Andrew Leigh

I spoke on 2SM today with Leon Delaney about the fact that the Abbott Government may be strong at standing up to the weak, but it's weak at standing up to the strong.

ANDREW LEIGH
SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER
SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION
MEMBER FOR FRASER





E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW
2SM WITH LEON DELANEY

THURSDAY, 24 APRIL, 2014



SUBJECT/S: Budget cuts; Means testing; Expenditure on Joint Strike fighter; Superannuation; Pensions.



LEON DELANEY, PRESENTER: I said at the beginning of the show today, I've never seen a scare campaign like it. It's most unusual, in fact unique, because it is a scare campaign being conducted by the Government against itself, basically. We're being told to be fearful of what might be in the Budget in a couple of Tuesdays away from now. So that's very, very strange, very unusual. We almost don’t need the Opposition to tell us to worry about it because the Government is telling us to worry about it. Nevertheless I thought we should find out what the Opposition thinks. On the line now, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Good morning

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning.

DELANEY: How are you today?

LEIGH: I'm very well, how are you?

DELANEY: Very well thanks. There's almost nothing for you to do because Joe Hockey's doing all the scaring for you isn’t he?

LEIGH: You put it very nicely. Yes, Mr Hockey is good at one thing in the area of manufacturing, and that's manufacturing a budget crisis. I think he wants people to forget that last year he did the deal with the Greens for unlimited debt, he said 'no' to 50 tax measures that Labor had put in place, and he gave $9 billion to the reserve Bank that they hadn’t asked for. Now he's standing around saying, lo and behold, there are fiscal problems, when he's doubled the deficit.

DELANEY: Okay but when you say he's manufacturing a Budget crisis, perhaps he's gilding the lily a little bit, but it is widely recognised, there is a structural Budget challenge that must be confronted over the years and decades ahead. We cannot simply go along as we have been going can we?

LEIGH: Well government is always about making trade-offs and decisions, Leon, but when you say no to the revenue from the mining tax and from the carbon price, immediately there you blow a hole in the budget, to say nothing of what you do to the environment. And if you're not willing to go ahead with modest measures, such as Labor's measure to impose a fairer rate of tax on people with superannuation balances over $2 million, again you blow a hole in the budget. But I don’t think it's fair to then turn around and say the people who have to pay for that are pensioners on $20,000 a year, regardless of the fact that the Prime Minister made a very clear promise to pensioners that there would be no changes to pensions.

DELANEY: Yeah. Now, of course we're all speculating a little bit because we haven’t seen what's actually in the budget, but we've been given a pretty clear indication from Mr Hockey, particularly in his speech last night, that there will be some sort of changes involving the pension and welfare generally, there will be some sort of changes involving our visits to the GP, why is it wrong to ask people to pay a little bit towards the cost of their trip to the GP? What's wrong with the idea of a co-payment?

LEIGH: Certainly if you ask health experts, whether it's the Australian Medical Association or the Doctors' Reform Society, they'll tell you that the impact of a co-payment is going to deter people from chronic conditions getting the help that they need in the cheapest place, which is from a doctor, and instead going to a more expensive place, which is a hospital emergency ward. We've already got out-of-pocket costs in Australia are high and rising, we've had the biggest increase in private health premiums in a decade approved by the Health Minister at the end of last year. So in that environment, it seems pretty rough to me to then be saying we're going to put a GP tax on the top.

DELANEY: What about the idea, because the, speaking in generalities, because that's all we have, but the idea that the Treasurer is telling us that nothing is free, and that we should look at more income tests, more means tests, and perhaps more co-payments in various areas of government services. Again, isn’t that reasonable, if people have the capacity to provide for themselves, shouldn't they do so?

LEIGH: I think means testing is a very reasonable principle Leon. The trouble is I can't remember a time when we were in government when Joe Hockey supported a means test. In fact when we made some modest changes to the baby bonus for second and subsequent children, Joe Hockey compared it to China's one child policy. So you know, this is a bloke who talks means testing, but then wants to put in a parental leave scheme that not only isn’t means tested, it's actually regressive - it gives five times as much to millionaire families when they have a child as it does to minimum wage families when they have a child.

DELANEY: Now I forget, what's the projected cost of that, six billion dollars or something?

LEIGH: Somewhere around there, $5.5 billion, and you know -

DELANEY: Is that annually?

LEIGH: No that's the cost over the four -

DELANEY: Forward estimates?

LEIGH: Four years, as we understand it, I mean we don’t, we don’t have details on this scheme but if Mr Abbott has to break a promise, well let's start with the unaffordable promise to turn a fair flat rate parental leave scheme into an unfair wage replacement scheme that gives the most to those who have the most, and according to independent economists, won't boost productivity or participation.

DELANEY: OK. You've mentioned the Carbon Tax Repeal, which still hasn't gone through of course, but when we look at the question of environmental management, Direct Action is set to cost, what is it, 3.2 billion dollars over the forward estimates?

LEIGH: Well the problem with Direct Action was it was drawn on the back of a napkin in that interregnum after Tony Abbott won the Liberal leadership, and it really hasn't been updated since then. It's a policy which no serious economist backs and that's because it's really a political strategy rather than an economic or environmental one. What we did with the carbon price was to say well let's deal with the problem of climate change and let's also get the double dividend of cutting income tax rates at the same time. So it's a scheme that works on two levels. Direct Action taxes households in order to pay polluters, and won't meet those emissions reduction targets that both sides of politics say they're committed to.

DELANEY: Now if we really want to get serious about balancing the budget, shouldn’t we look at, as suggested by the Greens, fuel subsidies for big mining companies which amount to something like 13 billion dollars?

LEIGH: Well Leon I'm not the Treasurer, so I'm happy to respond to -

DELANEY: Well you're the Assistant Treasurer, let's have a look at - Assistant Shadow Treasurer, I should say, so you know let's have a look at this, isn't that a reasonable suggestion, because obviously big mining companies are pretty profitable?

LEIGH: Look I'm happy to respond to proposals the government is making on the budget, what I would say is that Joe Hockey's budget numbers have the mining tax raising nearly $2 billion in a couple of years, and foregoing that revenue is again putting more pressure on the Budget. I mean Mr Hockey's cuts all seem to be cuts that will hurt low and middle income families, whether it's getting rid of payments to kids of veterans, scrapping the School Kids bonus, or raising superannuation taxes on low wage workers. But then at the same time, he wants this unfair parental leave scheme, he doesn't want to more fairly tax people with multi-million dollar superannuation balances, and he doesn't want to rethink giving a tax cut to mining billionaires.

DELANEY: So you don’t want to comment on the Greens' suggestion that looking at the 13.7 billion dollars in fuel subsidies for mining companies might be a way of helping the budget bottom line?

LEIGH: I think sticking with the mining tax would be a sensible move, and we know that a profit based tax is the right way of taxing commodities. That was what the Minerals Council of Australia put to the Henry Tax Review a couple of years back.

DELANEY: Yes. OK let me throw you a curly one.

LEIGH: Sure.

