Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 8 FEBRUARY 2016

TOPICS: GST; superannuation tax concessions; negative gearing.

KIERAN GILBERT: With me now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. You've heard a bit of the debate thus far: the Prime Minister not yet convinced on the GST. Is this what a healthy, mature debate on public policy looks like?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: I think we're learning, Kieran, what being innovative and agile involves. It involves taking every position on tax reform and then not listening to Australian families, as Labor has been, but just listening to your backbenchers. This Prime Minister has lost more ministers than he's had positive clear tax proposals. I think increasingly Australians are wondering: what does this bloke stand for? He says he's serious about climate change but he's got Tony Abbott's climate policies; he says he wants to do marriage equality but he's kicking it off to a $160 million plebiscite; and he says he wants economic leaderships but on the core issue of tax reform can't articulate a clear plan for –

GILBERT: But isn't he saying – I put it you again – isn't this a mature way to go about a discussion on tax issues? You look at all the evidence, you don't rule things out before you've even begun, and then you get on with it – unlike Labor which did not allow the Henry Tax review to even look at the GST.

LEIGH: Well Kieran, a mature approach would have been to follow through the Tax White Paper which the Government announced in 2013. It took in 800 submissions; had a $600,000 advertising campaign; millions of dollars were spent by communities and business groups putting in submissions. Now it’s been completely junked in favour of the thought bubbles that are being floated. Two completely different thought bubbles yesterday: one from the Prime Minister saying maybe not, one from Arthur Sinodinos saying maybe. It's absolutely clear that if you don't want a GST the only way to make sure it doesn’t happen is to vote Labor at the next election.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

MONDAY, 8 FEBRUARY 2016

SUBJECT/S: GST; Labor’s fair plans for tax reform; asylum seekers. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning everyone. Ever since the notion of raising the GST has been put on the table, Labor has been saying it is a bad idea. We have made absolutely clear this isn't going to be good for growth. We’ve pointed out that the Australian economy fell backwards when we first introduced the GST, and that the Japanese economy went into recession after they raised theirs. We've also said it's bad for inequality.

It's a sad day when Malcolm Turnbull is more inclined to listen to his own backbenchers that to Australian families. There are now signs that Malcolm Turnbull might be walking away from GST; though who knows given that Arthur Sinodinos seems to be walking in the other direction. The fact is that when he talks about being agile and innovative, the Prime Minister seems to be at his most agile and innovative when he is ducking and weaving around the tax debate.

This is a Government that has lost more ministers that it has had concrete tax ideas. Increasingly, Australians are wondering: what does this Prime Minister really stand for? He says he is serious about climate change but has taken on Tony Abbott's climate policies. He said that he believed in a free vote for marriage equality, and now he’s taken on Tony Abbott's idea of a plebiscite. He said that he was keen for economic leadership, but we haven't seen economic leadership. Instead what we've seen is the junking of a white paper process which began in 2013 and has cost the Australian taxpayers $600,000 in advertising alone; cost community and business groups probably millions of dollars in putting together the 800 submissions for the Tax White Paper. That methodical process of a white paper has been completely junked in favour of focus groups and discussions with worried backbenchers.

CSIRO Cutbacks and Changing Climates 

8 February 2016

Last week the CSIRO's chief executive, Larry Marshall, announced that the organisation would shed 110 positions from the ocean and atmosphere staff and a similar number from its land and water division. In the early days of the Abbott-Turnbull government I visited the CSIRO along with my colleagues, Mark Dreyfus and Kim Carr, to participate in an unusual activity for their very busy and focused research staff—a political protest. The staff and their research capacity was being literally decimated—one in 10 faced the chop—and an indignant activist reflex was triggered. Some of those out on the day in white lab coats said that it was their first political protest. One forestry researcher who was facing the chop asked me the question: if Australia does not do eucalyptus research, who in the world will? Now the cuts are more targeted and they are more extreme. This latest directive will see the ocean and atmosphere section lose nearly eight out of 10 staff members.

