Andrew Leigh

On 28 Jan 2014, I spoke with Sky News host Peter Van Onselen about macroeconomics, jobs and how policy might affect the gap between battlers and billionaires.

[caption id="attachment_5582" align="alignleft" width="1024" caption="Out on Lake Burley Griffin with members of the Canberra Ice Dragons Paddle Club, January 2014"][/caption]


Young people can find it difficult to meet the ongoing and significant costs associated with participation at sporting competitions.

The Local Sporting Champions program is designed to provide financial assistance for young people towards the cost of travel, accommodation, uniforms or equipment when competing, coaching or officiating at an official sports event.

The ACT is one of the most active communities in the country, with a sports and recreation participation rate of 80 per cent.



Applications for the next round close on 28 February 2014.

To allocate the latest round of funds for the Fraser electorate, I recently co-judged applications with Australian Dragon Boat President Kel Watt before heading out on the water for a paddle with Canberra’s Ice Dragons Paddle Club (pictured).

To be eligible for the next and subsequent funding rounds you need to be between 12-18 years and have travelled more than 250 km to compete in an endorsed state, national or international competition.

For more information on the Local Sporting Champions program visit the Australian Sports Commission website: www.ausport.gov.au/champions.

On 27 Jan, I joined host Kieran Gilbert and Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield to discuss the evidence against Work for the Dole, the possible sell-off of the National Disability Insurance Agency, Australian of the Year Adam Goodes and speculation about the next Governor General. A transcript is over the fold.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY AM AGENDA WITH KIERAN GILBERT
MONDAY, 27 JANUARY 2014

SUBJECT/S: Work for the dole, privatisation of the National Disability Insurance Agency, Adam Goodes, Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, Peter Cosgrove.

KIERAN GILBERT: Senator Mitch Fifield, if I could put it to you on this work for the dole story, is it fair to say as I said there just a moment ago that it is in general terms a return to the Howard era approach?

MITCH FIFIELD: Well the Coalition since Howard government has been committed to the concept of work for the dole, but more broadly committed to the concept of reciprocal obligation, and that is, if the community is supporting you in a time of need, it is not unreasonable to expect that you put something back into the community. So that's been a long-standing principle of the Coalition and we have made no secret of the fact that if we were successful in gaining government that we would want to revitalise the work for the dole program. Now, how we give expression to that, the details are yet to come, but we will be announcing in due in due course, but look, we want to make people have a sense of value. The best way to do that is for them to have a job. If for whatever reason they don't get a job at a point in time we want them to be engaged in an activity that has meaning and that makes them feel that they are making a contribution to the community.

GILBERT: I don't think you're going to announce all the details this morning, but in terms of the things that are around this morning in the NewsCorp papers, that local government, not for profit groups, that they are being called upon to recruit some of the 800,000 plus unemployed. That all makes sense given your broader point this morning. Is that generally right? Are those details that are out there today correct?

FIFIELD: Well any work for the dole program, any program with reciprocal obligation, is obviously a partnership between government, the individuals taking part in that program, and community organisations and businesses. So obviously in any scheme you need to partner with other organisations. But as I say the details of how we give expression to the program, they are something come.

GILBERT: Andrew Leigh, your response to the notion or reciprocal obligation. Is that fair, if people are receiving welfare that they should chip in a bit as well.

ANDREW LEIGH: Kieran I've certainly got no issue with reciprocity. The challenge with work for the dole is what the evidence says. I am basically an evidence guy, if the evidence points towards a policy I'll go for it. In the case of work for the dole, we have one high quality evaluation done by Jeff Borland of Melbourne University for the Howard government. It found that work for the dole increased joblessness because it ended up diverting people from job-search activities into work for the dole activities. So if the Coalition pursues work for the dole they will be pursuing a policy which, on the evidence, will increase the jobless rate.

When people talk about bad policies they are typically talking about policies that don't have the desired effect. This is worse than that. This is a policy that would actually make the problem worse. Only a government that was really wilfully willing to ignore the evidence in favour of pure ideology would pursue work for the dole. But this is a government whose every policy seems to be jeopardising jobs at a very fragile stage in the labour market. And as Bill Shorten has pointed out, we have seen a worsening of the employment situation since the Abbott Government came to office, we are seeing public service jobs going –

GILBERT: But I think a lot of our viewers watching this morning would like the idea of some of what we are hearing today, like if someone is offered a job, that they can't simply refuse it because they don't necessarily want it or it is not convenient. If they are unemployed and on welfare should they not then be required to take that job?