DELANEY: I've just had a caller a few minutes ago who expressed her absolute disgust that the Federal Government could be talking about cutting pensions, or indicating that there's some threat to pensions, while at the same time announcing a $12 billion purchase of jet fighter aircraft which will probably cost a lot more than that in the long run anyway. She sees that as being the height of hypocrisy. We've got plenty of money to buy jets, but no money to help aged people. Now I know that the F35 purchase has bipartisan support, but how do you explain that to people? Say ‘well look we can buy jets but we can't help people see the doctor’?

LEIGH: Well, there's no new money going to purchase the Joint Strike Fighter, so they've been in the Budget and they go back to the 2011 Defence Capability Plan, the 2013 Defence White Paper, and so they're about making sure that our capacity to defend ourselves continues. And the only concern that I have with the Joint Strike Fighter purchase is that the government is cutting jobs from the Defence Materiel Organisation which is one of the key organisations that manages projects of this kind. We need to make sure that we make the best use possible of this capability, because as your caller notes, that it's an expensive purchase.

DELANEY: But you understand the frustration of ordinary people who can't understand why we can spend billions of dollars on that sort of thing, but can't seem to find enough money to keep our health system running as well as it should?

LEIGH: Well I think we need to make sure that we have a strong defence capacity, but at the same time I think that if you're looking at making budget savings in an Australia where the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been steadily widening for the past generation, then you don’t want to have the axe fall hardest on those who have the least. Cutting back on the income support bonus, on people with very modest means, but then for those who are the most affluent, giving them a parental leave scheme which gives them $75,000 a year. $75,000 - that's more than many of your listeners would earn in an entire year, but that's what a millionaire will get when they have a child under Mr Hockey's new proposals.

DELANEY: The other comment that constantly comes up when people ring in about you know, trying to rebalance the Budget, and how the government tells us everybody has to take their share of the heavy lifting, the comment that frequently comes back is, ‘yes but when are the politicians going to take their share of the heavy lifting and reduce their salaries, and reduce their entitlements after they retire?’ People are pretty frustrated with what they see as hypocrisy on that front too.

LEIGH: I can understand the perspective that's coming from. What we decided to do a couple of years ago was to put off politicians' pay to an independent committee, because I don’t think it's appropriate for people to be setting their own pay. I think that's a bad look and we also traded off some of the things like the study tours, which I think were mostly being well used, but in certain cases were being abused, and giving the study tours a bad name.

DELANEY: And of course the Parliamentary Superannuation Scheme was changed a couple of years ago now, so the people who are elected now don’t get the same entitlements as people who were previously elected.

LEIGH: Yeah that's right.

DELANEY: But those changes don’t seem to have been enough to, I guess, allay the concerns of many of the people that ring up and say, yeah they talk about heavy lifting but that's easy for them to say, they don’t have to worry about the next dollar, or where the next meal's coming from do they?

LEIGH: Leon, I think it's a fair point and I would certainly acknowledge that as Parliamentarians, our salary puts us in the top couple of percent of Australian income earners. I thought there was a little moment in Joe Hockey's speech last night where he talked about the pain shouldn’t fall on the few - and he talked about them as being other people. For the Treasurer not to accept that his own income places him very high in the income distribution I think is to forget his sort of moral responsibility to be making sure that the burden is shared across the community.

DELANEY: One of the other things, I didn’t actually see the speech itself, but reading the reportage this morning, he appears to have endorsed one of the broad goals of the Commission of Audit. The full report of course has not been released yet, but one of the broad goals being the capping of future government spending at an increase of 1.7 percent above inflation annually. Now that's a much tighter constraint than ever before, pretty much in the history of the country isn’t it?

LEIGH: We had a two percent spending cap coming out of the Global Financial Crisis, and we offset all of our new spending decisions with additional savings. Some of them weren’t straightforward; we got attacked by the Coalition when we means tested the Private Health Insurance rebate, for example. Or when we phased out the outdated Dependent Spouse Tax Offset. But we thought that they were reasonable savings measures to make. And in our final year of government we actually managed to cut nominal spending.

DELANEY: Yeah.

LEIGH: We spent less even after inflation, and as far as I’m aware, there's not another government in the history of Federation that's done that.

DELANEY: Yeah but to maintain a figure of 1.75 over a decade, which is I think the intention, that would be unprecedented, wouldn't it?

LEIGH: 1.75 is smaller than 2 but not by much.

DELANEY: Yeah but to maintain it over a decade is a fairly big ambition. And the effect of that if you achieve it is you quite dramatically reduce the government participation in the overall economy don't you?

LEIGH: Yes, and you need to take account of where Australia is compared to other developed countries. I mean our size of government, whether you look at taxing or spending, puts us down near the bottom, where with government in the economy in Australia is more like it is in the US or Korea, than in Sweden or Finland.

DELANEY: Oh yes.

LEIGH: So we've got a fairly modest size of government in Australia, and let's face it, when you look internationally: strong growth, those AAA credit ratings, and debt around a tenth of GDP, which is significantly lower than most developed countries.

DELANEY: If the Budget in a couple of weeks’ time, actually does unveil some sort of change to aged pensions, and does introduce the co-payment for visits to the GP, and does introduce things like cuts to funding at the ABC, these are all clear and blatant breaches of election promises aren't they. So what do you see as the political fallout of that?

LEIGH: I think it would be an unwise Prime Minister who spends three years criss-crossing the country talking about the importance of keeping promises, and attacking Julia Gillard for a promise that she made the day before the 2010 election, and then says ‘well when I made a promise the day before the 2013 election, I didn't actually mean it. And it's OK for me to break my promises because I'm a Liberal Prime Minister and Liberal Prime Ministers are allowed to break their promises’. If that's the strategy he wants to pursue, good luck to him. I'm not sure how pensioners, ABC viewers and so on will take it.

DELANEY: No. Well pensioners in particular I think are pretty cranky already and it hasn't even happened yet.

LEIGH: That's right and I think they're right to be concerned and I think it's particularly worrying to me that Mr Hockey is playing these political games and not considering the impact it has emotionally on pensioners. I had a man in my electorate office the other day who was just genuinely worried about what the government is going to do. He's living on the margins and not feeling as though he could cope with big cuts to the support that he receives.

DELANEY: Yes and that's you know something that perhaps isn't often enough considered, that that emotional impact that you're talking about is really quite substantial for a lot of people.

LEIGH: It is, and I think had Mr Hockey released the Commission of Audit early, rather than holding it back for the South Australian election and the Western Australian Senate election, we could have had a better debate over this and he would have been able to more clearly say what he was going to do and wasn’t going to do. But because he's played games with the Commission of Audit report, it's left many older Australians a little concerned about their fiscal futures.

DELANEY: Well you've brought us back to where we started. I think the government is conducting the most extraordinary scare campaign against itself and it's succeeding.

LEIGH: It's a very strange spectacle isn't it.

DELANEY: It is. Thanks very much for your time today.

LEIGH: Thank you, appreciate it.

DELANEY: The Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh.

ENDS

I spoke today with Marius Benson about Joe Hockey's one big manufacturing success - a manufactured budget crisis, created by doubling the deficit. Here's a transcript.

