Andrew Leigh

COALITION UNCOOPERATIVE OVER COOPERATIVES AND MUTUALS REFORMS

Almost two years after Labor unveiled our policy on the co-operative and mutual sector, and almost a year after the Coalition said they would back the reforms, the Morrison Government is still yet to draft all the necessary legislation.

In November 2016, we announced that a Shorten Labor Government would amend the Corporations Act to define mutual enterprises and implement reforms to facilitate new financial instruments for member-owned firms such as credit unions, building societies, insurance providers, and mutuals such as motoring societies.

Labor’s cooperatives and mutuals reforms will promote ethical competition and productivity, as well as encouraging social investment and the well-being of workers and small businesses.

Maths fun factor is highly probable

The Chronicle, 23 October 2018

‘Maths explains why a sunflower’s seeds spiral in the way they do, maths explains the sprawling shape of a river delta meeting the ocean, and maths explains why bees around the world build their honeycombs in such a perfectly hexagonal arrangement.’

Eddie Woo has been called the Kim Kardashian of Australian maths teaching. With more than 400,000 followers to his ‘WooTube’ channel, he specialises in making maths fun.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS AGENDA

MONDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2018

SUBJECTS: The Coalition loss in Wentworth, New Zealand resettlement offer, Kevin Rudd.

KIERAN GILBERT: Let's bring in now the shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh and Andrew it has been a long time coming, this apology, and of course I guess the process started under Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: It's a really important moment, Kieran, for the survivors to be told ‘we believe you’ and to hopefully begin that process of healing. But we will be judged not just by our words, but also on our actions, and it is vital that we implement the findings of the Royal Commission in full.

LAURA JAYES: Andrew Leigh, can I ask you about the results out of Wentworth now? Are there any lessons for Labor here because I note that your primary vote was only around the 9,000 mark - the Greens were only 2,000 behind.

LEIGH: Labor voters were following the strategy that Scott Morrison outlined for them in his press conferences the week before the by-election. He said it was important that Labor didn't come third because that'd give Kerryn Phelps the best chance of winning. Labor voters heard that message and many of them would have put Kerryn Phelps ahead of Tim Murray in order to make sure that the conservatives for the first time since Federation didn't hold this seat.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 17 OCTOBER 2018

I move the second reading amendment circulated in my name:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that the Coalition Government has had six Ministers responsible for charities over the last five years; and

(2) expresses its disapproval of the appointment of prominent anti-charity advocate Gary Johns as chair of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission”.

Labor will be supporting this bill in the House. Schedule 1 of the bill makes a number of technical refinements to the income tax law so that the new tax system for managed investment trusts operates as intended. Following recommendations made by the Board of Taxation in its report on the review of tax arrangements applying to managed investment trusts in 2016, the new tax system for attributed, managed investment trusts was enacted. Labor supported that legislation. The new tax system was designed to increase certainty, provide flexibility, reduce compliance costs for managed investment trusts and improve the competitiveness of Australia's fund management industry.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 16 OCTOBER 2018

Fifty years ago today, a young Australian did two extraordinary things. At the Mexico City Olympics, Peter Norman won silver in the 200 metres with a time of 20.06 seconds. In the half century since, no Australian has run faster. It is still our national record. But the best was yet to come. As he walked out to the medal ceremony with Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the two African American runners told him they planned to bow their heads and put their fists in the air in support of human rights.

When Carlos revealed their plans he said, 'I expected to see fear in Norman's eyes, but instead I saw love.' Peter Norman told the two athletes, 'I'll stand with you.' He borrowed an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge and pinned it on his chest. The famous photograph shows Peter Norman standing silently alongside the two athletes giving the Black Power salute. When he returned to Australia, Peter Norman should have been treated as a hero for racial equality, but he wasn't. He wasn't highlighted in the 2000 Sydney Olympics' opening ceremony. When he died in 2006, Smith and Carlos were among his pallbearers.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 16 OCTOBER 2018

In DC Comics in the 1960s there was a fictional place called htraE which was the home of Bizarro World, a place in which everything was backwards. It feels like we are in Bizarro World today, as we look at a government behaving like an opposition and an opposition behaving like a government.

