Andrew Leigh

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.

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION

MEMBER FOR FRASER

 

ED HUSIC MP

SHADOW PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY

TO THE SHADOW TREASURER

MEMBER FOR CHIFLEY 

 

ENTREPRENEURS TO KEEP AN EYE ON ESS CHANGES

Labor will task our recently announced Treasurer’s Entrepreneurial Council with an ongoing responsibility to recommend improvements to the employee share scheme changes introduced in Parliament today.

Employee share schemes are a vital support for start-ups seeking to attract the best talent in their early days.

That is why in March 2014, Bill Shorten called on the Government to consider changes to the scheme to encourage entrepreneurs to do what they do best.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE

TUESDAY, 26 MAY 2015

SUBJECT/S: Marriage equality; GST on sanitary items; Budget fairness

PATRICIA KARVELAS: In the studio with me I have Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh, representing the Labor party - hello Andrew.

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: G'day Patricia.

KARVELAS: And also Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos, welcome Senator.

SENATOR ARTHUR SINODINOS: Representing the Liberal Party.

KARVELAS: Representing the Liberal Party! Well, let's hear about that. Let's go to an issue which is just breaking. It is going wild on social media and no-doubt, I think, leading news bulletins as well: Bill Shorten wants to bring on the marriage equality debate. He is tabling his own bill in the lower house next week, bringing it on. Arthur Sinodinos, I'll start with you: does this mean that next week the Liberal party room will finally discuss this issue?

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWSRADIO

TUESDAY, 26 MAY 2015

SUBJECT/S: NATSEM modelling on Budget unfairness; Marriage equality

MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Leigh, the Prime Minister has called on Labor to release the research on which you are basing your claims that the Budget is going to damage low income families in particular. Are you prepared to release that research?

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: Marius, the model that we're using for this is the same model that the Government has used when it has asked NATSEM to do work for the Treasury and the Department of Social Services. It's the same model, indeed, that the Liberal Party had NATSEM use when NATSEM did work for the Liberal Party a couple of years ago, leading the PM to call them Australia's top modeller. So I'm really not sure what the puzzle is out of this. Labor has had to do this research because the Family Impact Statement that had been in the Budget going right back to Peter Costello's time was taken out of the last couple of budgets.

E&EO TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

UNIVERSITY OF WOOLONGONG

WEDNESDAY, 20 MAY 2015

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: I'm here with my colleagues Stephen Jones and Sharon Bird, and we've just been touring the iAccelerate building at the University of Wollongong. Learning about their programs to encourage women entrepreneurs; engaging with companies producing 3D printers and pop-up ergonomic desks and potentially game-changing medical technology. It's really impressive to see the range of technologies and the extent to which firms are looking towards the future. It's exactly that future that Bill Shorten was looking to build towards with Labor's announcements in the budget reply about investment in science, technology, engineering and maths, and supporting Australian students to learn coding. I might just throw now to my colleague Sharon Bird to make a couple more quick comments.

MEDIA RELEASE

VISIONLESS ABBOTT VACATES THE FIELD ON SHARING ECONOMY

The Abbott Government is ducking responsibility for leading a serious conversation about the sharing economy.

Today’s ruling by the Australian Tax Office shows the Government is leaving it up to line agencies to drive national policymaking on services like Uber.                

These are not the actions of a future-focused government.

Internationally, some authorities have ruled that sharing economy apps represent a different type of service which requires a distinct regulatory approach. But the Abbott Government has been slow to recognise that new technologies may require the rules to be updated.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 18 MAY 2015

SUBJECT/S: Budget 2015; paid parental leave; Renewable Energy Target; iron ore inquiry

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda. With me now the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh and the Assistant Social Services Minister, Mitch Fifield. Gentlemen, good morning to you. Senator Fifield first to you on the polling: I know you don't want to get into too much commentary but I guess it's got to feel a lot better this year than it did last year in terms of how this has been received, the second Hockey budget?

ASSISTANT SOCIAL SERVICES MINISTER MITCH FIFIELD: Kieran, we've been working to a plan to get the budget back on a path to being on balance, to creating an environment that's conducive to growth and the creation of jobs. It would probably be fair to say that the plan we have is better understood at this point than it might have been at the same time last year, but we're focused on that plan, on delivering it. You're right, we will leave it to others to commentate on the polls but I think you'll find that all of my colleagues are out this week and the weeks ahead, explaining the good news that is in the budget; the good news for small business, the good news for families.

GILBERT: And the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Mr Leigh, famously – or infamously as far as I'm concerned – never comments on the polls at all. But this budget comparison, it's pretty stark and I guess it's understandable given that this is a much more generous budget than last year.

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: Kieran, I do appreciate that my unwillingness to commentate on polls is an enduring source of frustration for a Monday morning regular. But I do think that the number that really counts is not the polling number but the 80,000 mums who are finding out that they won't be eligible for parental leave under the Government's policies. This is a budget which still has so much of the unfairness from the last one but doubles the deficit. Not on Labor's numbers, but on the Government's own number, the deficit has doubled over the course of the year. And it lacks that plan to invest in the future which is why Bill Shorten spent so much time on Thursday night laying out an alternative Labor plan for investing in the future.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWSRADIO

FRIDAY, 15 MAY 2015

SUBJECT/S: Labor’s Budget alternative; small business tax cut; paid parental leave

MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Leigh, one of the centrepieces of Bill Shorten's policy speech last night was a 5 per cent cut to tax on small business. He's proposing working with the government to achieve that cut, to cut the company tax for small business from 30 per cent to 25 per cent. He said to Tony Abbott: let's work together. A bit disingenuous, isn't it? This is not a government of national unity; oppositions don't get to join the Government at the Cabinet table to work out economic policy.

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: Marius, I believe Australians very much want their parliamentarians to work together. We always have to be putting the national interest before partisan interest. What Bill Shorten did yesterday was to reach across the table in the Parliament and say to Tony Abbott that if he, too, believes in giving small businesses a better deal, then Labor is happy to work together to try and boost growth in that vital sector of the economy.

BENSON: Has Labor ever invited the Opposition, when it has been in government, to join it at the Cabinet table to work out policy like that?

LEIGH: We've certainly cooperated with the Coalition on a range of things. Whether they're in Government and we're in Opposition, or the other way around.

BENSON: What would a 5 per cent cut to the company tax on small business cost?

LEIGH: We'll work through the costings with the government. Certainly that'd be an important matter to be considered.

MEDIA RELEASE

ABBOTT’S ‘SAVE OUR JOBS’ BUDGET EXPOSED AS CRUEL HOAX IN CANBERRA

After a year of savage cuts to Canberra, the 2015 Budget delivers nothing for our community except more uncertainty. This is just the latest proof that the Liberals see Canberra as little more than a political punching bag by the Liberals.

There is no new infrastructure spending for the ACT in this Budget, and no acknowledgement of how hard the Abbott Government’s 17,300 job cuts have hit Canberra since the Liberals came to office.

In fact, the Government appears to be gearing up for a fresh round of public service cuts, with so-called ‘functional reviews’ on the horizon for the departments of Environment, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Social Services, the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as well as the Australian Tax Office.