ANDREW LEIGH
SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER
SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION
MEMBER FOR FRASER





E&OE TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW
ABC NEWSRADIO

THURSDAY, 24 APRIL, 2014



SUBJECT/S: Budget cuts; Means testing; Superannuation; Pensions

MARIUS BENSON, PRESENTER: Andrew Leigh, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning Marius.

BENSON: Can I start with some areas where there may be agreement with, between you and the Treasurer? That the broad points that he says we need to head back to surplus. To do that you need to cut government spending, it’s on track at 26 per cent, well above revenue coming in at 23 per cent and you should cap spending increases at 1.75 per cent, that increase above the inflation rate. I’m not sure how much of all of that you agree with. Andrew Leigh are you still with us there? We’re back live and I was just putting some points to you there that you might agree with in terms of the need to head back to surplus, broadly as one.

LEIGH: I can hear you now.

BENSON: Excellent. Did you hear the point I was putting to you which is the need to return to surplus is one that Joe Hockey was stressing?

LEIGH: Well it was certainly something that was in Labor’s last budget update in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. But what we’ve got now from Joe Hockey is really the Shadow Treasurer in drag, still trying to score political points by being unwilling to admit the impact of his own decisions on the budget bottom line. I mean, if you’re going to repeal the carbon price and the mining tax, that’s a huge hit to the budget. If you’re not going to go ahead with measures that Labor put in place to tax multinational firms fairly or to tax the superannuation of high income earners fairly, then again you blow holes in the budget. And if you relax Labor’s fiscal rule that was clearly put in place to contain spending growth, then again you manufacture a deficit. Joe Hockey has effectively doubled the deficit since coming to office by his own decisions. And he’s now playing political games and wanting the most vulnerable to bear the costs.

BENSON: Are you being fair to Joe Hockey there because you say that he is overlooking the corporate sector but there was actually an indication that the handouts welfare that is available now to the corporate sector may well be trimmed in the budget next month.

LEIGH: Well certainly that would be a different approach than we saw from Joe Hockey when Labor was in Government. You’ll remember then that he opposed almost every sensible savings measure that Labor put up, and eventually even blocked the company tax cut that we were proposing. And so you’ve got the Government playing political games which is terribly sad Marius because all of this should have been ruled out when Peter Costello brought in the Charter of Budget Honesty back in the 1990s. What Joe Hockey is doing is really the Charter of Budget Dishonesty. He is pretending that his first budget update is Labor’s last, that’s far from the truth and the difference between them is a massive doubling of the deficit. Joe Hockey, if he wants to find savings, ought to look to things like keeping the mining tax, which would add an extra $2 billion in 2016-17, he should look to things like dropping his unfair Parental Leave Scheme, giving $75,000 to the most affluent families to have a child.

BENSON: What about the point that he made that older Australians and now overwhelming relying to some extent on benefits. That only 14% of older Australians are not receiving any kind of federal government benefit, 86 per cent get a benefit, that’s just too wide. That doesn’t target need means testing; greater means testing would target need.

LEIGH: Marius, we certainly support means testing and it was a Labor Government that put an assets test on the pension in the 1980s to the cries of outrage from the conservatives at the time. But if you look at the overall public spending on pensions in Australia it’s 3.5 per cent of GDP, compared to 7.8 per cent across the typical developed country, so we spend less on pensions. And in fact if you’re looking for savings, then why not look for example to those with more than $2 million in their superannuation balances who are getting Government assistance via tax concessions that’s bigger than the full rate age pension. Joe Hockey scrapped a measure that Labor had in place to slightly raise the tax rate on that cohort – instead he seems to want to slug some of the most vulnerable Australians, people getting $20,000 a year or so.

BENSON: But in fact Joe Hockey did refer to superannuation in his speech last night saying, despite spending billions of dollars in taxation benefits for super, by 2050 the ratio of Australians receiving a full or part pension will still be around 4 out of 5. That those super tax breaks aren’t working. Would you support changing those superannuation tax concessions as they stand now?

LEIGH: I would, but it’s got to be done in a fair way and since coming to office, the Government has done it in a distinctly unfair way. They’ve refused as I said to go ahead with a modest Labor measure to slightly raise superannuation taxes at the top, but instead they’re raised superannuation taxes at the bottom. So you know, all of this has an equity implication and in Australia where inequality has grown markedly over the last generation, Joe Hockey thinks that those who have the least should bear the most when it comes to balancing the books. He wants to give parental leave to millionaires, at much higher rates than ordinary Australians, he wants to give a tax cut to mining billionaires, but at the same time he wants to take away things like the Low Income Superannuation Contribution and the School Kids Bonus: measures which are targeted at low and middle income Australian households and families.

BENSON: Andrew Leigh, thank you very much.

LEIGH: Thank you Marius.

ENDS

Today I launched a new book on economic growth, a collection of essays in honour of former chief statistician Ian Castles.

Launching Measuring and Promoting Wellbeing: How Important is Economic Growth? Essays in Honour of Ian Castles AO and a Selection of Castles’ Papers
Edited by Andrew Podger and Dennis Trewin, ANU Press, 2014

Andrew Leigh MP
Shadow Assistant Treasurer
Federal Member for Fraser

Australian Treasury
24 April 2014

One of the most famous music acceptance speeches was delivered at the 2003 Grammy awards by rapper Eminem, who simply stood up and reeled off the names of 15 musicians who had made him who he was.

The next time the Australian economy wins an international award, perhaps it should give a similar speech. That speech would doubtless acknowledge the post-war economists known as ‘the seven dwarfs’: Allen Brown, Nugget Coombs, John Crawford, Harry Bland, Dick Randall, Fred Wheeler and Roland Wilson, as well as other greats who have run Treasury – Bernie Fraser, Chris Higgins, Ken Henry and Martin Parkinson among them.

It would cover some of the key Reserve Bank Governors, and might even include a few Treasurers, such as the two who have been named Euromoney Finance Minister of the Year. It would include academic economists such as Trevor Swan, Fred Gruen and Noel Butlin. But crucially, it would also include our great statisticians, among whom we must surely include Timothy Coghlan, Colin Clark, George Knibbs and Ian Castles.

In economic policymaking, measurement defines our goals. The Millennium Development Goals and Closing the Gap targets shape policy because they have precise numerical objectives.

Measurement also marks our achievements. Without great economic historians, we would not know that Australia had the highest income per head in the world in the mid-nineteenth century. Statisticians tell us when the economy has slumped, and when it has narrowly avoided recession (statisticians can also revise away a recession, as Paul Keating discovered shortly after delivering his 'recession we had to have' speech). The slogan ‘we are the 99 percent’ has its origins in Thomas Piketty’s work estimating French top incomes, which inspired Tony Atkinson and me to develop similar estimates for Australia.

Indeed, it was while working on long-run inequality and social capital series for Australia, in the basement of the Widener Library at Harvard University, that I first met Ian Castles. Well, not literally him, but hundreds of dusty publications bearing his name. As I dug out the data that would eventually underpin Disconnected and Battlers and Billionaires, he popped up again and again. When I finally met him in person at a Canberra barbecue in December 2003, it was like people who meet the Reserve Bank Governor, and realise that his signature is on just about every note in their wallet. I couldn’t chat with him for long enough.

