Media Release - Andrew Leigh welcomes appointment as Shadow Assistant Treasurer & Shadow Minister for Competition
MEDIA RELEASE
Andrew Leigh
Shadow Assistant Treasurer
Shadow Minister for Competition
Member for Fraser
FRIDAY 18TH OCTOBER 2013
I am delighted with the opportunity to serve in the Opposition’s economic team as Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Competition.
I thank my colleagues for giving me the chance to serve in the Shadow Ministry, and thank Opposition Leader Bill Shorten for entrusting me with this role.
Labor has a proud economic record. We saved Australia from recession, built vital infrastructure projects and invested in a better education system. With the carbon price package, we switched the tax mix: lowering the tax burden on work and increasing it on pollution. Inflation stayed low, and we maintained the open-economy settings that have helped raise prosperity.
The work of improving productivity and boosting innovation is vital in raising living standards for all Australians. And the ethos of the fair go demands policies that narrow the gap, rather than perpetuate inequality.
Over the next three years, I will be enthusiastically engaging with the business community, the social sector, the union movement, and my former colleagues in academia.
I particularly look forward to working with the other members of our economic team, including Chris Bowen, Tony Burke, Ed Husic and Bernie Ripoll.
ENDS
Friday Forum - ABC Canberra Breakfast with Ross Solly - 18 October
2CC Breakfast with Mark Parton - 15 October
TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2013
MARK PARTON: Well, we will get the full unveiling of the Labor front bench, the opposition front bench on Friday, but we know that Andrew Leigh, the Federal Member for Fraser is back where he belongs. He's a part of the main team. He's on the line now. Hello Andrew.
ANDREW LEIGH: G'day Mark. Thank you for that, that's very kind of you.
PARTON: Well, I mean and you know because I've said it publicly for a long time. I just am of the belief that you're one of the most talented and smartest people on the team and you should be in the cockpit driving the plane for God's sake. Now I'm sure, I'm sure that you know more about what portfolio you're going to end up with.
LEIGH: I don't actually. I haven't had the opportunity.
PARTON: Oh come on Andrew.
LEIGH: I'm looking forward to sitting down with Bill Shorten at some stage during the week, but haven't had the chance to even have that face-to-face discussion with him and, as he put it, if you have some sense as to what you're doing then go away and tell your spouse and then walk into an empty room and tell that empty room as well. So I'll be following that sage advice if I do find out what I'm getting.
PARTON: How does it work though? Like in the lead up to now and Friday, you can't tell me that you're not going to have discussions. Are you going to, I mean, do people lobby and say ‘hey, I'd really like this or I'd really like that’.
LEIGH: That's right. People will talk about where they think they'd be best placed to make a contribution. There'll be people who served for a while in particular roles and want to continue doing it. There'll be people who want to move on and Bill Shorten has to take all of that information, crunch it down and produce the best allocation of portfolios.
PARTON: Are you in a position to tell us what you'd like or would you rather not?
LEIGH: Well look, let's stick with your plane analogy Mark. I'm just excited to have gotten a ticket on the plane. I'm making no grabs for the cockpit controls just yet.
PARTON: I've gotta say, I'm a little taken aback by the way that the media focuses on these ructions and you know, the fact that some people are unhappy. Got to understand that everyone that runs for political office has an ego, because if you didn't have an ego, you couldn't do this job. And so when people, more than the required amount of people are going for a certain amount of positions, some of them are going to miss out, and it's not really all that remarkable that people that miss out aren't going to be happy.
LEIGH: That's right, and the other thing that you have is just, you have far more talent in the Labor Party room than there are spots available. So, you could easily fill a second front bench and you'd take people like Ed Husic, Stephen Jones, Kate Lundy. I could pretty comfortably put them up against Abbott ministers of the likes of Peter Dutton and Warren Truss and you'd still have a stronger second team than the Liberal Party's first team.
PARTON: Well, according to you Andrew of course, and of course you've got to say that, wearing that particular coloured jumper. A lot of ...
LEIGH: No, well there's a lot of talented people in that room and I particularly feel for Kate Lundy having missed out, but there's a lot of other people who came in in 2010 or earlier who haven't had the opportunity to serve in the ministry, who if given that chance would do so with distinction.
PARTON: Anna Burke is a feisty Labor soldier. Are you disappointed with the way that she's dealt with this or dealt with this set back of hers?
LEIGH: Anna's entitled to say in the media what she wants to, but I think she served us very well as speaker in very trying circumstances in that parliament there. It was a cauldron into which she was thrust, but that last period of the government where Tony Abbott was doing his best to try and make the parliament break, and Anna just looked back with eyes of steel and maintained order in the house.
