Andrew Leigh

Appropriations Bill 2022
House of Representatives
22 November 2022

I am pleased to rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2022-2023, a bill which reflects on the contributions of the Albanese government in taking action on climate change; beginning to make some of the much-needed investments into housing; and recognising the importance of fixing up parts of our education system that are not working as well as they can. This is a budget which deals with some of the rorts and mismanagement that have been locked in under nine lost years of coalition government. It is a budget which makes an investment in Australians' future.

I want to talk about much of that, but I want to anchor it in the aspirations, interests and commitments of some young Canberrans. I want to do so through an interesting initiative, the Raise Our Voice Australia initiative. Raise Our Voice is a volunteer-run organisation that seeks to amplify diverse young, female, trans and non-binary voices to actively lead conversations in politics and in domestic and foreign policy. They've asked me to amplify the voices of young people from Fenner by reading their words in this parliament. So I'm going to begin my speech today with speeches from four young Australians, beginning with Amelie Toogood, nine years old. Amelie says as follows:

Warren Hogan Memorial Lecture: Economic Dynamism: A Global Perspective
University Of Sydney, School Of Economics
Wednesday, 2 November 2022

I acknowledge the Gadigal people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which we gather today, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present.

Thank you to the Sydney University School of Economics for hosting today.

I have fond memories of my first-year economics class in Merewether in 1991.

In the seat next to me was my friend Justin Wolfers – now a professor at the University of Michigan, and co-author of a major first-year textbook.

Last month, I gave a talk to Justin’s Economics 101 class at the University of Michigan, reflecting on the power of economics in public policy.

It's a lesson our first-year Sydney University lecturer embodied.

In 1991, he was just another dashing macroeconomics lecturer, but Yanis Varoufakis would go on to enter the Hellenic Parliament, and serve as one of the most significant finance ministers in Greek history, attempting to help navigate his country’s economy through the 2015 debt crisis.

He had quite the influence on his students – my parliamentary colleague Chris Bowen, who delivered the 2019 Lecture, is another student of this era (Bowen 2019).

At that time, the School of Economics was a mere 69-year-old whippersnapper.

It’s hard to believe it celebrated 100 years in July.

Congratulations to Garry Barrett for your leadership of the school, as well as your pioneering microeconometric research, especially on inequality.

Cost of Living
Matter of Public Importance
House of Representatives
9 November 2022

It is certainly true that in Australia we have a strong egalitarian ethos. Ours is a country where many people would prefer to sit in the front seat of a taxi, where we prefer to use the word 'mate' rather than 'sir', where we don't have private areas on the beaches and where most people don't stand up when the Prime Minister enters the room. Yet, over recent generations, we've seen a steady rise in inequality. As Thomas Piketty outlined in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, we've seen, across the advanced world, an increase in the share of the top one per cent of income earners. We've seen an increase in the share of the top 0.1 per cent of income earners, tripling since the early 1980s. We have seen CEO pay increase far faster than an average worker's pay. Work by Tomas Kennedy and Peter Siminski asks the pertinent question: for Australians born in successive generations, what's the chance that they earned more than their parents? For Australians born in the 1950s, 84 per cent earned more than their parents. For Australians born in the 1980s just 68 per cent earned more than their parents.

We've seen a fanning out of real wages since 1975. Since 1975, wages at the 10th percentile have grown in real terms by 33 per cent. Wages at the median have grown by 55 per cent. But wages at the 90th percentile have grown by 81 per cent. That is, earnings are growing nearly three times as fast for the highest paid as for the lowest paid. Work done by Treasury, which I highlighted in my recent Gruen lecture, shows that market concentration has risen. The biggest firms have a larger slice of the pie than they did in decades past. Mark-ups have increased -- the gap between what firms charge and their costs has grown. Under the former governments we saw the JobKeeper scheme funnel some $20 billion of taxpayer money to firms with rising revenues, some of which used that taxpayer money to pay executive bonuses.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
SENATE COURTYARD, PARLIAMENT HOUSE
THURSDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2022

TOPICS: Multinational tax, ATO corporate tax transparency report, $5 note, energy prices, renewables, industrial relations laws

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY DR ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks very much for coming along. My name is Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Well, today we had the release of the Australian Tax Office’s Corporate Transparency Report. This is a report that is brought into the public domain as a result of laws passed under the Gillard Government, to the cries and objections from the Liberals at the time. It shows for 2,468 corporations, their tax that they've paid, their total income and their taxable income. It's really important that all firms pay their fair share of tax. And the Corporate Transparency Report is a Labor initiative that is delivering to Australians more information about tax paid. This is for the year 2020-2021. So it's not yesterday's information, but it is critical to corporate tax transparency.

Labor is strongly committed to making sure that all firms pay their fair share of tax. The recent budget, we funded the ATO's Tax Avoidance Task Force to the tune of $1.1 billion over the next four years to ensure that multinational firms don't get a leg up on their local competitors simply because they're exploiting unfair tax loopholes. We announced we'd be closing down a number of tax loopholes that have been exploited by multinationals. Multinationals will no longer be able to deduct as much debt as a result of our changes to the thin capitalisation regime. We've made changes to the ability of multinationals to use royalty payments inappropriately to minimise their tax bill. And we're expanding transparency for large corporations in Australia. For significant global entities - you can think of these as firms with revenue over a billion dollars - we're requiring country by country reporting detailed tax information, ensuring those firms are paying their fair share. For public companies, listed and unlisted, we'll require the number of their subsidiaries and the countries in which they're located. Again, a measure to ensure that we're not seeing taxes that should be paid in Australia, leaking away to low or no tax jurisdictions. Any firm that's tendering for a government tender worth more than $200,000 will have to disclose its country of tax domicile.

