Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
SUNDAY, 5 JUNE 2016
SUBJECT/S: Labor’s childcare package; Transition to Retirement changes

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Our next guest tonight is Labor's Andrew Leigh. Welcome to the program.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER & SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION: Thanks Patricia, great to be with you.

KARVELAS: On your childcare policy; your policy is very, very generous to the rich. The Prime Minister's policy has a new means test for the childcare rebate that will reduce assistance when families earn $180,000. Yours is a basically a no-losers policy on childcare reforms. Why shouldn't families earning up to a million dollars be means tested?

LEIGH: As you know, with families you can have a situation where the household income is high but where the secondary earner – which is most commonly the woman – faces a strong disincentive to move into paid work. One of the reasons why we have traditionally provided childcare support right through the income spectrum is because if you have the situation of a low-wage spouse married to a high-wage spouse you don't want one of them to be deterred from entering the labour market.

As you say, the Coalition’s package has a lot of losers. The Australian National University’s analysis suggests one-in-three families will be worse-off under the Coalition’s package. Whereas under Labor's package, nearly a million families benefit. And that's low-income, middle-income and families further up the spectrum.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
ABC NEWS
SUNDAY, 5 JUNE 2016

SUBJECT/S: Labor’s childcare package

JEREMY FERNANDEZ: Andrew Leigh, thank you for joining us on the program. Labor's set to announce today a lifting of the childcare rebate cap. Tell me, what is the thinking behind this?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER & SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION: It's really important that we have a childcare system which provides quality child care to every child and also ensures affordability. Because we know that one of the main things which holds Australia back – particularly around female workforce participation – is child care. 

Labor’s announced today an increase in the childcare benefit, which will benefit more than 800,000 Australian families and also a lift in the childcare rebate threshold from $7500 to $10000, which will benefit over 100,000 Australian families. So, nearly a million Australian families benefiting from a package which will take effect from the 1st of January next year, not two years down the track like the Coalition’s childcare package. 

A Shorten Labor Government will reform Australia’s competition laws to protect disadvantaged Australians and tackle inequality.

Labor will legislate so that the competition regulator must put disadvantaged consumers first.

Scams and rip-offs often target low-income earners and Indigenous Australians, and Labor’s tougher laws will ensure these scammers are targeted and punished appropriately.

Inequality remains a major problem in Australia, so it’s vital that we ensure that competition law works to make Australia a fairer and more equal society. 

MARKETS CAN'T BE ALLOWED TO VICTIMISE THE VULNERABLE - The Australian

Like a large tree that overshadows the saplings around it, firms that abuse their market power prevent newer competitors from growing. They hurt entrepreneurs and often reduce the scope for innovation. Consumers suffer through higher prices, lower quality and less choice.

However, one aspect of uncompetitive markets that many have missed is that they may worsen inequality. A recent issue of The Economist magazine notes that many US markets have become more concentrated and points out: ‘‘High profits can deepen inequality in various ways. The pool of income to be split among employees could be squeezed. Consumers might pay too much for goods.’’

Australia has no shortage of concentrated markets. A common metric of over-concentration is when the largest four firms control more than one-third of the market. Against this yardstick, my analysis suggests that more than half of Australian industries are concentrated markets.

WHY THE GOVERNMENT'S COMPANY TAX CUT IS A CARNIVAL SIDESHOW - Business Insider

In the 1890s, Texan cowboy Clark Stanley began marketing a new product at medicine shows.

A man who could kill rattlesnakes with his bare hands, Stanley promised people that his rattlesnake extract would bring relief from rheumatism, sprains, swelling, back pain and toothache.

It wasn’t until 1917 that Stanley’s operation was finally shut down, with a court finding that the product not only didn’t provide a cure; it wasn’t even made from snakes. And so the term ‘snake oil’ was born.

I’ve been thinking about Clark Stanley since budget night, as Coalition leaders have boldly claimed that a cut to company taxes will whiten your teeth, improve your car’s fuel efficiency and make your chooks lay more eggs.

Yet just as Stanley didn’t want people to read his recipe, so too I’m not sure the Coalition wanted Australians to delve into the Treasury report that underpins their big business tax cut.

Titled ‘Analysis of the Long Term Effects of a Company Tax Cut’, the Treasury analysis makes clear how a company tax cut is supposed to help households. You’ll have to bear with me, because this one’s longer than a scrub python.

LAFFERNOMICS VS CLOSING LOOPHOLES: TAXATION REFORM IN AUSTRALIA TODAY

TAX INSTITUTE BREAKFAST

SYDNEY

FRIDAY, 3 JUNE 2016

**CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY**

Our story begins with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a cocktail napkin.

In 1974, American economist Arthur Laffer met with two officials in the Ford administration. Cheney and Rumsfeld were young, ideological, and eager to find an excuse to cut taxes. Over dinner at the Washington Hotel, Laffer sketched out on a napkin his notion of how government revenue related to the average tax rate. If taxes were zero, the government raised no revenue. If taxes were 100 percent, he claimed, the government raised no revenue. Somewhere in between was a revenue-maximising tax rate. The graph was shaped like an inverted U.