PARTON: Can I tell you I never want to have a face-to-face argument with her.
LEIGH: She does seem to be one of the most terrifying people in the parliament, but she's also a very gentle person who's given me a lot of advice in my first term in parliament.
PARTON: But what fascinates me is she's carrying on about the fact that the factions are still ruling here in the one sentence, but in the next sentence then says ‘Oh, well yeah there's 12 women, but there's not enough from this faction’ and it's like, well hang on a second, you can't have it both ways.
LEIGH: Anna Burke has earned the right to make public comments without a whippersnapper like me cutting across it the next day. I'll do her that deference.
PARTON: Alright, there will be a lot made of the fact that there are 11 women in the front bench team. I personally think that there'll be too much made of it because, can I tell you, when I look at the former Labor leader in Julia Gillard, I don't necessarily see her as the first female prime minister, I just see her as the 42nd Prime Minister. To me, it's just about irrelevant the gender of people that are thrust into power. I'm sure you'll disagree with me.
LEIGH: Well I just think it's important to have a front bench that looks like Australia, Mark, and the Abbott front bench is really something out of Mad Men.
PARTON: Out of Mad Men?
LEIGH: Yeah absolutely. You've got one woman in the room, but if the foreign minister's plane is late coming back from an international engagement, as could well happen, then the cabinet is all blokes sitting down to make decisions about the nation's future. And the fact is that where you come from does influence your ability to make decisions. You know, I try and be as sensitive as I can to a range of views, but in the end, I'm a white middle-class bloke and a parliament full of white middle-class blokes, a cabinet full of white middle-class blokes is not a cabinet that's going to govern in the interests of all Australians. I think diversity's a great strength, and I think Mr Abbott's cabinet could have been stronger had he chosen to have more gender diversity as we have with our front bench.
PARTON: I just, I don't know. I just don't subscribe to this whole concept where we are, in some circles, expected to apologise for being a white middle-class bloke. I mean, I just don't get it.
LEIGH: It would matter to you in other dimensions wouldn't it Mark? I mean surely, you wouldn't think it was appropriate to have a cabinet that was all made up of people from Victoria? You'd say, ‘Well, that's pretty unrepresentative, and you'd say...’
PARTON: I don't know, I still reckon Andrew if all of the best people happen to be from Victoria, so be it.
LEIGH: Well, that's certainly not the view that Mr Abbott took. I mean, he was quite careful to achieve representation on a state basis because he thought, I think rightly, that there are different perspectives that come from representing different states. But he didn't apply that same principle to trying to have a cabinet that was representative by gender as we've done…
PARTON: …If only Sophie had got up...
LEIGH: …you never get these things perfectly right. I’m sorry?
PARTON: If only Sophie had got up.
LEIGH: Indeed. But even still, you would have had two women in the cabinet and there you would have been at the stage of maybe the cabinet of Afghanistan rather than being lower still. It's a bit odd to have as many women in cabinet as we had in 1975. I think the country has come a long way in that period. Most corporate boardrooms look more gender diverse than the federal cabinet does today. Diversity isn't everything but I think it matters.
PARTON: Andrew, obviously we're looking forward to finding out what particular gig you've got on Friday. Thanks for joining us this morning.
LEIGH: Thank you Mark.
Chatting Politics with Waleed Aly
Monday Political Forum with Richard Glover - ABC 702 Sydney
Labor shadow ministry - ABC 666 Canberra - 14 October
Breaking Politics - Fairfax Media - 14 October 2013
HOST TIM LESTER: So, Labor has a new cabinet and with Bill Shorten in the position of Opposition leader, the team can now take its places. We will learn this week, not only who is on the front bench but what roles they will have and one of the names kicking around is Andrew Leigh, the Labor MP in the electorate of Fraser, a regular on Breaking Politics. Welcome back Andrew.
ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks Tim.
LESTER: Tell us, what are your hopes for a frontbench spot?
LEIGH: Caucus will make that decision, now that we've changed the rules to allow democracy to flow through the party and I think that's a great thing. We're seeing a whole lot of opening up in the Labor Party, opening up of the selection of the leader to the membership which has been so warmly welcomed and now, going back to the system of the caucus choosing the frontbench. We're fortunate to have an array of talent comfortably fill two high-quality frontbenches, so it's going to be a tough decision for us collectively to make today.
LESTER: Now, I gather Chris Bowen is already the nominee for the position of shadow treasurer.
LEIGH: Yes.
LESTER: But you would naturally fit in an economic portfolio given your academic background in that regard. Do you think that's a chance?