Perhaps not everyone has a rock-groupie reaction to meeting a former Australian statistician. But when I read this 800-page tribute to Ian Castles, I realised that at least 20 people shared my view of him. The authors are an impressive team, and I congratulate them – and particularly editors Andrew Podger and Dennis Trewin – on the breadth of scholarship contained in this book.

Since we all take data seriously, I note that 37 percent of Australian book-buyers judge books by their covers. So it’s worth mentioning that the book’s subtitle - How Important is Economic Growth? – somewhat undersells it. The answer to the question is of course ‘very’. As Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers have shown us, GDP per capita closely tracks life satisfaction across and within countries. And without economic growth, it is hard to imagine how Australia could reduce carbon emissions, help people with disabilities or cut poverty. To see this, it helps to note that the physical weight of output hasn’t increased with its value – indeed, Alan Greenspan argued in a 1999 speech that the physical weight of US GDP hadn’t changed much over the twentieth century. (Since there are a bevy of boffins around, can I ask if anyone would like to do the same calculation for Australia?)

But the book does much more than to give two thumbs up to growth.  It includes a critique by Jonathan Pincus of Treasury’s wellbeing framework (and a counter-view from David Gruen and Duncan Spender). Pincus is right about the challenge of measuring capability, but my view on the framework is a bit like Churchill’s on democracy – that it’s the best we’ve yet found.

You will find in these pages a data-rich discussion of trends in inequality from Rob Bray, and a careful analysis of how redistribution affects inequality from Peter Whiteford. The latter concludes with the following rousing sentence: ‘However, despite the work of the Canberra Group and national and international statistical agencies in significantly improving the comprehensiveness of household income surveys, questions remain about the methodology of comparative analysis of welfare state outcomes.’ Now there’s a sentence to make a statistician shout ‘huzzah!’.

The collection also includes several of Ian Castles’ best papers, including his Colin Clark lecture, where he reminds us that Keynes described the twentysomething Australian as ‘a bit of a genius’. I greatly enjoyed his quirky approach to data. In one paper, he uses Big Mac prices to form an international league table of wellbeing. Using data from the 1980s, he shows us that a tenth of Sydneysiders were still at work at 6pm, compared with a quarter of adults in Tokyo. He quotes Stanley Jevons’ observation that Australians were so cricket obsessed in the 1850s that the city stopped for the game. And in ‘Economics and Anti-Economics’, he recounts how the poet Coleridge was so aggrieved by Malthus that he ‘referred offensively to Malthus in German and Greek’, which I’m sure you’ll agree is both empörend and κακός.

However, it would be remiss of me if I didn’t take issue with the biggest area where I disagree with Ian Castles: climate change. Michael Keating’s chapter says that Ian Castles wasn’t a climate change sceptic, but he does appear to have been agnostic. Yet as I read the evidence, the past decade has increased the certainty around anthropogenic climate change, to the point where the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fifth assessment put it at 95 percent – about the same level of certainty as researchers attribute to the link between smoking and cancer.

Some argue that Australia – with only a couple of percent of global emissions – should free ride on global action. This argument strikes me as a bit like saying that it’s okay to litter because a single piece of garbage doesn’t make much difference to the environment. The problem is, small things eventually add up. Somewhat surprisingly, those who say that Australia shouldn’t contribute to climate change are curiously resistant to my counter-claim that Canberrans should not pay income tax. I’m always puzzled by this, because – as I remind them – we’re really only a small share of the whole.

The thing about climate change is that there are over a dozen countries with similar greenhouse gas emissions to Australia – nations such as Canada, Britain, Mexico, Korea, France, Spain, South Africa, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Together, we account for a fifth of global emissions, which makes a significant impact on the total problem. Moreover, as economists have shown, a well-designed emissions trading scheme gives the lie to those on the extreme left who say that the only way to stop climate change is to end growth, and to those on the far right who say that the market is not ingenious enough to cope with pricing a negative externality. In fact, we can decouple pollution from economic growth at minimal cost.

What is missing? Indigenous Australians receive only a short reference (in Henry Ergas’s chapter), and there is little discussion of the wellbeing of migrants. And there is little serious analysis of issues of gender. This reflects not just the gender of the authorial team (90 percent male), but policy economists as a whole. Indeed, careful listeners will have noted that the list of economic giants that I began with was 100 percent male. Thankfully this is changing fast. In just three years, Treasury has increased the share of women at SES level from 23 to 30 percent, and at EL2 level from 38 to nearly 50 percent. A favourite Canberra dinner party game is now to guess who will be the first woman to head Treasury or Finance.

* * * * *

As the saying goes, you can have your own theories, but not your own facts. In my careers as a research economist, a Treasury secondee, and a parliamentarian, I have relied on the data and analysis of Ian Castles, his contemporaries, and his successors. Australian policy is better for his contribution, and our intellectual life is richer for this terrific book. I commend it to you on the grounds that it will not only stop a door, but perhaps also a few bad arguments.

One fact I hadn't realised before giving the speech: when we lived in Banda Aceh for two years, our next door neighbour, Lance Castles, was Ian's brother. And that, folks, is why you should always show your draft speeches to your dad before giving them.

On 22 April 2014, I joined Peter Van Onselen on Sky to discuss budget sustainability, pensions, superannuation, and Medicare co-payments.

In the Newcastle Herald, I have an op-ed on the importance of the charities commission

Charities commission is a vital public safeguard, Newcastle Herald, 22 April 2014

Australians are generous people. We donate millions of dollars to charities we trust each year. Many of us volunteer our time for charitable work with organisations at the heart of our communities. As World Vision CEO Tim Costello puts it: ‘‘The charity sector isn’t just a few amateurs with goodwill.’’

So it may come as a surprise that until very recently Australia did not have an independent charities regulator, monitoring and supporting the activities of thousands of charities and not-for-profit organisations.

In 2012, the former Labor government introduced the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission. The creation of the commission followed a report from the Productivity Commission, and was broadly welcomed by the sector, with which Labor consulted closely. The commission determines the legal status of groups seeking special tax treatment on behalf of the Commonwealth. It ensures charities comply with the law and that they do not rip donors off. To protect yourself against scammers, you can check a charity’s credentials on the website (acnc.gov.au).

In the Newcastle CBD alone, there are 77 registered charities with information on the commission’s website.

The commission helps provide public accountability, which is essential given the millions of dollars in tax concessions charities receive each year.

Importantly it cuts red tape. It is administering a Charity Passport underpinned by a ‘‘report-once, use-often’’ reporting framework. Charities that work with different government departments and fund-raise across the states will find that their reporting is simplified. That means charities in Newcastle can expect to spend less time on paperwork, and more time in the community.

Despite its obvious benefits to charities and the wider public, the Abbott government intends on scrapping the commission.  It hasn’t provided good reasons for the change, nor has it explained what will replace it.

The government is heeding only a very small minority of critics of the commission. According to a recent survey, four out of five charities support the work it is doing.

More than 40 charities, including the RSPCA, Lifeline and the Hillsong Church, have signed an open letter asking the Prime Minister to keep the commission. They say it underpins the consumer benefit to charities. Carolyn Kitto, of anti-slavery charity Stop the Traffik, calls it ‘‘a dream come true for small charities’’, saying that it cut the red tape dramatically for her organisation.