The United States, Laffer claimed, was on the right side of the curve - meaning that cutting taxes could raise revenue. To conservatives like Rumsfeld and Cheney who wanted to cut taxes and shrink the deficit, it suggested an exciting possibility: the government could reduce tax rates and increase the tax take.

There was just one problem with this argument: it was wrong. As Greg Mankiw, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush has noted, ‘there was little evidence for Laffer’s view that US tax rates had in fact reached such extreme levels’.

Yet despite the lack of empirical evidence, US Republican leaders repeatedly quoted Laffer in debates over major tax reductions in the 1980s and 1990s. The facts told a different story: during the Reagan-Bush era (1981 to 1993), taxes were cut. Partly as a result, these two presidents added more than US$3 trillion to their country’s national debt.

You might say that Laffer’s theory wasn’t worth the napkin it was sketched on. Helping popularise the Laffer theory wouldn’t be the last time that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld helped take their country down a very costly path – but that’s another story.

This morning, I want to contrast the approaches to tax reform being put forward in this election. For those of you who attended my talk at the Tax Institute’s National Convention in Melbourne in March, some of the points I made today about Labor’s reform agenda will be familiar. On the flipside, you may be pleased to know that there is one major political party in this election that can say it has the same approach to tax reform as we had three months ago.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SKY PM AGENDA WITH DAVID SPEERS
THURSDAY, 2 JUNE 2016

DAVID SPEERS: As to the substance of the Treasurer's attack today on Labor, let's bring in Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer. Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER & SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION: Pleasure, David.

SPEERS: Now, putting that war-like rhetoric to one side, let's go through what the Treasurer is saying. You are proposing higher taxes than the Coalition is, on businesses small, medium and large, on capital gains, on negative gearing and on high-income earners. That's true isn’t it?

LEIGH: David, we’re with the Coalition on the small business tax cut. Bill Shorten actually led this debate in his budget reply last year. We believe small businesses should get a tax cut, but we don't believe that big businesses should be reclassified as small business. 

ARRIVEDERCI, ALDO

It's a long way from reconstructing Rome out of the rubble of World War II to earning a Masters in Architecture from New York's Columbia University.

It's further still to go from studying in New York to designing Parliament House in the heart of Canberra.

Romaldo Giurgola, who left us last month aged 95, made both those journeys, and many more.

The man universally known as "Aldo" said that his most important work should rise out of the Australian landscape, as true democracy rises from the state of things.

To visit his Parliament House (now that it's 28 years old, we can stop calling it "new") is to experience great design.

Aldo's story speaks of a maturing nation. In the past, Australia did not make the most of overseas talent. The story of Canberra designers Walter and Marion Griffin is one of angry architects and bruised bureaucrats. So too the tale of Sydney Opera House creator Jorn Utzon.

With Aldo, it was different. He worked carefully with the design team.

He fell in love with Canberra and settled here permanently after Parliament House was completed.

He made an enduring contribution to this city, which he loved for its unique relationship with nature. Like many Canberrans, he wasn't born here, but he made this city his home.

Aldo, thank you for everything. You will be missed.

Andrew Leigh is the shadow assistant treasurer and Member for Fraser. 

This piece was originally published in The Chronicle.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
MELBOURNE
WEDNESDAY, 1 JUNE 2016

SUBJECT/S: Royal Commission into the financial sector

CARL KATTER, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR HIGGINS: We are very excited to have Andrew Leigh here today in the heart of Higgins. We will be talking today about the inquiry into the banking sector. I have spoken to a lot of members in Higgins who would like to see some action. Over to you. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks so much, Carl. Carl has been out there telling the Labor story in Higgins – a seat which is tiger territory for the Labor party, and that is why we have got a tiger of a candidate in Carl Katter. 

Carl is today launching a petition calling for a Royal Commission into the Australian banks. Labor believes this is a Royal Commission whose time has come. The list of scandals is as long as your arm. It goes through Storm, Trio, Opes Prime, the bank bills swap rates, the scandal involving the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a NAB employee, and a whole suite of scandals that have seen people lose not only their life savings, but sometimes end up with debt.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY AM AGENDA
MONDAY, 30 MAY 2016

SUBJECT/S: Company tax cuts; Labor’s positive plans for the economy.

KIERAN GILBERT: With me now on the program we've got Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, coming up the Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, but first the Labor perspective on last night's debate. It's good to have you in this morning, Andrew Leigh. I want to ask you about this core message from Labor. You're obviously strong on the education funding, that's one thing, but what about on the economic growth message? What's the core of Labor's plan to manage a transitioning economy?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: The first place to start is to recognise that as technology advances, worker skills have to improve. We know that Australia is being hit with a range of different technologies. If you're looking at the transport sector you've got big changes from Uber and driverless cars. If you're looking at the retail sector you've got the huge rise of apps for ordering. Any office job is already being hit with different changes in technology. In the face of all of that you've got to have a better-skilled workforce. We know that each individual year of education raises earnings by about 10 per cent, so it's not surprising to know that increasing the total pool of education in the economy has a big payoff.