LEIGH: I'll make a contribution to the economic debate wherever I am Tim. I am pretty passionate about this stuff. I got into parliament because I wanted to make a difference on increasing the growth of Australia and reducing the gap between rich and poor and I'll make that contribution whatever part of the Labor team I end up in.
LESTER: Bill Shorten as leader, what qualities do you think he brings to the job?
LEIGH: So Bill's pretty extraordinary at connecting with people across a wide range of walks of life. I've been a kitchen in Civic in the middle of Canberra. We were there to do an event with the chefs and Bill was the first bloke to walk over and shake the hand of the kitchen hand washing the dishes in the corner. It's the kind of guy he is. He's very good at connecting with people, making them feel comfortable and listening to their stories. He's a great speech-maker which I think is really important in terms of building a narrative of what we do because public policy is complex and it's only getting more complex. I think voters get turned off a bit if they feel that what you're doing is just a just cooked up policy designed to solve a political problem rather than telling the story, the long narrative about how we got there. He did that with DisabilityCare. He did that with the increase in superannuation. Storytelling really is a vital part of good policy, whether you are in government or opposition.
LESTER: Tony Abbott has just given a four year lesson in how Opposition works if you attack. He brought his own Opposition together and he brought down two prime ministers and ultimately a government. Does Bill Shorten need to have some of the attack dog, that Tony Abbott had in Opposition, in him.
LEIGH: Good critique's important Tim. But I think that people who say we ought to just ape the tactics of the Coalition are missing what modern politics is about. Politics isn't about Coke and Pepsi, where you see your competitor pursuing a strategy and you do your best to adopt that. Labor's role in Australian politics has always been as the generator of ideas. We need to be the party that is coming up with the next big reforms because we just can't leave that to the conservatives. That's not in their nature. That's not the way they operate. They block, they oppose, they maintain the status quo. We're the ones that build, whether it's university access or better schools. And so, we'll be working on the ideas game. But of course holding the government to account.
LESTER: Tanya Plibersek as deputy, which she do it well?
LEIGH: Tanya would be first rate as deputy. She's somebody who's extraordinarily well respected across the community. She did a tremendous job as health minister and somebody who, I think, is extraordinary in her ability, just to balance so much, to get to so many seats, to contribute to the policy, and, like me, she's got three little kids and I'm greatly impressed at how she was able to manage that with being a cabinet minister.
LESTER: Has Labor done itself a favour going through this process, or has it in fact perhaps undermined Bill Shorten by highlighting the fact that the rank and file actually didn't want him. They wanted Anthony Albanese by a ratio of almost, two-thirds of them wanted Anthony Albanese.
LEIGH: I think that whenever you see these sorts of split voting systems you can expect that certain parts of the electorate will go differently from other parts. That's what you see in this style of voting system whether it's run in New Zealand or Britain. That doesn't make it a bad system. People point to the 52% overall result that Bill Shorten got. But I got to say that looks like a landslide compared to the 50.6% of the Liberal Party party room that Tony Abbott got in 2009.
LESTER: Okay. You're concerned about economics. You're going to be watching them closely. Is this government worried and exercised enough about what's happening abroad in the U.S. with the potential debt default here, what that might become for Australia?
LEIGH: Well, a government shutdown is bad enough but the debt default is terrifying. It will almost certainly send the U.S. into recession. It would have massive negative knock-on effects for Australia. What worries me is that we see from reports today that Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann, in 2011 visited the U.S. to meet with the sorts of people who are looking at sending the U.S. over the edge of this cliff. He met with the extreme wing of the Republican Party, the Tea Party. He met with Grover Norquist. And you saw some of those tactics some of those tactics being used by the Coalition in the last term: the incessant railing about debt and deficits as if it would have been better to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs, the attacks on increasing the debt limit in Australia. Those sorts of Tea Party tactics were pursued by the Liberal Party in the last term of parliament and I think that was a terrible mistake to play footsie with some people who are really causing massive problems now for the world economy.
LESTER: To what extent do you think Matthias Cormann now realises this or do you think he has genuinely adopted those perspectives and they might be reflected in some ways in policy?
LEIGH: Well, we'll see that from Mr Cormann himself. I'd like to see him to repudiate people like Grover Norquist and the extreme Tea Party wing. It's not good enough for Mr Hockey to be standing over in the U.S. assigning blame to Democrats and Republican alike. This is a Republican-caused shutdown. You just have to be clear about those facts and too often the Government seems caught in with its ideological bedfellows in the U.S. Republicans, not enough pursuing the interests of Australians, being critical and assigning blame when it's due and doing our best to avert this debt default.
