Andrew Leigh

SENATE SUPPORTS TRANSPARENCY OVER SECRECY

Joint Media Release with Senator Sam Dastyari

The Senate has today stood up for tax fairness by passing the Multinational Tax Avoidance Bill with important amendments that restore tax transparency.

Today’s amendments have reversed the Government’s shameful attempt to gut Australia’s tax transparency laws. Private companies earning more than $100 million a year will continue to be included in transparency reports published by the Australian Tax Office.

TAX PAPER DELAYED FOR MORE TURNBULL TALK

Joint Media Release with Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen 

Malcolm Turnbull loves the sound of himself talking about tax so much he has put off releasing the Government’s much-anticipated green paper until 2016.

The Government will now go into its third year in office without having even released its ideas on tax reform, let alone a real plan. 

This is acknowledgement from the Government that this term has been a wasteland when it comes to tax reform.

In an attempt to avoid acknowledging the delay, Treasurer ‘Sneaky’ Scott Morrison began slipping the new schedule into interviews today:

“There’s a budget next year, there’s a green paper we will be looking to release next year…”

- Scott Morrison, AM, 10 November 

LABOR WELCOMES LATEST MAJURA PARKWAY MILESTONE

Joint media release with Shadow Minister for Infrastructure Anthony Albanese and Senator for the ACT Katy Gallagher

Labor welcomes the completion of the Molongo River and Fairbairn bridges as part of Canberra’s $288 million Majura Parkway project.

The project will reduce traffic congestion for Canberra motorists by linking the Federal and Monaro highways and diverting trucks and other traffic moving through Canberra away from the city centre.

It will deliver more than $1 billion worth of economic, social and environmental benefits and carry at least 40,000 vehicles a day, including 6000 trucks, by 2030.

The ACT Labor Government and the former federal Labor government funded the project in 2011, each contributing $144 million.

UNTESTED TAX BILL NEEDS PROPER REVIEW

Scott Morrison should commit to a formal review of the Multinational Tax Bill by 2018, as recommended by the Senate Economics Committee this evening.

The committee’s report reflects Labor’s reservations about the Government’s untested approach to tackling multinational profit shifting.

It recommends the Bill be evaluated within three years of its 2016 start-date to determine whether it has successfully stopped companies siphoning profits offshore. 

With Treasury unable to say how much revenue the Government’s plan might return to Australia, and no other country having successfully implemented Australia’s approach, it is right that the tax Bill should be subject to serious evaluation in the future.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

666 ABC CANBERRA

MONDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2015

SUBJECT/S: Christmas Island; Liberals’ plan to raise the GST 

PHILIP CLARK: Parliament is back and I have Andrew Leigh, Labor member for Fraser, and Zed Seselja, Liberal Senator for the ACT, joining us now. Good morning gents. You're looking forward to it, can't wait, Andrew?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: It just doesn't get better than this, Philip. We have the nation’s leaders coming to this great city in order to make this country better. 

CLARK: Exactly right. Can we talk first about Christmas Island, there is some pretty disturbing news this morning about what's going on there. Is this sustainable into the future, what do you think, Andrew?

LEIGH: I'm really concerned about what's coming out this morning, Philip. It's not obvious what has happened but it does again point to the need for better transparency for Australia's detention facilities. Labor has called for more openness and for better access by third parties to detention centres. We believe, for example, that there ought to be a Children's Commissioner in place who has an independent remit to look at issues in Australia's detention centres. 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

MONDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2015 

SUBJECT/S: Liberals’ plan to increase the GST

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning everyone. When it comes to tax reform, every problem for this Government seems to come back to the GST. It's said that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For this Government, tax reform looks like raising or broadening the GST. The problem is, when you look at the big challenges Australia faces, the GST is exactly the wrong response.

If you look at inequality, which is now at a 75 year high, raising one of our most regressive taxes would hurt the most vulnerable. If you look at consumer confidence, it's very clear that with consumer confidence still fragile, jacking up the cost of spending could well do damage to the Australian economy. You've only got to look at Japan which raised its consumption tax and saw the economy slide into recession. If you look at the big challenge of housing affordability, it's very clear that putting the GST on mortgages as Dan Tehan has advocated today would just drive housing affordability further out of the reach of the typical household.

So whether it's inequality, consumer confidence or housing affordability, raising the GST is not the answer. And frankly, if you think that raising the GST to 15 per cent is the right answer for Australia, you're probably asking the wrong question.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWS RADIO

FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2015

 

SUBJECT/S: GST and tax fairness.

 

MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Leigh, the Government is still only talking in broad terms about its objectives for tax reform but one objective is that it be fair. I imagine Labor shares that. But another one they've indicated is that there be no overall increase in the tax rate – does Labor share that view?

 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Marius, we need to make sure that we have the tax base necessary in order to fund the services Australians demand. For example, we saw that when we put in place the National Disability Insurance Scheme that Australians, by and large, accepted that there would be an increase in the tax share to fund a new part of the social safety net. Because any of us could fall victim to a profound disability. So I don't think there's any magic about the tax rate, but tax reform should always be equitable, efficient and simple. I'm just not sure that the Government's plans for a higher GST meet those tests. 

TURNBULL DISCOVERS ‘FAIRNESS’, TWO YEARS TOO LATE

Malcolm Turnbull’s hypocrisy was writ large today when he talked about making changes to the tax system that are ‘fair’.

Australians know what Mr Turnbull’s definition of ‘fair’ is: he ‘unreservedly and wholeheartedly’ backed every measure in the Liberals’ 2014 Budget. 

Supporting a GP tax on the vulnerable, making students pay $100,000 for their degrees and taking over $6,000 from the pockets of families: was this ‘fair’ Mr Turnbull?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I support unreservedly and wholeheartedly every element in the Budget. Every single one.

ALAN JONES: So you’re totally supportive of the Medicare co-payment?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I support every element, of course, including the Medicare co-payment. Do you want to go through the whole list?

ALAN JONES: You’re totally supportive of the increase in the fuel excise?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I support the re-prioritised funding of official development assistance. I support introducing co-payments for general practitioner pathology and diagnostic imaging services in the Medicare Benefits Schedule. I support the reforms to higher education. I support the changes to family payment reform. Do you want me to read through the whole Budget?

2GB – 5 June 2014

Malcolm's medium is Australia's XXXL, Business Spectator, 28 October

Calling a firm earning $100 million a year a “medium-sized company” is like describing Andre the Giant a featherweight. It’s so wrong as to be laughable.

 

Yet that is exactly how Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has described the companies his government chose to shield from Australia’s tax transparency laws.

 

In the last sitting fortnight the Turnbull Government rammed a bill through the Senate that gutted transparency rules put in place by Labor in 2013. Our laws required the Australian Tax Office to publish information about the income, taxable income and tax paid by companies earning more than $100 million. The first report was supposed to be published by the end of the year.

Five things that matter, The Australian, 28 October

A few months before the 2013 federal election, the Australian economist Stephen Koukoulas issued the incoming Liberal Government what he called ‘a very simple and professional challenge’. Fed up with all their rhetoric about fixing the budget and turbo-charging the economy, Koukoulas challenged the Liberals to improve Australia’s economic performance on five key indicators.

The indicators he picked were the ones any good economist looks to when taking the temperature of an economy: GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, wages and interest rates.

As Treasurer 2.0 Scott Morrison starts work on the upcoming Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, it would be worth him returning to those key indicators. If he does, he’ll find problems on all five fronts. The mid-year budget update is Scott Morrison’s chance to show his government has any kind of plan to get the dials on Australia’s economic dashboard moving the right way again.