Andrew Leigh

Although the government’s budget cuts to the Australian Bureau of Statistics have already forced 120 staff members out of their jobs, reports this afternoon are warning that another 80-100 jobs will be cut from the agency.

If true, this is more unwelcome evidence of the Turnbull-Joyce government’s war on information.

The government’s ideological obsession with firing public servants has blinded it to the important work of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. ABS staff produce data and analysis critical to the delivery of hospitals, schools, housing and public transport infrastructure.

Just six months ago Chief Statistician David Kalisch admitted that, “the ABS does not have the resources to undertake all the activities that fall within our legislative mandate that our users would like”? 

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TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 20 MARCH 2017

SUBJECT/S: Competition policy; Newspoll; National energy crisis; Turnbull’s support for penalty rate cuts.

KIERAN GILBERT: With me now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Thanks very much for your time. You've copped some criticism for a piece you wrote last week in relation to the five faceless investors in top 20 Australian companies. The critique of your piece is basically that it's wrong in the sense that these custodian firms only have the power to hold shares, not have voting rates or anything of that sort. Were you wrong to suggest that these faceless investors behind the scenes control the firms?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Kieran, I've made a mistake and I've owned up to that already. But what we were doing here is looking at the ways in which uncompetitive markets can hurt consumers. It's a part of work I've been doing for years since taking on the competition portfolio. I think it's absolutely critical in Australia that we keep on lifting up rocks and having a look at instances in which consumers aren't getting the best deal because of uncompetitive markets. 

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

TIM HAMMOND MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSUMER AFFAIRS

SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING FOR RESOURCES

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR PERTH

 ROD SIMS BACKS LABOR’S CALL FOR HIGHER PENALTIES, AGAIN

Labor welcomes yet another call from Rod Sims, the Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, for an increase in the penalties for companies that breach the Australian Consumer Law.

 In 2016, Labor announced that we would;

 “Increase civil penalties under the Australian Consumer Law from $1.1 million to $10 million, bringing penalties in-line with the competition provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.”

–     Andrew Leigh, 15 June 2016

In yesterday’s speech to the National Consumer Congress, Mr Sims cited recent messages from the Federal Court that penalties must be high enough to sufficiently deter misconduct, especially as some big companies continue to treat their customers “so badly, and with so little respect.”

“Penalties should be seen as more than just a cost of doing business…Where the Court finds contraventions, it’s vital that large companies are held to account, but the penalties must make them sit up and take notice.”

 –     Rod Sims, 15 March 2017

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RADIO INTERVIEW

MORNING WITH JON FAINE (774 ABC MELBOURNE)

FRIDAY, 10 MARCH 2017

SUBJECT/S: Inequality, Minerals Council of Australia Tax Conference, Housing affordability.

JON FAINE, PRESENTER: There's a big mining conference on in Melbourne today. The Shadow Assistant Treasurer from the federal Opposition - Bill Shorten's federal Labor Opposition - Andrew Leigh is going to go along and tell the mining community that they need to think about equality, of all things. Andrew Leigh, good morning to you.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning, Jon. Great to be with you.

FAINE: Not sure that the mining industry are that interested in hearing about equality, but why does it matter?

LEIGH: I think there's three reasons that the mining community, and indeed the business community more broadly, should care about inequality. One is that more inequality means less wellbeing. If you believe that a dollar buys more happiness for a battler than a billionaire, then you should care not just about the average level of income, but also about egalitarianism.

I think too, miners care about political stability, and we do know that the rise of far-right populism in Europe, the US and elsewhere is partly driven by growing inequality. And the third reasons is that a more unequal society is less mobile society, which we we don't make good use of the talents of all Australians; in which kids born into poverty tend to stay there. So these are all reasons why I think it in the enlightened self-interest of the business community to make equality a higher priority.

‘WHY CORPORATE AUSTRALIA SHOULD CARE ABOUT EQUALITY’

MINERALS COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA TAX CONFERENCE

FRIDAY, 10 MARCH 2017

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri people, and pay my respects to elders past and present.

In doing so, I want to recognise the significant steps forward that have been made over the past generation towards a better relationship between the resources industry and Indigenous Australians.