LESTER: While we're on the topic of Joe Hockey, the question of foreign investment has emerged. What do you make of Mr Hockey's latest comments on where the Government might go on the vexed question of foreign investment limits.
LEIGH: Well we warned the Liberal Party before the election that they were pursuing strategies that would get them into trouble overseas – that turning the boats back would offend Indonesia, that attacking Malaysia's human rights record would damage our relationship with a major ally, and that saying they would lower the foreign investment review threshold on China would make a free-trade agreement impossible. We know see that Mr Hockey's looking like back-flipping on that; increasing the foreign investment review threshold in order to strike a free-trade agreement. That will represent a broken promise from the Coalition who said the opposite beforehand. Barnaby Joyce campaigned very hard to make it more difficult for Chinese investors, not to make it easier as the Chinese would like to see.
LESTER: Andrew Leigh, as always, we're grateful for you coming in to Breaking Politics.
LEIGH: Thanks Tim.
Same-sex marriage - 666 ABC Canberra - 11 October 2013
This morning I spoke with ABC 666 Canberra Breakfast host Jolene Laverty in support of the ACT Government's same-sex marriage laws as something that will make our society stronger. Here's the full transcript:
ABC 666 CANBERRA with host Jolene Laverty
JOLENE LAVERTY: ACT is ready to fight to become the first jurisdiction in Australia to legalise same-sex marriage. It's expected to pass through the assembly with the full support of Labor and Green MPs. But really that looks like it's going to be the easy part. There has been a commitment from the Coalition Government to challenge any law in the High Court. Attorney General Senator Brandis has asked the ACT to withdraw the bill. We invited him on this morning. He was not available. We also asked Senator Zed Seselja who was also not available to comment. You may have heard in the news there with Mark Dawson that Zed has given some comment to ABC News. This is what Senator Seselja had to say:
ZED SESELJA: One is that I don't support same-sex marriage. Two, that I believe that same-sex marriage or marriage generally is the preserve of the federal parliament. So, whether your views are in favour of same-sex marriage or against same-sex marriage, the correct place for this to be debated is in the Commonwealth parliament. One thing I have always done is, I've always been upfront so people have always known my views on the issue. I don't think there's any secret. I've also, on this issue, even though my views on same-sex marriage are clear, what the issue is here is who has the power. I believe it's very clear that the Commonwealth parliament has the power. The ACT Assembly does not.
LAVERTY: Andrew Leigh is the Labor member for Fraser. Now, you've been quoted as saying you're disappointed but are you surprised?
ANDREW LEIGH: I am actually Jo. Thanks very much for the opportunity to speak about it. It’s quite usual for a federal government to challenge a state or territory law. It's an inherently political decision and it's a decision that I think, flies in the face of history and decency. The states and territories in fact, contrary to what Mr Seselja just said, had responsibility for marriage all the way up until 1961. So there's nothing in the Constitution that says that states and territories can't act here. The situation we are in arises from the Howard Government in 2004 narrowing the scope of the federal Marriage Act down to heterosexual marriages. That's left open the opportunity for the ACT to say, ‘well, if the federal law is going to just regulate heterosexual marriages, we'll have a parallel law that doesn't overlap, doesn't have anyone marry twice, which allows same-sex marriages’. I think that's perfectly reasonable and that the notion that George Brandis will go about trying to tear up ACT same-sex marriage certificates is, to me, pretty repugnant.
LAVERTY: Well they are challenging it because they say that same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. And they want to take it to the High Court. Do you think that's the right place to debate it?
LEIGH: The High Court will make its own judgement on this. The arguments as I understand them might well be quite finally balanced. I'm a former High Court associate and I certainly don't want to, as a politician, tread onto what they're doing. But what I will say is that the Attorney General didn't need to make this challenge. A challenge that like this would normally come from a private citizen rather than the federal government and I think it really reflects this archaic attitude to same-sex marriage that so many in the Coalition leadership seem to have. This idea that somehow their heterosexual marriages are threatened by allowing same-sex couples to wed. I just think that in a generation's time, people will look back at this and they will roll their eyes that there were parliamentarians who would fight this hard against the right of a same-sex couple to walk down the aisle.
LAVERTY: There is a lot of conversation about whether or not this should be debated in the High Court or taken to the parliament. What would be the difference there?
