Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s vaccine failures

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Andrew Leigh MP joins me on the program each Tuesday. Morning, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Marcus. How are you?

PAUL: Good. Bill Shorten, obviously, summed it up succinctly yesterday. I know that you're a man who doesn't refer to language like that, but you probably agree with his sentiments.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 6 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Government’s vaccine bungles; Julia Banks

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Someone who, I don't know whether he's fully vaccinated, but I know he's had at least one jab, Andrew Leigh. Good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day Marcus. I'm halfway there. Next is due at the middle of the month.

PAUL: I get my first today. I'm off to Royal North Shore this afternoon, and then I get my follow up on 30/7, so in less than a month. My first one, a Pfizer-vaxxed day, and then the second one, dose two is on the 30^th. That's not too bad. By the end of this month, I'll be fully vaccinated.

LEIGH: That's the thing about Pfizer, that three-week rather than three-month gap means that you can actually get people vaccinated more quickly than if you go with AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca still has the efficacy, but a little bit slower to get people done.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2CC BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO

FRIDAY, 2 JULY 2021 

SUBJECTS: Bank branch and ATM closures

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST: Bank branches have been gradually disappearing all over Canberra, including various branches in Weston Creek, Mawson, Tuggeranong, Dickson, Civic. Westpac have announced they're closing nearly 50 branches right across the country, and it's an issue that Andrew Leigh, the member for Fenner has been across, and I imagine has been inundated with phone calls. Andrew, thanks for joining us this morning. I guess the difficulty here is compelling private businesses to open a shop front, so to speak.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Yeah, that's right, Stephen, and I'm really glad that Ron's raised this important issue. It's something that I was asking the big bank CEOs about when we had hearings with them earlier this year. When each of them gave their evidence I went through and asked them how many branches they had closed, how many ATMs they'd closed, and what their plans were for the coming year. The picture is pretty much the same across the big four: they're just steadily shrinking that network of ATMs and branches because they say that they lose money. Now, it's true that their in-person custom is dropping, but there are vulnerable people who rely on these ATMs and branches, and just shutting them out risks a whole slice of the population becomes unbanked. I think the big four need to do more to think about the most vulnerable as they're assessing the state of their ATM and branch networks.

NO NEED TO PLAY AGATHA CHRISTIE GAMES WITH THE NATION'S CHARITIES

The Canberra Times, 30 June 2021

If you listen to the Morrison government talk about activist charities, you'd think they were engaged in an epidemic of lawlessness.

Yet over the past three-and-a-half years, the charities commission deregistered just two charities for breaking the law in pursuit of activist goals. With 59,000 charities in operation, that means the annual chance of a charity being deregistered for illegal activism (10 in 1 million) are about the same odds that the typical Australian will commit a murder (9 in 1 million).

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

4BC BREAKFAST WITH SPENCER HOWSON

TUESDAY, 29 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Brisbane Grammar claiming $3 million in JobKeeper despite posting a $3.7 million surplus

SPENCER HOWSON, HOST: You've heard about businesses not paying back JobKeeper when their profits did not fall as much as predicted. Well, how would you feel about a Brisbane private school doing the same? Labor's Dr Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities. He's on the warpath this morning. Dr Leigh, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Spencer, I think ‘warpath’ might be a bit much! But yes, I'm a little irked.

HOWSON: Well, with which school are you irked, and how much are you suggesting they've profited from JobKeeper?

LEIGH: Well, one of your most elite schools, Brisbane Grammar, received $3.1 million of JobKeeper last year, and that's despite the fact that its fee revenue went up rather than down. I've got no trouble with JobKeeper going to businesses that would otherwise have hit the wall or had to lay off staff, but in the case of Brisbane Grammar, it's an elite school which has a dozen tennis courts and charges nearly $30,000 a year, has its nice rowing sheds, and last year gave its headmaster a $14,000 pay rise. It doesn't seem like the kind of organization that desperately needed JobKeeper in order to stay afloat.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 29 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s quarantine and vaccination failures; Intergenerational Report.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: All right, each and every Tuesday we catch up with Andrew Leigh from Canberra. Andrew, good morning, mate. How are you?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Terrific, Marcus. Great to chat with you.

PAUL: Yeah, you too. Look, what's happening in your neck of the woods there in the ACT? Just fill me in with what Andrew Barr and his local government are doing. Are you on lockdown as well?

LEIGH: We're on mandatory masks, Marcus, and we're what's called an orange zone. People are being encouraged to limit travel, work from home if they can. There are no cases here at the moment, but we're pretty close to Sydney so the chances of something coming through is very real.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2CC CANBERRA LIVE WITH LEON DELANEY

WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Morrison Government’s failure to tackle tax havens and multinational tax dodging; Morrison Government’s crackdown on charities engaged in public debate.