On the hustings, we hear the government claiming to be cutting red tape. Yet scrapping the commission means abolishing its red tape reduction directorate – the very people in charge of reducing regulatory burdens on the charitable sector.

As the Community Council of Australia has warned, abolishing the commission would be a sign that the government is not interested in the views of the charity sector. It would harm charities, which will lose visibility and governance support. And it would be bad for the public who will be more exposed to fraud and scams.

This month visiting charity regulators and experts from around the world praised Australia’s national charity regulator for its positive reputation and high compliance rates. They rejected Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews’s view that it is heavy-handed. Kenneth Dibble, the chief legal officer with the UK Charities Commission, said the commission is ‘‘flexible and sensitive to its constituency’s needs in a way that allows the sector to thrive. In such a short time the ACNC has commanded such respect from the sector.”

The chief executive of the Scottish Charity Regulator, David Robb, also praised the commission while reflecting on the difference his national regulator has made in Scotland. “We had some high-profile scandals where significant amounts were misappropriated. The Scottish Parliament was persuaded to act.  It was a big step forward. Now basic information is provided to the public and charities appreciate that the regulator understands their business and offers advice sensitive to their situation.” When the Scottish agency was introduced in 2005, moving charities regulation from the revenue office as Australia has, some people “grumbled initially” but then it won widespread favour.

Mr Andrews has not ruled out returning Australian charities to the defacto regulator, the Australian Tax Office. When asked if they supported the move, just 6 percent of charities said yes.

The government has no real plan for this country’s charities. It pretends to consult but will not listen to the sector that helps some of our most vulnerable people.

Andrew Leigh is federal Shadow Assistant Treasurer.

ANDREW LEIGH MP
ACTING SHADOW TREASURER
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR FRASER

E&OE - PROOF ONLY

TELEVISION INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 21 APRIL 2014



SUBJECTS: Neville Wran; Age pension; Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave.



KEIRAN GILBERT: With us on the program we’ve got Liberal frontbencher Steve Ciobo and also Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh. Now Andrew Leigh first to you, on Neville Wran, described by one person this morning, Troy Bramston, the author and journalist as the greatest ever Labor leader either state or federal. How do you reflect on the contribution of the former premier?



SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER, ANDREW LEIGH: He was pretty extraordinary Kieran, and Malcolm Turnbull reminded us once again why he really ought to be the parliamentary eulogist. There's no one better to encapsulate a life than Malcolm. In the area of law reform, he just dusted off the cobwebs after a decade of conservative rule in New South Wales, with things like the decriminalisation of homosexuality, stopping smoking on public transport, four year terms and an elected legislative council.

These sorts of things that we just regard as basic and fundamental. Then at the same time, the national parks in the north-east of New South Wales; investing in infrastructure and hospitals and schools - ahead of inflation in eight out of the nine years of the his term and then to step down while he was the top of his game. Since World War Two, only Menzies has done that from the prime ministership. There's a few other premiers, Carr, Bracks, Beattie who managed to do it but as Malcolm has noted, it's a rare thing to step down voluntarily from the top office.

GILBERT: Steve Ciobo as we remember the life and legacy of Mr Wran and that is a 100% valid point, it is rare isn’t it, for political leaders to leave on the top as he did.

STEVE CIOBO: Well Kieran, the reality is politics is a hard business and so I think with the passing of Neville Wran, of course whether you’re on the Liberal side or the Labor side or whatever your involvement is in politics, or even as someone who is a student of politics or if you’re interested in politics. It takes a lot of gusto, a lot of determination and a lot of hard work to rise to the top on any side of the political aisle, so in that respect of course, we honour Neville Wran’s passing and the contribution he made to the development of New South Wales especially.

GILBERT: This is AM Agenda, thanks for your company, with me this morning is Andrew Leigh and Steve Ciobo. Steve Ciobo, to you on the budget speculation around this morning in The Australian: ‘pension assets tests safe from PM’s axe’ – Mr Abbott, according to The Australian, arguing very strongly that the assets test should not be changed at least before the next election, because that would be a broken promise. Is that a fair assessment?

CIOBO: You know Kieran, there’s always speculation about what’s going to be in the budget, what’s not going to be in the budget. The media whip themselves up into a frenzy about what may be and what might not be. I think let’s get down to brass tacks – we have a very big repair job to do in this year’s budget, and that’s not just this year’s budgets, it’s going to be future budgets as well. We know that under Labor we saw the fastest growth of debt in this nation compared to basically every other developed country in the world.

That’s Labor’s legacy - $123 billion worth of deficit, $667 billion worth of debt, that’s the forecast. So what we’ve got to do are make changes that do a couple of things. One, put the budget back onto a fiscally sustainable position. And secondly, we need to make sure we honour our election commitments. We said we were going to do that, we will honour our election commitments, and we’ll do it in a way that sets us apart from Labor’s track record where they said one thing before the election but delivered something entirely after the election. We won’t do that, we’ll honour our commitments, but we’ll repair the mess that Labor left behind.

GILBERT: Is it inevitable though, that things like the assets test and so on need to be looked at in the medium to longer term if the budget is going to be put on a sustainable footing? Because as it stands it’s taking up a big chunk of the overall budget, isn’t it?

CIOBO: I think the error is to focus on particular issues. I mean, the issue is that we have expenditure that is growing so massively, largely as consequence of a number of decisions that Labor took, and we don’t have the revenue to cover it off. Now this isn’t a challenge that is unique to Australia, this is a challenge that is across the world. And last week for example the Treasurer and I were at IMF and G20 meetings in Washington, and there was a consistent theme across many countries.

But the difference is this Kieran: in Australia, we fought hard to get Labor to honour their commitments but they took decisions that made our budget situation worse. And that’s the difference, every country is struggling with its budget, but overseas they’re doing what they can to try to rein in the budgets, trying to get that spending under control, to make that budget sustainable.

Here in Australia we’re fighting a fight with the Labor party because that’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to keep the budget on a more sustainable footing, but it’s the Labor party who keep saying ‘no, keep spending, no cuts’. So it’s a ridiculous situation Kieran, that Labor is actually opposing $5 billion in savings that the Labor party themselves announced – so they’re opposing their own announced savings. That just underscores how completely wacky the Labor party is becoming when it comes to fiscal restraint.

GILBERT: Andrew Leigh, on the assets test, is it too generous? Does it have to be reined in?

LEIGH: Keiran, on the broader picture, people say that Mr Abbott doesn't care about manufacturing, but he has manufactured one thing. He's manufactured a budget deficit. He has doubled the deficit since coming to office, adding $68 billion to the deficit. Steve may chuckle but it's just there in black and white -

STEVE CIOBO: Because it's comedy hour from you Andrew.

LEIGH: So, the effect of doubling the deficit, of going on soft on multinational profit shifting and the other 55 tax measures that they didn't pursue is now that the Coalition has doubled the deficit and needs to look elsewhere to find savings. And in manufacturing the budget crisis they've now put themselves in a position where they're really going to struggle to meet their election promises.