LEIGH: If the Federal Government isn't going to act on marriage equality - and it feels fairly likely that the bill won't be brought before the House - then it's perfectly reasonable for the ACT Government to act. What the ACT Government has said is, well, back nine years ago the Howard Government restricted the federal Marriage Act, so it only covered heterosexual marriages, so we're going to have our own ACT same-sex marriage law. It reminds me of the lovely line in the New Zealand same-sex marriage debate when one of the conservatives, Maurice Williamson, gave a promise to people who opposed same-sex marriage. He said 'I promise you, the sun will still rise tomorrow. Your teenage daughter will still argue back as if she knows everything. Your mortgage won't grow and you won't have skin diseases, rashes, or toads in your bed'. That, to me, sums up the debate. I think this is something that means an awful lot to those same-sex couples in the ACT who would like to marry their loved ones. It isn't going to weaken heterosexual marriages like mine. This is going to make us stronger as a society.
LAVERTY: It may mean an awful lot for those same-sex couples Andrew Leigh, but if the elected government has not prepared to accept same-sex marriage in Australia, then doesn't that then say that perhaps Australia's not ready for it?
LEIGH: Certainly when you look at popular opinion on this, I think it's changing faster than on any social issue that I have seen. I tend to think that attitudes on race and gender move glacially. But this one is moving with extraordinary pace. I mean, just in the time between when the federal parliament last voted and now, we've seen same-sex marriage been passed by conservative government in Britain and New Zealand. They've passed it because they believe, as conservatives, that the institution of marriage is one that's good for families. Don't forget that one-fifth of lesbian couples have kids in the home. Why wouldn't we allow those couples to have access to the institution of marriage, that stabilising institution of marriage, that I think could potentially good for kids in those households as it can for kids in heterosexual households.
LAVERTY: Which is interesting because that's part of the constitution as well, isn't it, that it can constitute over adoption and having children in the homes as well, which is part of the Marriage Act?
LEIGH: There are things that the federal Marriage Act covers but the argument that will be before the High Court is whether - in saying the federal Marriage Act only covers heterosexual couples - the federal government has effectively covered the field on marriage or whether it has inadvertently left open the space for the ACT Government to allow same-sex marriages. But really I think the federal government should let alone on this one. I think they should allow the ACT to pass its own laws. It should allow ACT same-sex couples to walk down the aisles to have the joys, travails, to have the same-sex divorces that will invariably flow. That's not harmful for Australia. There are other things that the Federal Government should be fretting about rather than challenging ACT laws and trying to rip up same-sex marriage certificates.
LAVERTY: We are going to be talk to constitutional law expert George Williams in just a moment but before I let you go Mr Leigh, the Labor leadership. It's been going some weeks now to find a new Labor leader. How do you think it's unfolding? What do you expect to happen?
LEIGH: As they say, the voters have spoken - we just haven't quite heard them yet. The result is there in the ballot papers and it's just a matter now of counting it. We'll have a caucus meeting on Sunday and welcome in the new leader. But I was really struck yesterday in the caucus, the sense of warmth and generosity that came from Mr Albanese and Mr Shorten speaking about each other, about the contest and just the sense that it is really provided yet another great reason to join the Labor Party. Because in the Labor Party unlike any other major or minor political party in Australia, members get to have a say in choosing their leader.
LAVERTY: Terrific. Thank you so much for making yourself available this morning.
LEIGH: Thanks Jolene.
LAVERTY: Bye bye. That is Andrew Leigh, who is our federal member for Labor.
Breaking Bad
Broken promises after just three weeks in job, The Daily Telegraph, 11 October 2013
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has made a great deal of the importance of keeping his promises. A few days before the election, he said that if he became Prime Minister: ‘you should move heaven and earth to keep commitments and only if keeping commitments becomes almost impossible could you ever be justified in not keeping them. And I suspect the electorate would take a very dim view even in those circumstances.’
And yet after just three weeks in the job, Mr Abbott has broken at least three promises.
First, Mr Abbott told Australians before the election that the nation was facing a ‘budget emergency’. In his campaign launch speech, he promised a budget update within 100 days of the election. Yet now he looks set to put off the mid-year budget update until 2014, well outside his 100-day timetable. As if that wasn’t enough, we have Joe Hockey – who spent his years as Shadow Treasurer railing against ‘debt and deficits’ – relying all the time on the misleading ‘gross debt’ figure to exaggerate how much we owe. Now, according to recent reports, Mr Hockey is looking for ways to reclassify debt so he can borrow more for his favourite projects. Could this really be the same party that held media conferences in front of a ‘debt truck’?
Second, after pledging that no public servants would be fired, Mr Abbott used his first full day in the job to fire three agency heads. All were career public servants who had worked for both sides of politics. Indeed, one had helped Peter Costello implement the GST, while another was chief of staff to Liberal Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock. Their crime was to state the obvious: that policies like turning back the boats and Direct Action (aka soil magic) won't work. Instead of a frank and fearless public service, it looks like the Coalition wants a flaccid and fearful public service.
