Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS ON THE HOUR WITH TOM CONNELL

TUESDAY, 11 APRIL 2017

SUBJECT: Housing affordability.

TOM CONNELL: There's another litany of stories about housing affordability today, with the Coalition seemingly wrestling over just what to do. We know Labor's plan – it's been settled since before the last election – they will reduce the Capital Gains Tax discount and keep negative gearing only for new homes. Of course, grandfathering both of those measures. We've seen house prices climb a lot higher since then – in Sydney, in Melbourne – is the policy still fit for purpose? Joining us now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Thanks for your time today.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, Tom.

CONNELL: The plan that you've got at the moment. The intention – we're talking about stalling house prices. Do you need more than that in Sydney and Melbourne given 15-19 per cent increases? Do you need prices lower?

LEIGH: Tom, let's just look at what happened at the end of last year where house prices in Melbourne and Sydney were rising nearly ten times as fast as wage growth. So you get this phenomenon – I've struck it with young couples in my electorate – where they'll come to me and they'll say, 'I nearly had the deposit and then a few more auctions went by and suddenly I was priced out of the market.' The challenge is not driving house prices down, it's just making sure we don't continue to see this massive mismatch – terrible wages growth and house prices going gangbusters because investors are now half of the new buyers. 

ONE YEAR ON FROM PANAMA PAPERS,

WHAT HAS THE COALITION DONE TO STOP MULTINATIONAL TAX AVOIDANCE?

This week marks the first anniversary of the unprecedented Panama Papers leak that detailed the legal twists, turns and loopholes multinational companies and individuals use to avoid tax.

Multinationals who feared the Turnbull Government would be jolted into action will be popping corks on the Dom Pérignon.

Hard-working Australians who expected the Turnbull Government to close tax loopholes and increase tax transparency are left bitterly disappointed.

The past year has seen the Turnbull Government launch a phoney war on tax avoidance. They want middle Australia to think they’re getting tough with multinationals, while at the same time they give their mates a $50 billion tax cut.

The Turnbull Government’s failures on tax avoidance include:

THE HON ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

THE HON MARLENE KAIROUZ MP

MINISTER FOR CONSUMER AFFAIRS, GAMING AND LIQUOR REGULATION

MEMBER FOR KOROROIT

2017 IS THE YEAR FOR CHARITY FUNDRAISING REFORM – BUT NOT IF YOU’RE MALCOLM TURNBULL

 Outmoded charity fundraising laws are holding back innovation, jeopardising trust and wasting valuable resources in the sector. 

At today's #fixfundraising event, leading voices in the sector made it clear that bringing charitable fundraising regulations under the Australian Consumer Law is the answer to the problem. 

As the sixth Coalition Minister to take responsibility for the charity sector in four years, Michael Sukkar must make it his first priority to be clear with the #fixfundraising alliance by answering one simple question: does the Turnbull government believe the Australian Consumer Law is the right regulatory framework for fundraising?

SPEECH TO JUSTICE CONNECT’S

‘FIX FUNDRAISING’ EVENT

WEDNESDAY, 5 APRIL 2017

MELBOURNE

 ***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

 Thank you for the generous introduction. You were good enough to run through my various titles, but for the purposes of today only one of those matters. I am proud to be the first Shadow Minister for Charities and Not-for-Profits. Under a Shorten Labor Government, I would be the first Minister for Charities and Not-for-Profits. I have had consistent responsibility for that portfolio since Labor lost office in 2013.

I note that Assistant Minister Michael Sukkar has just taken over responsibility for charities in the Turnbull Government. I look forward to working with him - as I've done with his five predecessors over the past four years. 

Adam Smith, one of the founders of modern economics, is best known for his book The Wealth of Nations, but in an earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith gave what I think is one of the best answers to the question of how we should spend our lives. He wrote, 'to be amiable and be meritorious, that is to deserve love and deserve reward, are the great characters of virtue. Man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely. To be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.'