The Albanese government is strongly committed to a level playing field on tax, ensuring that firms are competing based on serving their customers well, being innovative and providing a good workplaces for their employees. The last thing we want is an economy in which firms are competing based on who's got the best tax loophole. That doesn't provide a stronger economy. That's not the foundation for the productivity growth that we know is vital. Very happy to take questions on the report or other economic issues.

Address to the Australian Government Solicitor Civil Regulation Conference
Sydney
Wednesday, 2 November 2022

I acknowledge the Gadigal people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present.

Congratulations to the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) for getting this conference back up and running after some challenging years for events.

The best part of being Assistant Minister is that I get the opportunity to meet some amazingly dedicated people and this group is no exception.

With everyone here today, I want to acknowledge the mountain of work you do acting on behalf of the regulators.

Crime and punishment: can we have less of both?

Opening address, Australian Institute of Criminology Conference, Canberra
Monday, 31 October 2022

Acknowledgements

I begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the Traditional Custodians of the land we are meeting on. I acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the region, and I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.

I would like to especially thank Aunty Jude Barlow for her warm Welcome to Country.

Second Reading Speech
House of Representatives
26 October 2022
Aboriginal Land Grant (Jervis Bay Territory) Amendment (Strengthening Land and Governance Provisions) Bill 2022

The Wreck Bay Aboriginal community in the Jervis Bay Territory has an unusual status. It is part of my electorate of Fenner, but residents do not vote in state or territory elections. This means the Commonwealth has a particular responsibility to residents of Wreck Bay.

The Jervis Bay Territory is a special place. In a dozen visits, I have appreciated the chance to learn from and work with members of the community.

I thank my colleague Linda Burney, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, for allowing me to introduce this bill today on behalf of the Australian government.

The Australian government has worked with the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council and the broader Wreck Bay community over a number of years to co-design the Aboriginal Land Grant (Jervis Bay Territory) Amendment (Strengthening Land and Governance Provisions) Bill 2022, with the most recent consultations on the detail of the bill in August this year. This bill will:

• strengthen the council's governance structures;
• enhance the control the council has over its own affairs; and
• help to enable homeownership style leases on Aboriginal land in the Jervis Bay Territory.

The Wreck Bay community is located in the Jervis Bay Territory, on the southern New South Wales coast, 126 kilometres east of Canberra. The Jervis Bay Territory was formally established in 1915, on the land of the Bherwerre Peninsula, through the enactment of the Jervis Bay Territory Acceptance Act 1915. First Nations people had been living in the area since long before that time, and never agreed to the surrender of these lands. Middens on the Bherwerre Peninsula provide evidence of thousands of generations of First Nations occupation of this area.

Summing Up Speech
House of Representatives
26 October 2022
Treasury Laws Amendment (More Competition, Better Prices) Bill 2022

My thanks to the members who have contributed to this debate. I acknowledge the work of both Small Business Minister Julie Collins and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones on this bill. This bill delivers on an election commitment to protect Australian households and small businesses by banning unfair contract terms and increasing penalties for anticompetitive behaviour.

The Australian Labor Party has a long history of economic reform that builds a fairer and more resilient economy. Competition is an essential part of that for three key reasons. First, competition is about fairness. Without government action, monopolists can wield their power to rig the game in their favour rather than compete on even terms. Second, competition deals with cost-of-living pressures and makes our supply chains more resilient. Competition means businesses offer Australians the best prices they can. A diverse and dynamic economy, a resilient economy, helps to absorb, adapt and solve the challenges of an uncertain world. Third, competition is about jobs and skills. Competition helps to ensure that the most innovative, creative and savvy businesses are the ones that thrive. Those are the businesses that are best placed to offer jobs that are stable, secure and well paid. Competition also gives workers more options, empowering employees to negotiate pay and conditions that reflect their true value.

A Zippier Economy: Lessons from the 1992 Hilmer Competition Reforms

University of Sydney
Monday, 17 October 2022
***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

I acknowledge the Gadigal people, traditional custodians of the land on which we gather today, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present.

Thank you to Sydney Ideas, the University of Sydney’s flagship public talks program, for hosting me today. I welcome the students, members of staff and alumni attending this afternoon. Having spent six years earning a couple of degrees here, including a year editing Honi Soit, it’s good to be back.

Given the topic of today’s presentation – lessons from the 1993 Hilmer Review and the subsequent National Competition Policy reforms – it’s also my pleasure to acknowledge Professor Fred Hilmer, who has joined us today. It’s both exciting and daunting to have the subject of today’s talk in the audience.

Introduction

As Professor Hilmer told me recently, the National Competition Policy reforms were big, bold and far-reaching.

He’s right in every respect – they’re regarded as among the most significant economic reforms in Australia’s history.

And we’re still talking about them 30 years later because they provide a powerful lesson for building a zippier economy.

Successful reform often looks deceptively easy afterwards.