Andrew Leigh

FUTURES OF SENTENCING AND INCARCERATION WORKSHOP

University of Queensland, 1 August 2018

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today and pay respects to elders past and present.

My focus on mass incarceration is not as a lawyer or as a justice scholar. In fact, it is now a little over 20 years since I did my last day in the law. I finished up as Michael Kirby's Associate in the middle of 1998. My focus instead is as an economist who is concerned about the issues of poverty, disadvantage and inequality in Australia. It is becoming increasingly inescapable that you can't take a serious look at inequality and deep poverty in Australia without understanding what's going on with mass incarceration. In order to put a picture of what's going on together, I went back to trace the trends on the rates of incarceration in Australia. And in this, I also want to acknowledge the economist Saul Eslake who has helped build the long-run series back to 1900.

These days, the Australian Bureau of Statistics measures incarceration as a share of the adult population. But because of data limitations, I’m going to discuss today the incarceration rate as a share of the total population. In 1900, just a generation after the end of transportation, Australia incarcerated 0.126% of the population. By 1920, that had more than halved to 0.051%. It stays at about that level over the course of the next seven decades. Indeed, as recently as 1990, Australia's incarceration rate was only 0.077%. But in 2000, it had risen to 0.113%. By 2010, it was 0.133% - a doubling in just two decades. One of the first private member’s motions I moved was in 2011, on the topic of reducing crime and incarceration. Since then, the incarceration rate has risen by one-quarter, to 0.167%. That is the highest rate since Federation.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS
MONDAY, 30 JULY 2018
 
SUBJECTS: Braddon and Longman by-elections; Newspoll; Corporate tax cuts; Labor’s economic plan.

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda, with me now the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Thanks very much for your time. Obviously I spoke to Bill Shorten earlier, he's very happy this morning understandably given how much was at stake that week on Saturday, the Super Saturday by-elections.
 
ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: As he should be. Bill campaigned extraordinarily hard, particularly in Braddon and Longman but also in Mayo, Perth and Fremantle. We've seen this result not only a reinforcement of Bill's positive plan but also an utter repudiation of Malcolm Turnbull and Turnbullnomics. This idea that a big company tax cut is going to be good for the Australian economy has been rejected by many economists and now rejected by thousands of Australian voters.

BRENDAN O’CONNOR MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS
MEMBER FOR GORTON
 
ANDREW LEIGH MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY
SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS
MEMBER FOR FENNER
 
MURRAY WATT
LABOR SENATOR FOR QUEENSLAND
 

WHILE THE LNP DITHERS ON DIRECTOR IDS, DODGY DIRECTORS KEEP BURNING THEIR CREDITORS

 
Reports this week that Longman One Nation candidate Matthew Stephen sold his company to an Irish backpacker who had left the country two years earlier are a stark reminder of the need to crack down on dodgy phoenix activity.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS
MONDAY, 23 JULY 2018
 
SUBJECTS: Braddon and Longman by-elections; Superannuation; Regional migration; Politicisation of Treasury.

TOM CONNELL: Joining me now in the studio is Labor frontbencher, Andrew Leigh. Thanks for your time.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, Tom. Great to be with you.

CONNELL: I know you just love talking about the polls, it was an interesting one with Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten, is this the most pressure Bill Shorten has been in since the last election maybe?

LEIGH: The job of an Opposition Leader is probably the highest pressure job in politics, Tom. You’re both the central critic of the Government and also the alternative Prime Minister. Bill has done that remarkably well over the last five years, bringing together the Labor team, putting out positive policies. He'll be leading us to the next election and he'll be the next Prime Minister.

TURNBULL GOVERNMENT ALL TALK AND NO ACTION ON ILLEGAL PHOENIXING

The Turnbull Government have today finally released 2015 costings of how much dodgy phoenixing activity costs the economy – yet they are failing to take action to stop it.