LEIGH: You want to get the policy settings absolutely right, and jobs are a hallmark of Labor's time in government, saving those 200,000 jobs in the global financial crisis –

GILBERT: But to the point of the question, if someone has a job offer and doesn't accept it, stays on welfare, why not use a bit of the stick? The government is talking about a carrot and stick, giving people bonuses in they take a job, but also a stick if they don't. That's fair enough isn't it?

LEIGH: You do have bonuses if people find jobs in the form of the working credit which kicks in for people who have been unemployed for a long period, and in the case of particular jobs you want to make sure that it's a good match, that you are not simply forcing someone into a job that they are going to have to leave weeks later. That doesn't benefit the person or the employer.
Work for the dole is different though, work for the dole is compelling people into other jobs which Jeff Borland has clearly shown drives up the jobless rate.

GILBERT: Senator Fifield, what do you say to Andrew Leigh this morning, quoting that report out of Melbourne University that the whole thing could be counterproductive if people are required to work for the dole projects and spend less time looking for a job?

FIFIELD: Well we put a policy forward at the election. We were elected on that policy and it is our intention to implement it. But I have every confidence that work for the dole, giving people that experience, giving them that meaning and purpose in continuing to the community at a time when they are receiving a payment form the community, is an unqualifiedly good thing.

GILBERT: Along with a bit of tough love if they don't take the job, that they should lose welfare?

FIFIELD: Well look, we are also doing many things to encourage people into the workforce. From July 1 we are going to have a job-commitment bonus. So for long-term unemployed people between the ages of 18 and 30 if they commit to a job for twelve months they will get a payment. If they stay in work for two years they will get a larger payment. We will also have a mature age employer encouragement scheme for those employers who take on people who've been on a payment who are a little older, that will be an incentive for them. We are also introducing a relocation payment for people who need to go from the city to the country or from the country to the city for work. So we've got a range of things that we are doing to encourage and support people into work, but we want to make sure that people have that positive and good experience that everyone wants.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

GILBERT: Senator Fifield, something you've got responsibility for is the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I want to turn our attention to this now. A couple of weeks ago Tony Shepherd, the head of the government's Commission of Audit, told the Senate that he would refuse to rule out the prospect of a sell-off of the National Disability Insurance Agency, which is set to oversee the rollout of the NDIS, a privatisation of sorts. What do you say in response to those reports and comments in reaction to it at the time?

FIFIELD: Look Kieran, I think the scare campaign that Labor is running in relation to the government and the NDIS is deeply disappointing. I would have hoped that this is something that could have been elevated beyond partisanship, but in relation to the specific issue of privatisation which Labor have been running around taking about, it really is a moot point. The whole essence of the NDIS, the whole design of the NDIS, isn't for government to deliver the services to people with disability, it's for not-for-profit organisations and for private providers to do so. So an individual is assessed, they get an entitlement commensurate to their need, an individual takes that entitlement to the service provider of their choice. So the NDIS is all about contestability, it is all about the individual being in control, it is never –

GILBERT: Can we talk about the Agency though? Can we talk about the Agency that runs and oversees the whole thing, that that prospect wasn’t ruled out by the Commission of Audit?

FIFIELD: Kieran I think Labor are trying to set up a straw man. That somehow government is the deliverer of disability services through the NDIS. Government isn’t the deliverer of disability services through the NDIS, it’s not-for-profit organisations and it’ll be private providers as well. I’m actually very heartened by the Commission of Audit. I’m not worried by their work. One of the principles under which the Commission of Audit is operating is that government should do those things that only government can do and no more. The Commission of Audit, I’ve got no doubt, will find that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is core government business. And look, we’re getting on with the job of implementing it, and I just wish the Australian Labor Party could elevate this beyond partisanship.

GILBERT: Andrew?

LEIGH: Kieran, I share Mitch’s passion for making a difference to the lives of people with disabilities. But when you’ve got a Commission of Audit which is so dominated by big business, which lacks representatives from the social sector, the community sector, the disability sector, then you’re going to find extreme proposals like this, the notion of selling off the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

GILBERT: It’s not a proposal. It was just simply a question put that wasn’t rejected. It’s not a proposal.

LEIGH: Well it has been proposed by various people in the community and the Commission has signalled that it’s something they’re looking at.

GILBERT: They just refused to rule it out. They’re not saying they’re looking at it. They just refused to rule it out. There’s a difference.