Talking with people in business, I'm often struck by how well Smith's words encapsulate what we aspire towards. Most people don't just want to make money, we want that sense of inner tranquillity that comes from feeling that we are decent, ethical and admirable. In Smith's formulation, most of us want to be 'lovely'. Being involved in charities and philanthropy is one way we can do that. The typical career lasts only about 80,000 hours, and most of us want to make a contribution in that time.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS - AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 3 APRIL 2017

SUBJECT/S: Newspoll, Scott Morrison’s tax cut for big business.

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda, with me this morning is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Just in terms of that point there, the 10 point support for Greens, 10 point support for One Nation, does it show as David and I have been suggesting that the two major parties are on the nose right now?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning, Kieran. I think it's always important for major parties to continue to press our case and to the question of bipartisanship Labor has worked constructively with the Government where we can see ways that are making fair budget savings. We've supported over $100 billion of savings where they were reining in payments going to people in the higher end of the spectrum. But that doesn't mean we need to support a GP co-payment, cuts to pensions, cuts to Medicare – those sorts of things run directly counter to Labor values and we've stood up on those. If you look at the Newspoll today I don't think it's a great surprise that after a week spent fighting for tax cuts for the top end of town and for penalty rate cuts for those working on Sundays and to weaken down racial hate laws that Malcolm Turnbull is on the nose for many Australians.

GILBERT: In the idea of that grand bargain notion between the major parties, I think that that would go down well for the vast bulk of the population wouldn't it? In areas where there are common interest here in terms of the two major parties and your view of the national interest?

                      Australia can prevent the Global Gag Rule’s catastrophic statistics,                           Huffington Post, Friday 31 March 2017

Do you remember when Donald Trump described himself as “very pro-choice”.

I do.

I also vividly remember the photo of President Trump in the White House – surrounded by men – signing the Global Gag Rule he supercharged this year.

While some Madagascan women and girls may have missed that photo, many of them will suffer mightily from this Global Gag Rule’s implementation.

This is because President Trump signed into existence a much more extreme and destructive Global Gag Rule. Previous versions of the rule prohibited any non-governmental organization from having any involvement with abortion in order for it to receive any funding from the U.S. for family planning activities.

The rule meant that an organization couldn’t even use its own money to provide abortions, or to assist a doctor to provide or counsel a patient as to her best care, or refer that patient to another place for necessary medical care. It meant that patients couldn’t be given condoms to reduce HIV transmission.

The President aggravated this directive by extending it to all global health funding for any aid program that was linked in any way to abortion funding, not just family planning. The rule now applies to 15 times more funding, which will result in over US$9 billion in global health funding being affected.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

ABC AM WITH SABRA LANE

RADIO INTERVIEW

THURSDAY, 30 MARCH 2017

SUBJECT: Government’s tax cut for big business; sugar industry Code of Conduct

SABRA LANE: Today's the last scheduled parliamentary sitting day before the main budget and it appears certain the Federal Government's plan to cut the tax rate for all businesses to 25 per cent won't get through the Senate. The Coalition's Enterprise Tax Plan was the centrepiece of last year's budget. Labor doesn't support it and it also lacks support from the entire Senate crossbench, although the government last night won over One Nation Senators for part of the tax plan, as Julia Holman reports from Parliament House.

JULIA HOLMAN: The government needs the support of a disparate group of crossbenchers in order to get its legislation through the Senate. One impasse was smoothed over last night – with a national Code of Conduct drafted for the sugar industry. The Treasurer Scott Morrison.

 SCOTT MORRISON, TREASURER: I wouldn't call it an expansive code. It's not controlling prices, it's not re-regulating the industry, or anything like that. It's our view that these issues should be sorted out commercially. But when they can't be sorted out commercially, we're not going to allow it to turn to seed. There is a mechanism to ensure that things get sorted. 

HOLMAN: Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Senators had earlier this week threatened to abstain from voting on government legislation until the sugar issue - which was affecting some Queensland growers - was sorted out. One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts is claiming victory for his party. 

Why Corporate Australia Should Care About Inequality, Business Insider, Friday, 30 March 2017

When we talk about tax policy, we often say that good tax reform needs to be efficient, equitable and simple. But too often, equity becomes the ugly duckling of that troika – forgotten as soon as it has been uttered. Unless we put equity at the heart of tax policy, our economic debates will fail to address one of the central challenges of our age. Just as no business today can afford to ignore climate change, human capital or social responsibility, so too no business can afford to ignore inequality.