In 2012, phoenix activity was estimated by PWC to cost as much as $3 billion. PWC’s 2015 report – belatedly released by the Turnbull Government today – puts that figure at $5 billion.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS
WEDNESDAY, 4 JULY 2018
 
SUBJECTS: Braddon by-election; Corporate tax cuts; National Energy Guarantee.
 
KIERAN GILBERT: With me now is Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Just on this lunch or consultation with the Chamber of Commerce in the seat of Braddon, Labor wants to correct the record here saying it hasn't been cancelled, there is still a lunch going ahead and there's been quite a good response for a breakfast tomorrow. Seeing as Labor wants to make sure that there's no sense of a backlash here after the company tax debate last week.
 
ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Kieran, there's no shortage of people wanting to engage with Bill, whether it's in the community or in the business sector. He's holding business events at lunch today and breakfast tomorrow and a town hall meeting tonight. That will be about 70 town hall meetings that Bill has held since Malcolm Turnbull became leader. I've got to say that Malcolm Turnbull hasn't held 70 town hall meetings.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS

TUESDAY, 3 JULY 2018

SUBJECTS: New survey on friends and neighbours; Labor’s Reconnected forums.

DAVID SPEERS: Andrew Leigh, thanks very much for your time this afternoon. Let's just start by looking at how serious this problem of loneliness really is. How would you characterise the seriousness of this?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: I think it's a huge challenge, David. If you go back to the mid-1980s, 11 per cent of Australians said they had no one they could turn to in times of difficulty, now that has almost doubled up to 18 per cent. In Britain after the death of Jo Cox, they've appointed a Minister for Loneliness. Colleagues of mine including Graham Perrett, Andrew Giles and Louise Pratt have been talking about the issue of loneliness. We have these new survey results now suggesting that Australians have fewer close friends and are less likely to know their neighbours than they were in the past.

LABOR LEADING CONSUMER AND COMPETITION DEBATE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 27 JUNE 2018

Dr LEIGH (Fenner):  I move:

That all 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 notes the Government's failure to commit to a full suite of measures to strengthen the consumer watchdog, including:

(1) increasing the maximum penalties for anti-competitive conduct;

(2) cracking down on payday lenders;

(3) providing the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission with an independent market studies function;

(4) increasing the litigation budget of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission;

(5) requiring car manufacturers to share technical information with independent mechanics on commercially fair and reasonable terms, with safeguards that enable environmental, safety and security-related technical information to be shared with the independent sector; and

(6) prioritising cases that disproportionately affect disadvantaged Australians".

It is always a good day when the coalition belatedly adopts Labor's policies. On 15 June 2016, Labor called on the government to raise the penalties for ripping off consumers. We did so following a succession of scandals in which firms had seen penalties for anticonsumer conduct as simply the cost of doing business. We had that period from 2011 to 2015 when Nurofen, one of the big shots in the pain business, began selling a series of painkillers said to target pain in the body—Nurofen Back Pain, Nurofen Period Pain, Nurofen Migraine Pain and Nurofen Tension Headache—but the fact was they all had the same active ingredient, 342 milligrams of ibuprofen lysine. The fact was that Nurofen were misleading consumers, and the penalties dealt out to them were a mere slap on the wrist.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWS RADIO

THURSDAY, 28 JUNE 2018
 
SUBJECTS: Malcolm Turnbull’s $80 billion tax cut for big business; By-elections.
 
FIONA ELLIS-JONES: Labor’s Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and joins us now this morning. Andrew Leigh, thanks for your time today.
 
ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, Fiona. Great to be with you.
 
ELLIS-JONES: Please can you clarify this – will Labor limit tax cuts to firms with turnovers no higher than $2 million?
 
LEIGH: Fiona, we’ve been absolutely clear that we’re putting investment in hospitals and schools ahead of big business tax cuts. You’d have to have been living under a rock if you’d missed that message from Labor. We’ve said clearly that for businesses under $2 million turnover – that’s nine out of 10 Australian businesses – they’ll get the same tax cut under Labor. And we’re continuing to consider our position for businesses between $2 and $10 million of turnover.