At a time when it’s fashionable to bemoan the lack of bipartisan progress on important issues, it’s worth recognising how much that relationship has been transformed over recent decades, in terms of employment, respect and engagement.[1]

It’s not perfect, and as the troubling 2017 Closing the Gap report revealed, there is much more to be done. But amidst the nasty Native Title debates of the early-1990s, I think few would have imagined that Indigenous Australians and miners would be where we are today. That’s a credit to many in this room.

I should also say that it’s a pleasure to be back at the Minerals Council of Australia’s biennial tax policy conference, a conference which has fast-established itself as a vital forum for talking about the economics and politics of public finance in the mining sector. For the 17 of us in the country who are passionate about these issues, there’s no more exciting place to be today.

It reflects the fact that the Minerals Council doesn’t just supply pet rocks for Question Time. You also sponsor discussions where policy wonks like me get to use words like ‘elasticity’ and ‘incidence’. What other body in Australia can do all that?

* * *

I want to talk with you today about a theme that is often underplayed in policy debates - inequality. 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.

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TV INTERVIEW

AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 6 MARCH 2017

SUBJECT/S: Housing affordability; Zombies in the 2017 Budget; Penalty rates.

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda, with me this morning is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Andrew first of all, Scott Morrison's pitch to middle Australia. He's focusing on home ownership, the support for Medicare and essential services. That sort of message you'd welcome given it was such a big part of Labor's warnings in the lead up to the last election and he says they'll be reaffirming their support for the health system as it stands?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Well Kieran I feel this is Scott Morrison version 10.0. Scott Morrison has almost had more versions than iTunes. He keeps on rebooting himself, desperately hoping that he can come up with something that will provide traction. Today he's talking about home ownership but yet this is a guy that has ruled out changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount which most economists say are helping blow up the housing market by tilting the market towards investors and away from first home owners. I only wish that Scott Morrison was as ambitious for the country as he is for himself. He's very good at getting a headline but he's absolutely hopeless at running a consistent economic narrative of the kind that sets out clearly where Australia needs to go.

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TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS KARVELAS

SUNDAY, 5 MARCH 2017

SUBJECT/S: Buffett tax; Penalty rates; National Accounts.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: My next guest is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh who I'm sure was listening in there. Andrew Leigh, welcome.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks Patricia, great to be with you.

KARVELAS: I'll just start with the question I'd love to get your view on, do you support the Buffett tax?

LEIGH: The Buffett tax is essentially the notion that as Warren Buffett put it, it's unfair for a billionaire like him to be paying a lower rate of tax than his secretary. It has inspired a range of people to do work around tax fairness and that tax fairness package made its way into Labor's last election platform where we said it wasn't fair to have breaks like negative gearing, capital gains tax and the high income superannuation tax breaks and it was appropriate to rein those in. The Buffett tax tackles two issues essentially; deductions and the 50 percent capital gains tax discount and we went to both of those.

WHAT IS ONE NATION HIDING ON GST?

New revelations have raised more questions about possible breaches of Australian tax law by the Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party Queensland Division.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that One Nation had been collecting GST from its members and supporters, despite not having the Australian Tax Office's authorisation to do so.

Mysteriously, within a day of this becoming known, One Nation’s tax status has now been updated on the Australian Business Register, showing that it was registered for GST since 2015.

GOVERNMENT DEVOTES HALF A PERSON TO ITS “HIGH IMPORTANCE” TRADE DEAL

The Turnbull Government’s pretence of action on trade liberalisation has again been exposed by revelations at Senate Estimates that there is less than one staff member in the government currently working on one of its top trade priorities.

Last September, Trade Minister Steve Ciobo told an audience in Brussels that the Trade in Services Agreement was ‘of high importance to both our policy and commercial interests and to the future health of the global economy’.

(Source: website of The Hon Steve Ciobo MP,  Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment – Speeches, Address to the European Parliament, 8 September 2016).

State Agreement Will Stamp Out Charity Scammers, The Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2017

Camp Gallipoli claimed it was a charity established to raise funds for veterans and their families. On that basis, it received $2.5 million dollars in taxpayers’ money from the federal government, plus permission to use the word ‘Anzac’ on its promotional merchandise.

Except it wasn’t a charity.