Over the course of the last five years Labor have been stable under the excellent leadership of Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, and we have been producing a suite of important economic policies that will take us to the next election as the most policy-focussed opposition in a generation.

FIFTY YEARS ON, WE SHOULD HONOUR NORMAN’S COURAGE

The Herald Sun, 16 October 2016

Fifty years ago today, a young Australian did two extraordinary things.

At the Mexico City Olympics, Peter Norman won silver in the 200 metres, with a time of 20.06 seconds. In the half century since, no Australian has run faster. It is still our national record.

But the best was still to come. As he walked out to the medal ceremony with Tommie Smith (gold) and John Carlos (bronze), the two African-American runners told him that they planned to bow their heads and put their fists in the air in support of human rights.

1968 was the year in which Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. Race riots in Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago and Kansas City had represented the biggest upsurge in social unrest since the Civil War, claiming the lives of more than 40 people. Smith and Carlos decided to be a part of those protests.

FEDERATION CHAMBER, 15 OCTOBER 2018

When Senator Cormann addressed the APSwide Canberra conference last week he laid out his plans to invigorate the Australian Public Service. Like any propagandist, he tried to take control of the situation by taking charge of the words that defined it, but he forgot that Canberrans can read between the lines.

Fairfax Media got the picture, with the headline 'Cuts are good for you, Cormann tells public servants'.

Canberrans are entitled to wonder why Senator Cormann thinks so differently to them when it comes to cuts. After all, cuts hurt, don't they?

FEDERATION CHAMBER, 15 OCTOBER 2018

As a high schooler of the 1980s, I remember repeated taunts about anyone who seemed to be the slightest bit gay or lesbian. The idea of being homosexual was thought of as abhorrent and was used to attack students and teachers alike. It is a mark of how far we've come today that both sides of politics are now united in the view that exemptions allowing religious schools to discriminate against children on the basis of their sexuality should be removed.

I'm enough of a believer in Burkean representative democracy that I don't need polls to tell me what to do, but I still can't help noticing today's Fairfax-Ipsos survey showing that three-quarters of voters oppose laws allowing religious schools to select students and teachers based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or relationship status. That majority also holds among Coalition supporters, Labor voters, Greens voters and One Nation voters.

It is a significant shift for the Prime Minister, who just a few days ago, after the Ruddock review was handed down, was stating that it is existing law and that the coalition was not proposing to change those arrangements.

THE EQUITY-EFFICIENCY TAKEOFF

MELBOURNE INSTITUTE 2018 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL OUTLOOK CONFERENCE, MELBOURNE

THURSDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2018

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation on whose lands we meet today and pay my respects to their elders past and present. My thanks to organisers Abigail Payne and Paul Whittaker and their hardworking teams. I also recognize our distinguished session chair David Ribar, my sparring partner Kelly O'Dwyer - she and I go back to our early time in Parliament where we had a double header on Sky News and got to know each other so well that I think we could probably have done each other's speeches if need be - and to thank the many friendly and familiar faces in this room. The Outlook Conference really is a true national institution, bringing together the social sector, the media, economic policy makers, business, the community sector and more. It is to policy wonks what fairy bread is to preschoolers.

I've certainly been attending the Outlook Conference since I was an Australian National University professor and have continued to be back since entering Parliament in 2010, including since becoming Shadow Assistant Treasurer in 2013. Chris Bowen told you this morning that he is the nation's longest serving Shadow Treasurer. I've got this funny coincidence for you: it turns out I'm also the nation's longest serving Shadow Assistant Treasurer. Like Chris, I've enjoyed the role but I could do with a change next year.

We haven't spent the last five years throwing bombs. We've spent this period in Opposition crafting the most comprehensive economic policy that any opposition in a generation has taken to an election. Voters are sick of the insults, they're sick of the hyper partisanship. Whether I go to Townsville or Darwin, whether it's Launceston or Nowra, people want solutions, not slogans. You don't need to be a former Liberal Treasurer to see the failure of the current government to develop an economic narrative. You don't even need to be a former Liberal Treasurer to see it as a bit weird to promise tax changes in 2026. A time when, as Kelly O'Dwyer's former boss puts it, the Coalition are not going to be in government.