Third, Mr Abbott said in no uncertain terms: ‘the assurance that I give the superannuants and the superannuation savers of Australia is that there will be no adverse changes to their superannuation arrangements under this Government’. But in order to pay for policies like cutting the mining tax, his own costings show that he will raise taxes on the superannuation of 3 million low-income earners. This group – two thirds of whom are women – will be adversely affected, with lower superannuation balances as a result. Mr Abbott’s broken promise will hit people like sales assistants, childcare workers and hairdressers, who already struggle to put enough into superannuation.
There are also smaller breaches. Speaking at the Garma festival in August, Mr Abbott left many in the crowd with the impression that he would spend his first week as Prime Minister in northeast Arnhem Land. While he does have a track record of spending more time in Indigenous communities than most parliamentarians, he hasn’t yet spent a week on Yolngu land. And following his visit to Indonesia, it’s becoming clear that his avowed ‘boat buyback’ policy will be nothing more than an assistance fund to Indonesia.
Then there are the policy areas where the public is being softened up for a backflip. Despite being slapped down by his leader, Education Minister Christopher Pyne is clearly angling to cap the number of people going to university, and scrap targets that aim to raise the participation of disadvantaged Australians. What does this say to the aspirations of a bright high school student who hopes to be the first in her family to get a degree?
Also on the chopping block is the Coalition’s promise to cut taxes every year in office. Not complying with Peter Costello’s Charter of Budget Honesty might have served them well in the election campaign, but now they’re in government, the books have to balance. It’s hard to see how you can offer a multi-billion dollar tax cut to big polluters, give $75,000 to millionaire families when they have a baby, and still reduce income taxes for the rest of us. It is impossible to raise spending, cut taxes, and pay down debt faster. Unless Mr Abbott works out a way of repealing the laws of mathematics, that is.
The longer Mr Abbott is in the job, the wider the gap between the reality and his pre-election rhetoric. If he really believes in open government, why do his ministers have to seek permission from the Prime Minister’s office before speaking to the press? If he wants to raise ethical standards, why is his ministerial code of conduct being written by a man who thinks it’s appropriate for taxpayers to fly him to a mate’s wedding? If he believes that men and women should be equal, why does cabinet have just one woman – as it did in 1975?
Over the next term, Labor will be working hard to develop policies that build a fairer and more prosperous Australia. But we will also be keeping Mr Abbott to account on his pledges. With three broken promises in three weeks, who knows how many we will see in the next three years?
Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.
Capital Hill - The Three Andrews
Here's the full transcript:
ANDREW GREENE: Joining me to discuss the day is Labor MP Andrew Leigh who's here in Canberra, and Liberal MP Andrew Laming in Brisbane. It's going to be a bit confusing but welcome to you both.
ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks Andrew.
ANDREW LAMING: Thank you.
GREENE: Before becoming Prime Minister, Tony Abbott declared there was a budget emergency though he has been reluctant to use the phrase since. The Grattan Institute's John Daley today told the National Press Club there's no emergency but it is plenty to be worried about.
JOHN DALEY: But there’s no flashing, blue lights. The Australian government budget is not in cardiac arrest on the operating table needing a triple by-pass to keep it alive. We don't have that kind of emergency but Australian government budgets are unfit, overweight and smoking and now they have high blood pressure and chest pains and most worryingly, I'd suggest, the patient has gone into denial and is eating more cheese.
GREENE: Well, firstly to you, Andrew Leigh in Canberra, we have seen an IMF report released overnight that again is warning of a slow-down in growth, rising unemployment. The current government is dealing with the legacy of Labor, isn't it?
LEIGH: The figures we've seen out of the IMF are broadly are in line with the Treasury updates before the election so I don't think there's anything to be surprised about in this. Clearly, risks in Europe with the banking system, risks in the US caused by the extreme wing of the Republicans pushing the country to the shutdown now and potentially even to a default on October 17th. I'm not sure Mr Abbott would be as congenial towards the Tea Party now as he was last year. But certainly it is not a time to be cutting jobs and Mr Abbott's pledge to cut 12,000 public service jobs is, I think, badly timed. David Johnston's suggestion that the Government might break its pledge to exempt defence is even more concerning.
GREENE: Andrew Laming in Brisbane, is the Coalition settled on whether we do have an emergency or not?