We need to improve productivity, but not by cutting penalty rates, The Guardian, 6 February

Ever since Thomas Mortimer worried that the advent of the sawmill ‘would exclude the labour of thousands of useful workmen’, progressives have had an uneasy relationship with productivity. Everyone is pleased to see technology and process improvements that make jobs safer, cleaner and less stressful. But many worry that such improvements will also shrink the number of jobs going around and make life much worse for workers who end up displaced by machines. 

At its best, this anxiety manifests in close attention to who the winners and losers are in today’s changing workforce. At worst, it results in a rose-tinted yearning for the kind of back-breaking jobs few workers ever enjoyed at the time. 

NOW TURNBULL WANTS HIGHER STATE TAXES TOO

 

For a PM who says he wants lower taxes, Malcolm Turnbull sure loves talking about raising them.

 

Fresh from a week in which his Treasurer confirmed he’s ready and willing to make the hard sell for a higher GST, Malcolm Turnbull is now talking up higher state taxes as well.

 

Speaking on Adelaide radio, the Prime Minister called on state governments to increase state charges like payroll tax and land tax to cover the $80 billion his party has cut from schools and hospitals funding.

Change is made by those who show up - a tribute to Pat Corbett

I rise this afternoon to pay tribute to Patricia Lukin Corbett, a branch member of mine and a terrific supporter of progressive politics in Australia. Pat passed away on 3 January this year aged 89. Her life was an extraordinary one of service to others. She reminded us of the adage that change is made by those who show up.

KELLY O’DWYER: TAX CRUSADER??

It was Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer’s turn to try on the Liberals’ mask of concern about multinational tax today. Unfortunately, it was about as convincing as a pair of Groucho Glasses.            

Even the best Question Time pantomime won’t make Australians believe the Liberals really care about ensuring big multinationals pay their fair share of tax.    

That’s because their record speaks for itself.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SKY PM AGENDA

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

WEDNESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2016

SUBJECT/S: GST, tobacco excise 

DAVID SPEERS: With me now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Thank you for joining us.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, David.

SPEERS: On this spending point that Paul Keating has made today: “we need to trim our spending and not accommodate more of it by ever more taxation”. Labor is promising more taxation, more spending. 

LEIGH: There is no magic level of government spending. If you look across the advanced world, Australia sits towards the bottom of the pack. The size of government is similar to Mexico, Korea and the United States; well away from countries in Europe with 40 or 50 per cent of the economy being government.

MORRISON’S VAUDEVILLE ACT ON MULTINATIONAL TAX FOOLS NO-ONE

Perhaps to make up for Malcolm Turnbull’s suggestion yesterday that fairly taxing multinationals is “controversial”, the Treasurer came packing his best faux-outrage to Question Time today.  

Unfortunately however, he forgot his cheat sheet detailing the Coalition’s woeful record on tackling tax avoidance. As always, he attempted to bluff and bluster his way through while mangling the facts in the process. 

John Bannon

3 February 2016

For those of us on the Labor side of the House, when we think about South Australian politics so often we think about Don Dunstan, that great social reformer who brought South Australia out of the 1950s and 1960s with a splash of sartorial flair and with an openness to social reforms that reflected the social change of the 1960s. Don Dunstan was a unique political figure and the social reforms he put in place in South Australia presaged much of what the Whitlam government did.

Yet often sitting in Dunstan's shadows is John Bannon, who did for the economic side of South Australia what Don Dunstan did for the social side. He was the longest-serving Labor Premier of South Australia, and during the entirety of his 10 years as Premier he also held the position of Treasurer—an extraordinary feat. Some of his more notable achievements in expanding the economic potential of South Australia include winning the Grand Prix for Adelaide, establishing Australia's submarine industry, developing the River Torrens bank as an events and tourism precinct, converting part of the Adelaide railway station into a convention centre and facilitating the establishment of the Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine in 1988—I should say after a not inconsiderable effort on John's part to change Labor Party policy.