And now we have the spectre of a Prime Minister who criss-crossed the country talking about the importance of keeping promises, now looking at breaking promises to pensioners, a solemn pledge the day before the election - no changes to pensions, no cuts to pensions. The Labor Party intends to hold Mr Abbott to account on his promises.

GILBERT: But it looks like he will be honouring that, according to reports in The Australian today, that he is arguing internally against any change to the assets test and how it works. So he's actually going to be honouring the promises he's made.

LEIGH: It appears there is one aspect of the pension system where Mr Abbott will honour his promise. But he's not repeating his promise across the board. He is unwilling to say, as he did the day before the election, that there will be no changes to pensions. And now you've got Minister Andrews out there saying that in order to pay for $75,000 to affluent households to have a child, we have to cut back on support to people with a disabilities, to people with mental illnesses, by tightening tests around disability support.

These are twisted priorities indeed Keiran, to say that it's alright to give the most to those who have the most but then at the same time to be cutting back on the most vulnerable. Maurice Newman, the Prime Minister's top business adviser attacked me in The Weekend Australian for caring about equality. But I believe that the 'fair go' is fundamental to who we are as Australians. The notion of means-tested social support is absolutely vital, not a program like parental leave that gives the most to those who have the most.

GILBERT: Steve Ciobo, the Prime Minister is again, according to a report in The Australian today, the recommendation out of the audit commission apparently is for the Government to amend the paid parental scheme, the generous $5.5 billion a year scheme. Tony Abbott is pushing back on that as well. The Commission of Audit incidentally, we're expected to get over the next couple of weeks, but is this something that is defensible while you're trying to make cuts elsewhere? In hindsight, is it something that would have been better not to pursue.

CIOBO: Keiran, I'm not going to engage in speculation about what the Commission of Audit report says because we will see all that in due course. But I will say this about the paid parental leave scheme. This is a scheme that will empower women to get back into the workforce, to stay engaged in the workforce, to keeping [them as] contributors to Australia's tax base. You see, the sad thing about Labor's attack when it come to the paid parental leave scheme, we just heard it from Andrew now, they love to play the politics of division. Andrew says 'well, I'm all about a fair go and it's the lowest paid that are missing out while the Abbott's scheme is a Rolls Royce scheme'.

The reality is that when you talk about paid parental leave, you're talking about 1.7 per cent of the population. That's it, 1.7 per cent of the population who earn over $100,000 a year that are women. But we have a situation Keiran where we are are attempting to put women on a level plaing field, to say to women, you are going to get a replacement wage for 26 weeks to keep them in the workforce so that that way they are paying the taxes that the older generations are reyling on to help fund, for example, the NDIS, to help fund fund the pension scheme. These are the kinds of things that are paid for by working taxpayers. These are the kinds of things that need people to stay engaged and Labor might be very happy to walk away from Australian women and say 'you know what, you don't deserve super and you only deserve the minimum wage'.

That's not our approach. We say you deserve a replacement wage. We say you deserve to have superannuation paid as well and what's more Keiran, our policy, and this is the important one, our policy is fully funded. We are not borrowing a dollar to pay for it. It's fully funded unlike Labor's scheme, where the continue to borrow money hand over fist over I think, $200 million a day to feed their varacious spending they were going on.

GILBERT: Andrew Leigh, with the ageing population we need as many people in the workforce as possible including as many women, of course, as possible, working mothers. This is something Tony Abbott has argued for very strongly for a long time now and he's not going to back away from it from the look of today's report but really it's really no surprise. He's been sending those signals for a long time.

LEIGH: Well, the Government keeps on saying it won't rule anything out but in fact it has ruled one thing out, which is changing the gold-plated, diamond-encrusted parental leave scheme which no serious economist say will boost productivity or participation. Take someone like Saul Eslake, a respected economist, who's certainly not a mouthpiece for Labor. Saul as very clearly said that going from the current flat rate parental leave scheme introduced by Labor to a regressive scheme which pays five times as much to the most affluent families is not going to boost productivity or participation. And, yet at the same time, the Government is looking to fund this by taking away supports from pensioners who are getting $20,000 a year -

CIOBO: That's a complete fabrication Andrew -

GILBERT: They haven't announced that -

LEIGH: It is very clear to anybody who has looked at the front pages of a newspaper recently -

CIOBO: Get a hold of yourself mate.

LEIGH: - That the Government is looking at changing the pension age. We had a piece of the front page of The Australian on Saturday, very clearly stating unequivocally that the Government was going to push out the pension age still further.

GILBERT: But Labor changed the pension age.

CIOBO: You already did it.

LEIGH: Labor did two big things in Government. We put in place the biggest increase in the pension since its inception and that took a fifth of the people out of poverty. And then, we had a phased increase in 2017 to 2023 in the pension age. The Coalition is just interested in cutting and is saying to a bricklayer you have to work ages 68, 69, 70. I think that's not particularly fair when you're giving $75,000 to millionaire families to have a child.

GILBERT: Gentlemen, we're out of time. Thank you for your company this morning, Easter Monday.

LEIGH: Thanks Keiran, thanks Steve.

GILBERT: Happy Easter to you both.

CIOBO: Thanks Keiran.

ENDS

MEDIA CONTACT: TONI HASSAN 0426 207 726

After I gave a National Press Club address on egalitarianism, a somewhat aggrieved Maurice Newman responded by throwing his dictionary of quotations at my head. Today's Australian kindly gave me space to respond.

Gap Between Haves and Have Nots Must be Narrowed, The Australian, 21 April 2014

Egalitarianism goes deep in the Australian character. Most of us don’t like tipping, and passengers tend to sit in the front seat of the taxi. There aren’t private areas on our beaches, and audiences rarely stand when the prime minister enters the room. We’re a country that happily dispensed with knighthoods decades ago, and no sensible person would suggest that the land of ‘mate’ should become the kingdom of ‘sir’.

And yet that egalitarian ethos is increasingly under threat from a rise in inequality over the past generation.

In Battlers and Billionaires, I found that since 1975, real wages for the bottom tenth have risen 15 per cent, while wages for the top tenth have risen 59 per cent.

Cumulatively, the increase in inequality over the past three decades represents a $365 billion shift from the bottom 99 per cent to the top 1 per cent.

It’s not just income that has become more unequal. By my estimate, the richest 50 people in Australia have more wealth than the bottom 2 million. The richest 3 people in Australia have more wealth than the bottom 1 million.

Rising inequality is not an inevitable feature of economic growth. Indeed, from the 1920s to the 1970s, Australia became more equal.

In June 2000, The Australian published a week-long series on inequality, with its lead editor arguing that ‘Inequality in Australia today is a serious social issue’. Over the past 14 years, the level of inequality has continued to rise. But ideologues of the right have become more dismissive of the issue. Writing in these pages, Maurice Newman demanded that equality be off the political agenda, because it impedes mobility.

The facts show precisely the opposite. The more unequal the society, the less likely it is that a poor child will make it into the middle class: a relationship that has been described as ‘the Great Gatsby curve’.

Most Australians are worried about inequality. When asked their views about wealth distribution, the vast majority have a preference for a more egalitarian society than we have today.

And yet I am concerned that the Abbott Government’s policies may leave Australia a more unequal country.