LAMING: Well, I think you heard it very clearly, Andrew, the economy effectively has chest pains, shortness of breath. To me, whether the house is smoking or fully alight, I guess the definition of emergency depends on how closely you are responsible for paying it off. So certainly I'm glad this government is utterly committed to doing that. The IMF's downgrade, shaving 0.1 or 0.2% off global forecasts, mostly reflects a reweighting of developing economies and they've taken between one and two per cent off some predictions there. They're very obviously concerned about the state of Europe one to five years before we can see any glimmers of hope there and what's happening in the US as Andrew Leigh said. For Australia, we have to be investing. I'd rather be building the roads of the 21st century than expanding or public service. You really are seeing in this Liberal Government a focus on front-line services.
GREENE: That's the point isn't it, Andrew Laming, you'd much prefer to be in Australia right now than anywhere else, Europe or the United States as you mentioned?
LAMING: And the IMF is effectively agreeing. In 2007 we had a large budget surplus, very, very strong and well regulated banks and we were able to negotiate what turned out to be a very deep ‘V’ recession worldwide with minimal recession here in Australia. Of course Australia did very well but when you look at the way we spent that money, it wasn't on economic infrastructure, in too many cases it was giving checks to people or paying for flat screens which certainly helped the South Koreans escape the GFC more so than Australia.
GREENE: Andrew Leigh, your response?
LEIGH: Well, Andrew Laming makes a lot of important points but he did say there was a mild recession in Australia. That's not correct. Australia didn't experience any recession, something that wouldn't have been the case if we'd insisted on keeping the budget on surplus all the way through. We did the economically responsible thing which was to take on modest levels of debt to support jobs. Now I see Mr Hockey, after railing against debt and deficits for years, is now looking at how he can put infrastructure spending off budget. He criticised Labor when we constructed the national broadband network in such a way that it wouldn't be on budget because it earned a return. Now the Coalition's NBN plan has a similar accounting treatment and they're looking at doing the same for roads. I think it's perfectly reasonable to invest in the infrastructure of the 21st century. Labor doubled the road budget when we were in office but it is passing strange that Mr Hockey has shifted from driving debt trucks around the country to now saying he'd like to have more debt for Australia.
GREENE: Andrew Laming, is now a time to consider borrowing for stimulus or for infrastructure?
LAMING: Well, when we look at the US's action, what Ben Bernanke has done has been [to] continue very strategically and innovatively stimulus measures innovatively stimulus measures in the US which has been far more severely affected than Australia has. These are decisions obviously for the Treasurer himself but certainly Australia continues to spend and continues to have earnings, the question is what do you spend this money on and what can you do to stimulate your economy with the everyday expenditures of government? The simple point that's come out of today is we can't afford to go into even more debt without carefully targeted economic infrastructure, roads of the 21st century is the best example of that.
LEIGH: Andrew is right about that and I agree with his priorities but you would question why the Coalition wants to get rid of the profits-based mining tax, a measure whose benefits would go disproportionately towards magnates like Clive Palmer and wedding host Gina Rinehart and you would question why you would put in place a paid parental leave scheme which gives $75,000 to millionaires to have a child when we know the savings rates of millionaires are amongst the highest in the country. So, if you want money to flow into the country I agree with Andrew, it needs to be infrastructure. So build fibre to the home NBN, invest in urban rail and don't cut urban public transport. They’re ways of making sure we get a strong economy.
GREENE: Andrew Laming, your final response?
LAMING: Look, effectively Tony Abbott's paid parental leave scheme is making sure that low and middle-income earning females are supported through having children. Primarily they are the ones who miss out. We're not talking about the highly-paid public servants. We are not talking about those in corporate Australia, many of whom already have paid parental schemes. This about looking after every woman in Australia and as Tony Abbott said it is a productivity measure and shouldn't be seen as a social welfare measure.
GREENE: Andrew Leigh mentioned Gina Rinehart quite cheekily with the wedding host title, if we can turn to the issue of travel entitlements. Andrew Laming in Brisbane, firstly, you were investigated in the past few years over printing allowances and you were cleared by that process. Do you think it's now time to have a look at the rules and regulations, get some perhaps more scrutiny in the system?
LAMING: Look, I don't for a minute think that we need to completely change the system because the system itself fully, fully releases all expenditure by politicians and you're seeing now evidence that the public, through the media, can scrutinise what politicians have done going back years. So it's important for politicians to be very cautious, to remember that everything they do that's funded by the taxpayer has to be legitimate work-related business and obviously there's a balance sometimes because there can be personal time involved in work-related travel. But we have seen dozens and dozens of politicians on both sides of the fence paying money back. I think every politician knows whenever they travel at public expense that that decision can be expose by a vibrant media on the front page of the newspaper or on shows such as these. And I think that's a great system as it stands.
GREENE: Andrew Leigh, as the member for Fraser in Queensland, perhaps you're not the one to ask about airfares as much but are economy airfares something to consider for MPs travelling short distances?