LEIGH: Well if they don’t think that the Agency should be privatised they could very easily have said so. But that prospect is on the table and frankly, that would mean that we’d be selling off the Agency that runs disability care just while this initial work is being done. I mean, the Government shouldn’t be running around seeing who it can sell the Disability Insurance Agency to, it should be trying to get the rollout absolutely right.

GILBERT: Shouldn’t Labor be trying to elevate it above politics, as Senator Fifield says?

LEIGH: Kieran I think one of the great truths of these kinds of shows is anytime you see someone saying let’s elevate it above politics, it essentially means they don’t want to answer the question. If the Coalition wants to categorically rule out selling the Agency, I’d be greatly heartened by that. And Senator Fifield had an opportunity to do that on your program today but didn’t do it.

GILBERT: Senator Fifield, any response to that?

FIFIELD: There is nothing to sell. Let me repeat. There is nothing to sell. Labor don’t know the design of the scheme that they themselves legislated. It is not government that is delivering services to people with disability through the NDIS. It’s private providers and it’s not-for-profits. The role of government is to facilitate. The job of providers is to give those direct services to the people who need them. And that’s what’s going to happen.

GILBERT: Let’s move on. I want to talk about Adam Goodes, the Australian of the Year. Your thoughts on that Senator Fifield?

FIFIELD: I think he’s a terrific choice. He is a great role model for younger Australians. He is a very articulate individual. He’s got a lot of views on a range of issues and I think it’s great we have an Australian of the Year who’s going to be able to contribute to a range of debates.

GILBERT: And this is good in the lead up to the constitutional recognition attempts by the Government. Andrew Leigh, the Prime Minister says he wants the draft amendment to the constitution by September of this year. This is something you would hope would be above politics?

LEIGH: Certainly it’s had bipartisan support and I think that’s great. And indeed I saw Adam Goodes speaking about this. I think Australia’s treatment of Indigenous Australians needs to be tackled on a whole range of fronts. So we need to make sure we’ve got support for Indigenous bodies, that we have constitutional recognition. But as Adam Goodes has shown us, in our daily lives, all of us have moments, choices, in which we can speak out or stay silent. His example of dealing with the spectator who used a racist slur against him is just a terrific example to Australians young and old, whether in the school or the workplace, just not to stay silent on those racist quips. Building bridges and reconciliation isn’t just a job for government, it’s a job for all of us.

GILBERT: Mitch Fifield, finally on this matter, the Prime Minister wants constitutional recognition of Australia’s first people. He wants it to be a unifying moment. How hopeful and confident are you that that can be the case?

FIFIELD: I think Australians have open hearts and open minds. And the Prime Minister has really led on that journey. It’s important that there is a draft form of words put to the Australian people for discussion, which will happen by September. And we should let people have their say. If this is to go forward, it’s important that all Australians have a sense of ownership. And I think that can happen.

GILBERT: Finally Minister, I want to ask you about Peter Cosgrove, likely to be announced Governor-General this week. I’m told an announcement is imminent. That would be a traditional appointment. The military have a long history of serving in that role, doesn’t it?

FIFIELD: We’ve been very lucky in Australia with the people who have served in the office of Governor-General. It’s important that the holder is someone who is beyond reproach and above politics. There are many Australians who could well serve in that position after Quentin Bryce. But I don’t think as a Minister that I should be speculating in any way as to who the Prime Minister may recommend to Her Majesty. We’ll all just have to wait.

GILBERT: Good career move I think there Mitch Fifield! Andrew Leigh, your thoughts?

LEIGH: A very worthy Australian Kieran, and somebody who is extraordinarily articulate on our national character. When I wrote my last book about inequality in Australia, I talked about Peter Cosgrove’s view on our egalitarian military, about how our foot patrols get amongst people and hear from common people, not just from elders as some other militaries do. He talked about us as being out in the streets, rather than hiding behind sandbags. So he’s got some passionate views, he’s a worthy Australian and I’ll leave it to the Government to make any announcements that need to be made.

GILBERT: Andrew Leigh, Senator Fifield, appreciate your time.

ENDS

The Abbott Government confirmed today that it is closing the Australian Valuation Office in June. I have responded with a media release highlighting that this is a Government continually chipping away at the public service, outsourcing public services without concern for the implications for jobs, especially in regional Australia.

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

ACTING SHADOW FINANCE MINISTER

MEMBER FOR FRASER

MEDIA RELEASE

MORE JOBS LOST AS ABBOTT GOVERNMENT KILLS PUBLIC VALUATION OFFICE

The Abbott Government’s decision to axe the Australian Valuation Office jeopardises the jobs and livelihoods of almost 200 people across Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne and in remote and regional cities.

