Andrew Leigh

It's really disappointing to hear that the Abbott Government is considering making further cuts to Australia's aid budget after already slashing $7.6 billion from it in the May budget. The government's approach is especially galling when there's clear evidence Australians support foreign aid and want to see us do our bit in the region.

Foreign aid cuts are counter to Australian generosity, Canberra Times, 8 October

In the beachside town of Tibar, in Timor-Leste’s Liquiçá District, there is a little community school where local children come each day to learn reading and writing. For a long time, the school’s staff taught only from a couple of outdated textbooks, while the children ground stubs of chalk down to nothing writing on battered slates.

That changed in 2010 when an Australian Government aid program began providing Tibar’s school with brand new textbooks, reading tools and learning materials. For the first time, the school could offer its students an education that fed and inspired their young minds.

Following news that the Abbott Government has finally discovered the connection between international economic conditions and the state of the Australian budget, I joined Peter Van Onselen's show on Sky to talk about what it should do next. Here's the clip:  

For the past few months, the Abbott Government has been seeking feedback on its plans to abolish to Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. Despite promising to make this feedback public by September, there's still no sign of Minister Kevin Andrews releasing it. So the question is:

WHAT IS KEVIN ANDREWS KEEPING FROM US?

MEDIA RELEASE

Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews is keeping us all in the dark about how his plans for replacing the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission have been received by the sector.

In July the government released an options paper which recommended that the dedicated charities commission be replaced by a mix of oversight from the Australian Tax Office and self-reporting by not-for-profits.

Minister Andrews called for public submissions responding to this paper, and his department also held 10 forums around Australia for representatives of the charity sector.

The department promised to publish the findings from this consultation process on its website in September. Yet here we are in the second week of October and there is still no sign of the submissions being released.

Could it be that the Minister is holding back the submissions because they rubbish his idea of scrapping an agency which is making life easier for charities and increasing transparency across the not-for-profit sector?

The Women's Legal Centre will have $100,000 cut from its funding by the Abbott Government in the 2015-16 and 2016-17 financial years. A constituent of mine got in touch to share her story about the Women's Legal Centre, and concerns about the government's cuts. Without community legal assistance she and her children would have been exposed to prolonged abuse and trauma. Sadly, her story is not unique, nor is it uncommon.

1 October 2014

I spoke in parliament to offer my condolences for the death of Emeritus Professor Anthony McMichael AO, and recognise his major contribution to our understanding of the links between climate change and human health.

News that the federal government is going back to the drawing board with the budget because it can't get its unfair cuts through the Senate has further increased the focus on Australia's tax revenue. Are we collecting enough tax? And if, as Fairfax has been reporting, some big companies aren't paying their fair share, how do we fix that problem? I joined Janine Perrett on Sky to talk tax and the budget; here's the video.  

Over the past few days, there's been a lot of discussion about how much tax Australian companies pay and whether big firms are paying their fair share. This video from United Voice and the Tax Justice Network gives a great rundown of the facts and figures behind that debate:

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission has released some new research showing how much time and money Australian charities spend complying with their regulatory requirements. Embarrassingly for Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews, the report reveals his whole rationale for scrapping the commission is completely wrong.

MEDIA RELEASE

RED TAPE? NOT FROM THE CHARITIES COMMISSION

Kevin Andrews’ main argument for scrapping the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission has been blown apart by a new report today from Ernst & Young.

The report finds that the charities commission has an critical role to play in reducing regulatory burden.

Multinational tax avoidance continues to be a hot topic of discussion across Australia, and this morning I joined John Stanley and Garry Linell on 2UE Mornings to talk about how we can tackle this challenge. Here's the transcript:

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2UE MORNINGS

WEDNESDAY, 1 OCTOBER 2014

SUBJECT/S: Joe Hockey dragging his feet on multinational profit-shifting; New Senate inquiry

JOHN STANLEY: This is the question that we have been talking about for quite some time. This question of tax and the capacity of the Australian government to get some of these companies, particularly these big companies like Apple and Google to pay their tax.

GARRY LINELL: So we’ve got the big G2O meeting in Brisbane coming up later this year and the Abbott Government has pledged to tackle the issue there.  But there are now even more concerns that the Australian tax office is ill equipped to deal with the problems. I mean if you look at the money that’s going missing, it could actually solve all of our budget deficits. Now they are currently in the process of axing about three thousand jobs at the Australian tax office, including most of the international tax experts. Now many of these experts are being poached to work for the big four accounting firms.

STANLEY: Can we just get this straight. We’ve got people, thousands of them who have been trained at public expense in our universities, they’ve gone into the public service, they’ve become tax experts, they work in the tax office, they’re laid off and then they go and work for the big companies that are helping these big international firms avoid their tax.

LINELL: But the best ones are being poached anyway, long before they are being laid off. They are being picked up by both the major companies who want to know how to minimise their tax and the big accounting firms.

STANLEY: Dr Andrew Leigh is the shadow assistant treasurer and he is one the line with us now.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Morning John, morning Gary.

The Tax Justice Network and United Voice has just released new research showing many companies in the ASX 200 have an effective tax rate well below the Australian standard. I joined Jonathan Green on Radio National's Drive program to talk about how we can ensure that companies pay their fair share of tax. Here's the transcript:

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE

MONDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2014

SUBJECT/S: multinational profit shifting; corporate tax avoidance

JONATHAN GREEN: This may not come as a shock, but it seems that some of our biggest companies are paying the least amount of tax. The latest evidence comes in a report from the Tax Justice Network, and it’s a report supported by the United Voice union. Dr Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and he joins me now, Dr Leigh – welcome.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks Jonathan.

GREEN: We all know that businesses try to minimise their tax, but this survey suggests that one third of top Australian companies pay less than 10 per cent. Is that extent a surprise?

LEIGH: Certainly there is a challenge with what's known as multinational profit shifting which a lot of developed countries are facing at the moment. It arises because increasingly a lot of production is being globalised and we're increasingly becoming a service economy. So it's easier for accountants to move the nominal country in which production takes place around to a low tax jurisdiction. A lot of countries are now working out how they can crack down on multinational profit shifting.

GREEN: So do we have particular vulnerabilities?

LEIGH: Australia – as a small, open economy – is particularly vulnerable to this. One of the things that Labor did last year, in our final year in office, was for Wayne Swan and David Bradbury to sit down and put together a multi-billion dollar package of measures to crack down on multinational profit shifting. What was disappointing to me was that when the Coalition came to office, they didn't say 'well, what's the next thing we can do beyond this?' Instead, they began to wind it back. So they shrunk the size of that package by $1 billion, effectively losing $1 billion of revenue which went back to multinationals in the form of extra tax breaks.