LEON DELANEY, HOST: Well, we've heard a lot of talk about making multinational companies pay their fair share in tax. This is a topic that has emerged once again after a decision taken at the G7 meeting in the last few days, in order to levy taxes on companies like Facebook, Google, and other internet giants that shift their sphere of operations from one jurisdiction to another to avoid tax and the G7 nations have vowed to take steps to combat that. Somebody who's been beating this drum for some time, the Federal Member for Fenner and Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury, Shadow Assistant Minister of Charities, Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good afternoon, Leon. Terrific to be characterized as a drum beater. I like that description.

DELANEY: Well, that's what you've been doing. You've been beating this particular drum for quite some time, about getting multinational companies to pay a decent share of tax. Now the basic problem is that a company like Google or Facebook or whatever can come and operate here in Australia, generate revenue here in Australia, but because the parent company is in some offshore tax haven, they have to pay fees to their parent company for intellectual property or some other such nonsense, which means they don't make any taxable profit here in Australia and hence pay little or no tax. It's a dodge isn't it?

LEIGH:  Sure is, and if you're a video game designer in Gungahlin, I know we've got a bunch of terrific local firms, then you can't headquarter yourself out of Ireland or Netherlands or the Cayman Islands. You've got to pay tax like everyone else. If you're a pay-as-you-go earner then you end up paying the regular tax rate. But multinationals have been getting away with too much for too long and the Group of Seven rich countries has finally said we need to put a floor under company taxes. It's quite a different philosophy, Leon, from the one that Scott Morrison was touting a couple of years ago when he said we had to be part of this race to the bottom in company taxes. Back then there was a race he believed in. It was a race to the bottom. Now we're actually seeing Britain and the United States looking to raise rates, and all of these rich countries putting a floor under the company taxes, which I think is a great thing for making multinationals pay their fair share.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

5AA MORNINGS WITH LEON BYNER

WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Multinational tax avoidance and tax havens; tax fairness.

LEON BYNER, HOST: Now, ever wondered how your Netflix statement bills to a company in the Netherlands and gets to you, why people who place Facebook ads are charged by a company in Ireland, and why the tiny island of the Bahamas is the sixth-largest foreign owner of Australian farmland? Bet you didn't know that, eh? Back when most multinationals produced manufactured goods, taxation was pretty straightforward: profits were taxed in the country where the goods were produced and where the firm was headquartered. But these days, firms are sneakily shifting profits into low-tax jurisdictions. Two-fifths of multinational profits now pass through tax havens and so-called investment hubs, and of course, that means that a lot of those places, I would have thought that the place where you do business is where you pay your tax. Not necessarily. I want you to meet, again, a bloke who I think is one of the finest economic minds we've got. He's the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury, Dr Andrew Leigh. Andrew, this seems to put an unfair burden on the ordinary taxpayer, doesn't it - and good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Leon. Yes, you're absolutely right. When multinationals don't pay their fair share, that doesn't take away the need to spend on schools and hospitals, it just means the shortfall has to be made up for by pay-as-you-go taxpayers and regular small businesses. Your typical Adelaide business can't hide profits in the Cayman Islands, so they end up being stung more when multinationals pay less. It's in the interest of the whole economy to make sure that multinationals pay their fair share, but I don't see very much enthusiasm about that from the current Federal Government.

IT'S HIGH TIME TO MAKE THE BIG MULTINATIONALS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE OF TAXES

Daily Telegraph, 16 June 2021

Ever wondered why your Netflix statement bills to a company in the Netherlands, why people who place Facebook ads are charged by a company in Ireland, and why the tiny island of the Bahamas is the sixth-largest foreign owner of Australian farmland?

In the era when most multinationals produced manufactured goods, taxation was straightforward: the profits were taxed in the country where the goods were produced, and where the firm was headquartered. But these days, firms have become adept at shifting profits into low-tax jurisdictions. Two fifths of multinational profits now pass through tax havens and so-called “investment hubs”. Over half the corporate profits recorded in Ireland are shifted from other countries. In recent years, frustration with the slow pace of debates over multinational tax reform has led more than 40 nations to enact or announce new digital sales taxes on technology firms such as Facebook and Google.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 15 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Biloela family; Scott Morrison out of step with G7 on climate action; Liberals attack on charities; Importance of a UK trade deal that works.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Right now, Andrew Leigh. Good morning to you, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Marcus. Terrific to be with you.

PAUL: Thank you, mate. Did you enjoy - do you get a long weekend in Canberra?

LEIGH: We do indeed, yeah. A lovely big chunk of time with our three little boys, so that was fabulous.