The decision smacks of an ideological preoccupation with cutting government services without regard to their effectiveness.

The 104 year-old AVO, located in the Australian Taxation Office, has been doing an effective job. While the government refers to a projected loss in the future, it fails to point out that the AVO has consistently run a profit.

At the same time that the Minister for Social Services has announced a review of welfare spending, the Government is axing the office that conducts compliance valuations for Centrelink.

The AVO’s team of professionals provide valuation, assessment, risk management and independent advice regarding property and other assets. If the government does not know what its assets are worth, it risks making bad decisions in everything from defence to social security.

Tony Abbott gave no indication of this when in Opposition. The government has not consulted with staff before making this decision.

If there is a compelling case to axe the AVO, the government needs to make it. Scrapping a century-old institution deserves a proper report, not just a short press release from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer.

The Coalition said that they wanted more services delivered in regional Australia, but all they have done is cut jobs.

The decision comes off the back of revelations this week that the ATO plans to close regional tax compliance offices across four states.

Why is the Coalition axing jobs at a time of rising joblessness and insecurity? Is this a preview of the savage cuts to come with the Commission of Audit?

Friday, 24 January 2014

Today I issued a media release about  internal Tax Office discussions regarding the potential closure of regional office across four states. I raise doubts about the Coalition's commitment to regional jobs.

Shadow Assistant Treasurer

Media Release

WRITING APPEARS TO BE ON THE WALL FOR CLOSURE OF REGIONAL ATO CENTRES

Pressure is on the Abbott Government to explain if it's committed to regional Australia after reports that the Australian Tax Office is likely to quit 10 regional sites across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

The ATO has flagged that it’s looking to close offices in Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Mackay,  Cairns, Port Macquarie, Grafton, Orange, Sale, Bendigo, and Launceston.

The regional centres have been run down for some years making the ATO’s decision appear a fait accompli.

Eighty staff and countless small businesses will be affected by this decision.

It’s a blow for regional communities and those families with ATO workers who face being forced to uproot and move to bigger centres or be sacked. This is no way to acknowledge hard-working regional teams.

The Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss claims to have a passion for regional Australia.  But what is the National Party getting out of the Coalition partnership if it can’t defend and keep regional services and regional jobs?

The ATO is a national organisation with national responsibilities. Does the Coalition value the ATO regional network or not?

The ATO’s Bunderberg office shut its doors earlier this month. It sets a bad trend for regional Australia amid increasing insecurity in the public service under Tony Abbott.

ENDS

Today I issued a media release urging the Government to exercise caution as the ATO advances its plans to allow large firms to use their own accountants to sign off on their tax bills.

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

ACTING SHADOW FINANCE MINISTER

MEDIA RELEASE

BIG BUSINESS LOOKING AFTER THEIR OWN TAX LIKE PUTTING A FOX IN CHARGE OF THE HEN HOUSE



“The Australian Taxation Office’s plans to allow corporate auditors, paid by large companies, to conduct assurance reviews on the ATO’s behalf is concerning,” said Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh.

“Putting big business in charge of their own affairs creates a conflict of interest.

“It appears the ATO is being forced down this path by the Abbott Government cutting public service jobs.

“Why should families have their tax audited by the ATO but big business are given the option of using their own accountants to sign off on their tax bills.”

“This is likely to result in less tax revenue being collected,” Dr Leigh said.

“That means Australian families will need to pay more to make up the difference.”

“The Government needs to explain why the ATO is looking to allow companies to decide how much tax they pay.

“Secrecy and backscratching are becoming hallmarks of this Government. This follows the Assistant Treasurer’s comments that the Government may not go ahead with Labor’s reform to publish the amount of tax paid by Australia’s biggest 200 public companies.

“Australians appreciate that Tax Office staff assess individual and company tax compliance with no personal or special interest in the outcome. The ATO is valued for its independence and should be properly resourced.

“In December the ATO met with major private accounting firms and law firms to develop the pilot, in a sign that it’s keen to get the scheme going as soon as possible.

“But I urge the Government to exercise caution and to weigh up the public interest,” Dr Leigh added.



THURSDAY, 16 JANUARY 2014

Today The Guardian published my opinion piece on reform Labor is proud of that defines and broadens the meaning of charity and charitable purpose.

