to craft a better income tax system but if the average Australian had a dollar for every time they were promised tax cuts from Joe Hockey, they'd be as rich as he is.

The simple fact is, Joe Hockey is all hot air and no action when it comes to tax reform. Labor has announced our multinational tax plan and our superannuation plan. These are tax reforms that make a difference to the budget bottom line but are also fair and sustainable. 

Joe Hockey's tax disclosure wind-back is a 'reform' nobody asked for, The Guardian, 21 August

This week’s Parliamentary sittings began with the tabling of a Senate report into how some big companies are dodging their tax bills. The report found that billions of dollars are draining offshore through holes in the tax system. It called for better tax transparency to hold companies accountable for shirking their fair share.

Asked on ABC radio what the government was doing about the problem, Treasurer Joe Hockey pointed out that a law requiring the tax office to disclose the tax paid by large firms was about to come into effect. What he didn’t say was that he was about to gut that law.

The Parliamentary week has ended with the Abbott Government introducing a bill to help some of Australia’s biggest companies keep their tax dealings secret. This means we’ll never know just how much dodging they may be getting away with. Far from backing better transparency, the Abbott Government is actually working to shield huge firms from any public scrutiny.

The Coalition’s bill is designed to eviscerate transparency laws Labor put in place in 2013. Labor’s laws require the Australian Tax Office to publish information about the income and tax paid by companies earning more than $100 million.

MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,CANBERRA

THURSDAY, 20 AUGUST 2015

Recently scientists have been exploring a creature known as the sea squirt. It is a fascinating creature. It is a simple creature whose job in life is to try and locate a place on the sea floor, where it will sit and feed for the remainder of its life. It takes a little while to discover that place, but once it does, it begins absorbing parts of its body. It absorbs its tail, its eye, its spine and, finally, it eats its brain. That’s right, the sea squirt gets to where it wants to be and then eats its own brain.

I am sure I not the only one in this House who, when I hear about the sea squirt, starts to think about the history of the Abbott government. They had a brain that was devoted to getting where they needed to be and, once they gained power, they just ate their own brain. 

Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2015 Measures No. 2) Bill 2015 

Second Reading Speech

19 August 2015 

I say at the outset that the opposition supports this bill, which contains four schedules. Schedules 1, 3 and 4 are non-controversial, technical changes with no fiscal impact. Schedule 1 provides tax relief for certain mining arrangements. Schedule 3 deals with income tax look-through treatment for instalment warrants and similar arrangements. Schedule 4 deals with certain categories of company losses.

Schedule 2 is the material schedule of the bill; it increases the statutory effective life of in-house software from four years to five years. This means that deductions will be claimed over five years for expenditure allocated to software development pools. The measure is recognition of the fact that software developed in-house has a longer effective life now than it had in the past. The saving is not inconsiderable—$420 million over the forward estimates.

IT’S OFFICIAL – GOVERNMENT’S TOP TAX PRIORITY IS GUTTING TRANSPARENCY

The Abbott Government has today shown that its top priority on tax is helping big companies keep secret how much they really pay. 

In the very same week a major Senate report has called for better tax transparency, the Abbott Government has introduced legislation to gut Australia’s existing tax transparency laws.

This morning, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will table a bill that will roll back Labor’s transparency rules, introduced in 2013.

These laws require the Australian Tax Office to publish information about the income and tax paid by companies earning over $100 million a year.

Joe Hockey was spruiking these very rules on ABC Radio just three days ago when arguing against the need for better transparency.

ABBOTT’S CUTS LEAD CSIRO TO SELL THE FARM – LITERALLY

Australia’s premier research agency has been forced to turn property developer to make up for the Abbott Government’s deep funding cuts.

Today, the CSIRO announced it is seeking approval to re-develop a major tract of land in Canberra that has previously been used for agricultural research.

The agency has asked the National Capital Authority to re-zone the Ginninderra Field Station Site on the Barton Highway as 'Urban Area' in the next amendment to the National Capital Plan, due out next year. This would allow CSIRO to sell or build on the site for commercial development.

CSIRO would not need to sell off its assets if the Abbott Government hadn’t slashed $115 million from its funding in the 2014 Budget.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE

TUESDAY, 18 AUGUST 2015

SUBJECT/S: Marriage equality; Dyson Heydon; EPBC Act.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: We're joined in our Parliament House studio by Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Dr Andrew Leigh – hi Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: G'day Patricia.

KARVELAS: And the New South Wales Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos. Hi Arthur.

ARTHUR SINODINOS, SENATOR FOR NEW SOUTH WALES: Hi Patricia.

KARVELAS: Let's start with you, Arthur Sinodinos: why do frontbenchers need the riot act read to them? What's going wrong?

SINODINOS: Because last week we had a process of discussion in the party room on same-sex marriage which came to a disposition, which later became a decision, about a process for allowing the people to have a vote on this in the next Parliament. So then what happened afterwards is that various frontbenchers were out there, before there'd been a Cabinet discussion, giving their view about the form in which this consultation of the people should occur. What the Prime Minister was indicating, I think, in the party room today was that this is not the appropriate way to go about it and with the Canning by-election coming our way very soon, we need to make sure we are speaking with one voice and restoring Cabinet government so we can get on with focusing on the things that matter most to the people of Australia.

KARVELAS: But I've got to ask, Arthur Sinodinos, is there a position? You don't really have one yet – there’s only a sort of half position.

SINODINOS: The undertaking the Prime Minister gave to the party room was to come back with a process after consulting the Cabinet, and bring it to the party room in the next little while. I think that means, probably, when we're next sitting again.