The Coalition has announced that it will abolish three payments that are targeted at low-income and middle-income families: the income support bonus, the SchoolKids bonus, and the Low-Income Superannuation Contribution.

The wealthiest Australians benefited disproportionately from the Coalition’s decision last December to abandon 55 tax measures. For example, the Coalition has decided to maintain extremely generous tax concessions to people with more than $2 million in superannuation, despite the fact that these retirees receive more government assistance than someone on the full pension.

As though it wasn’t enough to cut benefits for the most disadvantaged and cut taxes for the most affluent, the Abbott Government has gone one step further, by proposing to transform Australia’s flat-rate paid parental leave scheme into a wage replacement scheme.

The effect of this is that a high-wage family will get $75,000 when they have a child, while a low-wage family will get $16,000. As the Coalition’s policy document last year stated, ‘paid parental leave is an economic driver and should be a workforce entitlement’.

So to the most prosperous: welcome to your new age of entitlement.

Meanwhile, the Coalition’s industrial focus is on making life hard for unions. Making collective bargaining tougher will likely widen the earnings gaps in Australia. One right-wing think-tank advocates abolishing the minimum wage altogether.

A blind faith in trickle-down economics will make it harder for the Coalition to achieve other goals. While the Abbott Government may claim to have a Closing the Gap Indigenous policy, it’ll be harder to achieve if they have a Widen the Gap economic policy.

But a deeper conversation about inequality is vital for my party too.

The gap between the powerful and the powerless has grown. So more than ever, Labor must be the voice of the vulnerable. If we do not speak out for those on the margins of our society, who will?

When Labor is given the chance to govern again, we should assess policy proposals based on how they will affect the gap. With Australian inequality higher than it has been for three-quarters of a century, we must not ignore the distributional consequences of policy.

The past generation has seen great success for the Australian economy. Our nation is more productive and entrepreneurial; more open to ideas, products and people from overseas. Yet at the same time, we have become more unequal.

Too much inequality strains the social fabric, threatening to cleave us one from another. Australia is a stronger nation when we act together than when we pull apart.

Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, and the author of Battlers and Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Australia (Black Inc, 2013).

ANDREW LEIGH MP
ACTING SHADOW TREASURER
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR FRASER

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
SATURDAY, 19 APRIL 2014
CANBERRA

SUBJECT / S: Tony Abbott breaks yet another promise on pension cuts; Kevin Rudd; Climate Change.

ANDREW LEIGH, ACTING SHADOW TREASURER: Thanks to everybody for coming to sunny Hackett on a Saturday afternoon. I wanted to make a couple of comments about the very clear statement now that the Prime Minister intends breaking his pledge to pensioners. Suggestions now that the government is going to cut into the pension will be a deep blow to Australian pensioners who had a clear promise the day before the election that there would be no cuts to pensions. Ultimately the government has found itself caught between its economic and political strategy. Joe Hockey has manufactured a budget crisis by things such as going soft on multinationals, giving $9 billion to the Reserve Bank. He's doubled the deficit and now the government has found that it can’t both deal with the situation Joe Hockey has created and also manage to keep its pledge to pensioners.  This will be a cruel blow to 2.3 million Australians who rely so heavily on the pension and who expect that they had a Prime Minster who could keep his world. Happy to take questions.

JOURNALIST: You’ve mentioned breaking an election promise, the latest speculation is that any change won’t be part of this four year term and therefore the government will be taking it to the people at the next election. What do you say to that?

LEIGH: The Prime Minister’s promise to the Australian people was not qualified; it was an absolutely clear promise. It was as close as you could get to what the Prime Minister would call prepared, scripted remarks. The Australian people were entitled to think that they could take him at his world and there would indeed be no cuts to pensions.

JOURNALIST: It looks like we’ve got two plans on the table. One is a change in 2029 the other is following Labor’s current rate rise of six months per year which would see the retirement age hit 70 by 2034. Is either one of those a better option?

LEIGH: Labor will be holding Prime Minister Abbott to account; this is after all a Prime Minister who has spent the last three years criss-crossing the country talking about comments that Julia Gillard made the day before the 2010 election. Now Labor is holding him to his word on comments he made the day before the 2013 election. He said no cuts to pensions; we believe he should be held to his word.

JOURNALIST: Do you rule out any bipartisan support for raising the pension age?

LEIGH: Prime Minister Abbott has been very clear that there would be no cuts to pensions and let’s be clear this is a payment of around $20,000 that goes to some of the lowest income Australians. By contrast the Prime Minster wants to give $75,000 to some of the most affluent Australian families when they have a child and wants to give a large tax break back to mining billionaires.

JOURNALIST: Why won’t you cooperate to help the government get the budget back to surplus?

LEIGH: Labor believes that the government should be held to account, to its promises. There was a plan to return to surplus prior to the changes Joe Hockey made which doubled the deficit. If Joe Hockey is going to go soft on multinationals so he can go hard on pensioners and break his word, the Australian people will take a pretty dim view of that.

JOURNALIST: Isn’t it a bit rich that Labor’s saying that this government’s going to break a promise?

LEIGH: Mr Abbott is simply being held to his word –

JOURNALIST: But Labor broke promises in government.

LEIGH: We are holding Mr Abbott to account who said prior to the election that he thought it would be very hard to foresee circumstances in which it would be appropriate for a politician to break their word and he appears to be doing exactly that relating to a payment which goes to the most vulnerable. A payment which is designed to reduce poverty among the elderly now looks likely to be changed in a way that will probably increase poverty among the elderly.

JOURNALIST: The government says that people are living longer and that‘s why a policy like this is needed. Would you encourage them too, if they’re going to push ahead with this, also bring in measures to assist older people to get back into the workforce, to get more hours in the workforce, to decrease age discrimination in the workforce?

LEIGH: This is a core equity issue. We know that for people in white collar jobs it might well be possible to work until 70 but if you’re a bricklayer and we’re asking you to work to age 70 that’s going to be pretty tough on your body. Added to that, that we know low income Australians die six years earlier than high income Australians. This is a policy which really seems to be saying because lawyers are living longer, we should make cleaners work for longer.

JOURNALIST: Would Kevin Rudd make a good Secretary-General to the UN?

LEIGH: I just read these reports like everyone else, and have little to go on. Kevin Rudd I thought did an excellent job as Australian foreign minister.

JOURNALIST: In his autobiography, his biography by Robert Macklin he said that he saw the Prime Ministership of Australia as a stepping stone to the UN General-Secretary job. Did he ever mention anything like that to you?

LEIGH: I’ve never spoke with Kevin Rudd about his desires for international positions.

JOURNALIST: Adam Bandt has described or equated carbon, coal mining as the new asbestos, what have you got to say about that?

LEIGH: I don’t think overblown rhetoric does anyone much good on an important issue like climate change.  What we need is clear headed bipartisanship in order to take the moderate steps that are required in order to decouple economic growth from carbon pollution.

JOURNALIST: Isn’t it a little insensitive from people who are dying from asbestos cancer?

LEIGH: I certainly don’t support intemperate rhetoric from either side of the carbon price debate. Certainly the language used by Prime Minister Abbott describing the science of climate change as ‘absolute crap’ was unhelpful and we need the sensible centre to come together to support a price on carbon, a consensus that we had for the best part of a decade before it was wrecked by Tony Abbott. Thanks everyone.

