Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

FRIDAY, 5 JUNE 2015

SUBJECT/S: Abbott Government gutting tax transparency; Economic outlook; Climate inaction; Monis letter

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning everyone and thanks for coming out on another gorgeous Canberra winter's day. In 2013 the Labor government helped change the laws to make sure that the tax office would publish information of the total income and tax paid by Australia's largest firms. What counts in this place is not what you say about tax transparency but what you actually do. Joe Hockey has had his fair share of big talk – in fact he's even said that firms that didn't say their fair share were thieves. But in 2013 he voted against Labor's tax transparency laws and now he's trying to wind them back still further. Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey don't want you to know how much tax big companies are paying. They want to stand on the side of keeping tax a secret rather than on the side of openness and transparency. Happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: My reading of the exemptions though is that it's only exempting some companies from having to disclose their total incomes, aren't they? That's what the draft changes involve?

LEIGH: It's a rollback. These are laws that ought to apply to every big firm.

ABBOTT GOVERNMENT GUTTING TAX TRANSPARENCY

The Abbott Government has shown its true colours on tax transparency after months of talking tough about tackling corporate tax avoidance.

Late yesterday afternoon the Government quietly published draft legislation to amend Labor’s 2013 tax transparency laws.

These laws require the Australian Tax Office to publish information about the income and tax paid by companies earning over $100 million. They are designed to ensure an open and informed public debate about how much tax our biggest companies really pay.

The Abbott Government now wants to roll these laws back to exempt several hundred privately-held companies from the disclosure requirements.

Running Group Builds Fitness and Pride, The Chronicle, 2 June 2015

As we stood in the pre-dawn light, the moisture from our breath condensing in the air, someone announced that the temperature had risen… to zero.

We were at a park in Queanbeyan, with a group known as the ‘Deadly Runners’. Formed by Georgia Gleeson last year, the goal was to build fitness and pride in the local Indigenous community, with the goal of running the 5km Mother’s Day Classic.

CORMANN COMES CLEAN ON TAX COSTING

The Abbott Government has absolutely no idea what the fiscal impact of its main multinational tax measure will be because no costings were prepared ahead of its inclusion in the Budget.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann admitted in Senate Estimates that the Government could not give revenue estimates for the proposed Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law because this is completely uncosted: 

REGULATORY BURDEN PILES UP FOR CHARITIES THANKS TO ABBOTT’S UNCERTAINTY

If the Abbott Government is serious about cutting unnecessary regulation, it must commit to keeping the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission open permanently.

In Senate Estimates this morning, Charities Commissioner Susan Pascoe said the uncertainty about the commission’s future is creating confusion for Australian businesses and consumers. It is also holding up progress on streamlining charity laws.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

MONDAY, 1 JUNE 2015

SUBJECT/S: Abbott Government’s $100 billion Budget hole; Intergenerational Report advertising spend; Marriage equality

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning. I’m Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer. We now learn that despite the Government putting up a deeply unfair budget, they're now spending more and more hard-earned taxpayer dollars on trying to promote it. Originally the fee that was going to promote the Intergenerational Report was $11 million. It's now been revealed through more detail in the Budget papers that the Budget ad campaigns will cost $36 million. At the same time, we’ve seen from the Parliamentary Budget Office that the cumulative deficit over the next decade will amount to $100 billion. This is because the Government keeps putting up measures which are just so deeply unfair and so at odds with the Australian values. They’re refusing sensible savings measures such as Labor's multinational tax package and our high end superannuation package, which together add more than $20 billion to the budget bottom line over the coming decade.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 1 JUNE 2015

SUBJECT/S: Marriage equality; Citizenship law changes; Budget

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda. With me now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Alan Tudge. To you first Alan Tudge on the same-sex marriage issue: do you feel that there is a group within your party or a momentum within your party towards marriage equality?

PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE PRIME MINISTER ALAN TUDGE: I think some people have shifted but I don't know where the numbers sit. I think if a vote was taken, it would be very close. But at the moment, we're absolutely focused on getting the Budget measures through the Parliament. That's our unashamed focus at the moment. The Budget was just handed down only seven sitting days ago, it's got some important measures which we want to introduce into the parliament– particularly the small business tax cuts and the instant asset write-off for small businesses which will turbo -boost that sector of the economy.

GILBERT: Are you cynical about the Opposition Leader's timing?

TUDGE: I am a bit cynical, because I think that Bill Shorten is under pressure as a leader and he doesn't want to discuss our small business package. He doesn't want to discuss jobs and he doesn't want to discuss national security measures. I think that he's a leader who is under pressure and wants to talk about anything else other than those issues. Hence he's putting forward this same-sex bill.

ANOTHER WEEK WITH NO NEWS ON BELCONNEN’S FUTURE

Yet another week has passed and the Abbott Government is still keeping silent on the future of the Department of Immigration in Belconnen.

The uncertainty created by Peter Dutton and Mathias Cormann has already hit businesses and the local community. Now, it seems it is also harming the department itself.   

Reports earlier this week indicate Immigration has lost 15 of its senior executives this year – almost one experienced manager a week.

Inequality: still a fair way to go, The Australian, 29 May

If you returned from work one day and found your home flooded by a gushing faucet, the first thing you’d do is turn off the tap. But once you’d stopped the water rising, could you then go about your evening as though nothing else was amiss? Only if you’re willing to overlook the rather pressing problem of everything you own being underwater.

This is the misguided approach we’ve seen recommended by some commentators recently in response to a new OECD report on inequality. The report shows that the gap between the rich and the rest has been relatively stable in Australia in the period 2006 to 2012, even as it has continued to rise in other countries like America.

Importantly though, the report also shows that Australia remains a very unequal place. On the OECD’s figures, the richest tenth of Australians now own 45 per cent of this country’s wealth. The top twentieth have nearly ten times the wealth of the typical household. There are 50 people living amongst us who together have more wealth than the poorest 2 million Australians.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures tell a similar story. Since the mid-1970s, earnings have grown three times as fast for the top tenth than the bottom tenth. If cleaners and checkout workers had enjoyed the same percentage wage gains as surgeons and financial dealers, they would be $16,000 a year better off.

Inequality may not have risen in the six years between 2006 and 2012, but it remains a pressing problem that should concern anyone who is interested in maintaining Australia’s strong traditions of opportunity and fairness.

LAUNCH OF THE FINANCIAL SERVICES COUNCIL NATIVE TITLE STANDARD

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

Thank you to Aunty Matilda House for that very fitting welcome to country, and thanks to Sally Loane and the Financial Services Council for inviting me to share in today’s launch. I acknowledge the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion, and also my counterpart and occasional sparring partner, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. All political sparring gets put aside when we come together to mark worthwhile initiatives like the one the Financial Services Council is launching today, and particularly when we do so during National Reconciliation Week.  

A little while ago I was reading some research done by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, on the experience of Indigenous communities managing their native title rights once these have been recognised in Australian law.