Over the past generation, wages have risen three times as fast for the top tenth (people such as financial dealers and anaesthetists) as for the bottom tenth (people such as apprentices and hairdressers). According to research that I did with the late Tony Atkinson, inequality in Australia is now at a 75-year high. Compared with other countries in the advanced world, Australia isn’t the most unequal. But we are among the upper third for inequality in the OECD.

There are three reasons that business should care about inequality.

First, because more inequality means lower levels of wellbeing. Like the slow shifts of Arctic Glaciers, this can be hard to notice at first – but it’s obvious when you think about the extremes. If we took all the income in Australia and gave it to one person, the average would be unchanged.

But do we really think that we would all be equally happy? In a similar way, the past few decades in Australia have been good times for professionals with harbour views, but hard times for a school cleaner with limited formal education. In economic terms, we’ve seen a rise in both top incomes and relative poverty.

As economists intuitively know, our discipline isn’t about maximising the total amount of money in a society; it’s about maximising the amount of happiness, or utility. If you think that a dollar brings more pleasure to a battler than a billionaire, then you intuitively recognise the prime reason why policymakers should care about inequality. If you’re a utilitarian, you should probably also be an egalitarian.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, CANBERRA

MONDAY, 27 MARCH 2017

 I move that this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Global Gag Rule (GGR), as implemented by the United States, will prove detrimental to millions of women and girls around the world;

(b) the GGR has expanded to an unprecedented degree, applying to 15 times more funding as a consequence of its extension into all global health funding, which will result in roughly $9.5 billion dollars in global health funding being affected;

(c) the GGR will result in the targeting of some of the most effective health organisations in the world, operating in 60 low and middle income countries;

(d) a study by researchers at Stanford University found that after the GGR came into effect in 2001, the abortion rate increased sharply in sub-Saharan African countries that had been dependent on such funding;

(e) the funding cuts will likely prevent many global health organisations from offering HIV prevention and treatment services, maternal health care and even Zika virus prevention; and

(f) it is possible that as many as 21,700 maternal deaths could occur in the next four years as a consequence of this executive order, which is in addition to 6.5 million unintended pregnancies and 2.1 million unsafe abortions from 2017 to 2020, according to Marie Stopes International;

THE HON. BILL SHORTEN MP

LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION

SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS AND ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS

MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG

THE HON. BRENDAN O’CONNOR

SHADOW MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS

MEMBER FOR GORTON

THE HON. ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

CANBERRA

MONDAY, 27 MARCH 2017

SUBJECTS: Malcolm Turnbull’s cut to penalty rates; energy crisis; Government’s $50 billion big business tax giveaway; Tropical Cyclone Debbie; China Australia extradition treaty

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY: Well, thanks very much for coming along everyone to this centre in the middle of my electorate where we have had an opportunity today to speak to apprentices working in the beauty industry about two issues that are important for Labor. One is our support for apprentices, making sure that Australia has strong apprenticeship programs with high completion rates. 

And the other is Labor's fight for penalty rates. You can be pretty sure that none of the people that Bill Shorten and I spoke with today will be benefiting from Malcolm Turnbull's millionaire tax cut when it cuts in in the middle of the year, but many of them may well suffer from the cuts to penalty rates that Malcolm Turnbull and his team are championing. 

It's my pleasure now to hand over to Bill Shorten to say a few words.

BILL SHORTEN, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: Good morning, everybody.

It's been a real privilege this morning to meet women training up in the beauty industry, getting the qualifications, working hard to make ends meet so they can pursue a career. But today, we're here to also talk about the fact that penalty rates in the hair and beauty industry are the next set of penalty rates which are on the chopping block. I think the apprentices and trainees today, who have been very well trained, they're working very hard, are really concerned to discover that if the penalty rate application is successful, that they could lose up to $77 as a fulltime worker on a Sunday. The young women here, the mature age women here who are retraining or training themselves for the future, doing everything this country expects of them, shouldn't have to face a cut to their real wages, to their real standard of living.