LEIGH: I’ve made that decision on a personal level, if I'm flying a short-haul flight to Sydney or Melbourne I'll book an economy-class fare and that's, I think, a decision that others can make personally. But I do think that the test that Andrew Laming identifies is absolutely the right one. Is this reasonable in the eyes of the taxpayer? When I look at the refusal of Bronwyn Bishop and Philip Ruddock to repay the costs of travelling up to the wedding of a parliamentary colleague, when I look at Mr Abbott's decision not to repay the cost of privately competing in the Port Macquarie Ironman I do raise an eyebrow. If it's the case that I can do a sporting event just because it's in a marginal electorate, then that means presumably next year I can go up and run the City to Surf in my own personal capacity as long as I pick a hotel to stay the night in that's in a marginal electorate in Sydney. That doesn't seem reasonable.
GREENE: Andrew Laming, are sporting events reasonable things to be claiming travel entitlements for?
LAMING: I'm a strong supporter of senior political leaders being involved in large community events. I’d strongly support politicians competing and participating in events like that. We get to the ridiculous situation where you can sit at the grand final and watch it on entitlement but once you throw a jersey on and participate then you can't. I want to see politicians that do what every-day Australians do, I want to see them at the beach, meeting with the surf club. I want to see them doing events, participating and having a go and you'll find when leaders do that the entire event and entire town is aware of it and has the opportunity to engage those political leaders. I'm a strong supporter of that. The point about travelling economy is interesting. It should be noted discount business airfares are about the same price as the economy tickets that politicians often choose to buy. So the only way to save money for the Commonwealth is to fly on these non-flexible ready deals which are often not taken up by politicians. Just coming out of the business cabin of an aircraft doesn't save much money.
GREENE: Andrew Laming, on that point, in 2011 when you were very critical of then Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and his overseas travel bill, you suggested Wotif.com and various web specials. Is this something perhaps Julie Bishop could embrace, she could be jumping on Wotif?
LAMING: Certainly I use them and most politicians I suspect do that. I guess, again, it's the public expectation test. Is $7,000 a night reasonable to stay in an overseas hotel or is it 700? Again, it gets the media test and public-interest test to decide those kinds of decisions.
GREENE: So to be clear, politicians should perhaps be looking at online deals?
LAMING: If you're asking me that question, look already in many cases where you’re presented with a global budget then the test for the politician to use the money as well as they can, representing their electorate or nation. So in many cases, in my case in particular as a federal politician, I have a limited pot of travel for family to accompany to Canberra, for instance, and we use that extremely judiciously to maximise the opportunities for my small family to be in Canberra, something I don't enjoy as much as Andrew Leigh who lives in our fine capital. We have a capped amount and use it as well as we can. I make the simple point that where there is a more expeditious way to travel then politicians, I think, are always looking to do that.
GREENE: Before we move on from this topic, we have been asking all MP s have either of you, beginning with Andrew Laming, had a need to update the registry in the past few weeks?
LAMING: No, I haven't but certainly years ago I paid back taxi fares, for instance, in my first year as an MP. I certainly add my name to the list of someone who's paid money back.
LEIGH: I flew to Melbourne last week on an economy fare, was upgraded to business and that's reportable so I reported that upgrade. Just to the broader point though, I think Labor has been very reasonable through this. For example with Mr Abbott's Pollie Pedal event, we haven't said we think that's inappropriate but we have encouraged the Government to look at a broader review of the way in which these entitlements are used. We'd like to see the system tightened up and I'm concerned that there are so many senior members of cabinet that seem to think that it's appropriate, for example, to use parliamentary entitlements to attend weddings or private sporting events. I agree with Andrew Laming, it's great to see parliamentarians competing in sporting events. But I just don't see why the taxpayer needs to foot the bill.
GREENE: Just before we end this evening, we will see the Labor caucus ballot tomorrow, Andrew Leigh, when we move ahead to the front-bench positions. Will you be expecting a call-up?
LEIGH: This is a matter for the caucus. The caucus selects the front bench and that's a decision we'll make collectively. I think that’s a great thing. And one of the things that you notice, if you look through the Labor caucus, you have an absolute wealth of talent. You've got a diversity of experience, people coming in having worked in the public and private sector, having worked as truck drivers and teachers. So we will be spoiled for choice in selecting our front bench in coming days.
GREENE: And on that point we'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much to our guests Andrew Laming in Brisbane, and here in Canberra, Andrew Leigh.
LEIGH: Thanks to the Andrews.
GREENE: That's Capital Hill for now. Good evening.