ENDS

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

PRESS CONFERENCE
CANBERRA
WEDNESDAY, 16 APRIL 2014

SUBJECT/S: ACT Government working with the Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission to help charities.

FEDERAL ASSISTANT SHADOW TREASURER, ANDREW LEIGH: Thank you everyone for coming along. I’m Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, and I’m here with ACT Treasurer Andrew Barr, Mike Zissler from Lifeline, and Lyn Harwood from Communities@Work. We are here at [Lifeline shopfront] Hipsley Lane to talk about the importance of Canberra charities and the importance of reducing the paper work burden. When Labor was in government we put in place in 2012 the Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission. One of the aims of that Commission was to reduce reporting duplication that charities face; to allow those charities to spend less time doing paperwork and more time helping the vulnerable. We've now found that as a result of the ACT ceding its reporting requirements to the ACNC, Canberra charities could save $2 million dollars. So, I'm calling on the Abbott Government to back the ACNC, to support Canberra charities and to get out of the way and reduce the paper work on our great Canberra charities. I'll hand over to Andrew [Barr].

ACT TREASURER AND COMMUNITY SERVICE MINISTER, ANDREW BARR: Thanks Andrew. It's very important that this reform process and reduction of red tape for the charities and not for profits sector continue and it's a high priority for the ACT Government. That's why we are one of the first jurisdictions to sign over a lot of reporting responsibility and accountability responsibilities to the ACNC because we saw the considerable benefit, not only for the sector but also for the territory government in being able to part of a nationally recognised and nationally consistent series of arrangements around the regulation of this sector. We all recognise the considerable importance of the sector here in Canberra and around the nation. So, common sense says let's work with the sector to reduce red tape to allow so many organisations to focus their efforts on their core reason for being, not filing reports to different levels of government. So, that's why we so strongly supported the ACNC and why we believe this is the right way forward and why we argue very strongly that other jurisdictions should also sign up and that the Commonwealth should leave this mechanism in place.

COMMUNITUES@WORK CEO, LYNNE HARDWOOD: Certainly from a large community provider perspective, the less paperwork the better. [The ACNC provides] more ability to have one funnelled form of reporting and a greater ability to ensure that we never become at the behest of the different layers of government. So, from our point of view a one-stop shop is the ideal and a one-stop shop that really is as efficient and effective as possible would make our lives easier, and so anything that creates that we certainly support.

LIFELINE CANBERRA CEO, MIKE ZISSLER: I think it's safe to say that for a smaller organisation like Lifeline Canberra reduction of red tape is important but for us also, it's about having transparency. Having a one-stop shop for people to be able to look at charities and make sure that they are spending their money wisely and appropriately. It allows people to look at various charities, how they work. So, we believe that single lodgement, one report that's common, allows us to be compared. For Lifeline Canberra it's absolutely vital that every dollar that's donated to us through the work we do goes straight to our core business. We can demonstrate that through our reporting. We'd like to see that transparency and commonality. We applaud the ACT Government which has worked hard on red tape. There's more they can do. The ACNC still has work to do and we'd like see them continue and refine their offering aswell.

LEIGH: Thanks Mike. Happy to take questions.

REPORTER: At this point, the federal government has said it's going to get rid of the charities commission. When do you think that will go ahead?

LEIGH: I hope it won't go ahead. We've got a survey showing that four out five charities around Australia want to keep the charities commission and we had an open letter signed by more than 40 charities – including World Vision, Lifeline and the RSCPA - all saying that they want to keep the charities commission. So, I hope the Abbott Government sees sense on this. And if they really want to reduce the paperwork burden on charities, to encourage other states and territories to follow the lead of the ACT and not to kill the charities commission and to get out of the way so it can do it's job of reducing the paperwork burden on Australian charities.

REPORTER: At this stage by removing the charities commission, will they be saving much money?

LEIGH: There's little saving in removing the charities commission. The work would then have to go back to the Australian Tax Office and if you ask charities if they want to see that happen, only 6 per cent say they'd like charities regulation to return to the tax office.

JOURNALIST: Does this mean the credibility of charities will be diminished because there is not a one-stop-shop for them?

LEIGH: There is certainly that risk. One of the important roles the ACNC plays, as Mike was highlighting, is that of transparency. Scams by charities are thankfully rare but it's important that people have a complaints body that's overseeing charities just as it's important for corporate investors to have ASIC in place to give them confidence in companies.

JOURNALIST: So if those rare scams happened who would people complaint to if there was no charities commission?

LEIGH: It's quite unclear what would happen in that situation.

JOURNALIST: For you Andrew, the other Andrew, in terms of charities having to work with multiple jurisdictions, does it increase your workload?

BARR: It certainly would, we've gone through a process of wanting to streamline, to cut red tape, to deregulate effectively and to ensure there aren't multiple layers of accountability and requiring organisations just to report in one place. Our reform process has focused also on ensuring that there's consistency in the information that's sought from charities and not-for-profits so that we're not asking different questions and requiring different sets of data. Requiring organisations that operate on limited administration budgets to spend a considerable amount of time filing reports to different levels of government. So the great advantage here was that we could have an appropriate level of regulation and oversight but do it in a streamlined way. So it's a fantastic thing for the sector and also reduce red tape and that is apparently a priority of the Commonwealth government, that they do want to work with states and territories to reduce red tape. A very clear way that they could see this reform agenda through is to maintain the ACNC and in fact to encourage the other states and territories, who haven't signed up, to do so. So that we have a national system that was simpler and more effective by way of regulation. I think that's a good goal to aim for.

JOURNALIST: I might just talk to you, Mike, about the importance of the commission and what your main concerns are.

ZISSLER: I think it's fair to say that the ATO is a very good regulator of tax and we support the ATO in their business. But they're not a great regulator of the charities as a whole. So, while they've had that role for many years, they're the first to admit that they don't regulate charities very well, And again, acknowledging that it’s a small percentage of organisations out there, there are a number of charities whose purposes are not clear where the money is going to. I know most organisations in the ACT are honest and have absolute integrity. We want to see that money go all the way through. Without something like the ACNC that gets lost in the taxation law, that's understandable, their job is taxing.

JOURNALIST: Does this mean that less money will go to what it was raised for?

ZISSLER: Absolutely, I mean we all have an administrative burden, whether it be a small organisation or a large organisation. Currently my organisation would write four or five reports that fundamentally provide the same information but in different ways. So my finance manager will still have to prepare five separate financial accounting reports. That's five times the effort. Now, it's not a huge amount of money, but it's things she could be doing with her time elsewhere. So yes, it does cost me money. There's no doubt.

JOURNALIST: Anything else you'd like to add?

ZISSLER: I think that is all, thank you.

LEIGH: Thanks very much for coming along today, I think what is highlights is that the $2 million additional burden the Abbott Government would impose if it were to scrap the ACNC would come out of the pockets of the most vulnerable Canberrans and I think that would be a terrible shame. Could I also thank Chenoeh Miller and Matt Heffernan from Lifeline for hosting us today. I really appreciate your hospitality.

Thanks everyone.

ENDS