The Abbott government shouldn't drag charity back to the 17th century

This year the Charities Act, championed by federal Labor, will modernise our country's definition of charity. Social services minister Kevin Andrews' efforts to halt it should be scrutinised

The Abbott government has so far been in the business of looking in the rear view mirror rather than ahead. On everything from the national school curriculum to mining taxation and emissions trading, this is a government which is busy undoing, rather than doing. Another reform the Coalition has recently tried to sneakily unpick is Labor’s reforms to bring Australian charities law into the modern age.

People have always grappled with the meaning of charity and the practice of it. The concept – taken from the Latin and Greek to mean "unlimited loving-kindness to all others" - was linked to hope and faith by the Apostle Paul in the first century; it is also one of the five pillars of Islam. Philosophers and the laity have long tussled with what it means to be charitable; a common image of the practice of charity is of grey soup kitchens in the Dickensian era offering emergency relief for those beaten by hunger. But that image is now dated.

Australian governments have also had to grapple with the meaning of charity, because generous tax concessions are applied to organisations deemed to do charitable work. To decide which ones are eligible, governments in the past have relied on 400 years of case law to define a charity. It has resulted in confusion and costly court cases aimed at getting clarity about the meaning of modern-day charity and charitable purpose.

From the start of this year the Charities Act, championed by federal Labor, came into effect to change all that. It sets out in statute, a historic and uniform definition of "charity" to avoid the ambiguity of the past and to recognise the diversity and vibrancy of a sector that employs more than a million people. It is a sensible development, and the result of years of genuine consultation. Governments, regulators and the broader community will find it easier to define when a charity is a charity and when it is not. The Charities Act clarifies that to be a recognised as a charity, an organisation must be not-for-profit, have only charitable purposes that are for the public benefit, not have a disqualifying purpose and not be an individual, a political party or a government agency.

Modern Australian charities see the need and the cause, and so seek to build capacity and change systems that create disadvantage. The Act restates the existing (judge-made) law in plain English and also recognises charitable purposes such as the protection of human rights, the promotion of reconciliation and tolerance, and by recognising that many modern charities advance causes by preventing, educating, researching and raising awareness. In consultations, many charitable organisations have welcomed the Act’s broad support of advocacy.

Organisations that promote philanthropy say the reform will generate a new era of strong growth for charitable giving in Australia. The money foundations spend on legal advice to work out what they can legitimately fund can now be better spent on organisations doing good and lasting work, including action for the environment and human rights.

The reform also resolves a number of anomalies which stymied particular charities. For instance, the definition of disaster relief has been expanded to enable charities to go beyond the relief of individual distress after a disaster, by including rebuilding, repairing or securing not-for-profit community assets after a disaster. The legislation retains the flexibility inherent in the common law that enables the courts, as well as parliament, to continue to develop and extend the definition to other charitable purposes judged beneficial to Australians over time.

Disappointingly, last year social services minister Kevin Andrews hurriedly sought, without consultation, to delay the introduction of the Charities Act until September 2014, stealthily inserting an amendment to an omnibus bill that would have scuttled the change were it not for the Opposition and minor parties in the Senate.

The sector fought hard for the Charities Bill 2013 and was conceivably alarmed that Andrews sought to delay the new definition and keep charities stuck in the 17th century. During a committee hearing late last year World Vision Australia CEO and Community Council of Australia chair Tim Costello gave evidence that the sector was very surprised by the government’s attempt to take Australian charities back four centuries. “This new definition is extraordinarily important for all of us. With the consultations and over 200 submissions made, I have not heard of anyone in the sector who was troubled by this definition,” Costello said.

And yet the reform is not out of trouble. Andrews may well seek to again scrap or amend the charity definition when the new Senate is in place after 1 July 2014. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us, given his determination to abolish many Australian charities amid a raft of repeals (environment advocacy charities especially appear to be in his sights).

We hope the government does not take us back to Howard-era gag clauses. Andrews appears deaf to the sector’s aspirations and hopes of making a difference with a regulatory framework that supports them.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/14/the-abbott-government-shouldnt-drag-charity-back-to-the-17th-century

I was delighted to appear today on Artsound Canberra (92.7 FM), to spend half an hour talking with presenter Jim Mooney about the role of classical music in a well-balanced life. Jim invited me to choose a few of my favourite tracks, so here's what I opted for:

1. Shostakovich’s 10^th Symphony (Allegro) - his great musical denunciation of the craziness of Stalin's era


2. Leoncavallo, Pagliacci, ‘Vesti la guibba’ - I chose the 1902 Caruso recording, which is scratchy, but magnificent nonetheless


3. Wagner, Tannhauser, ‘Wie Todesahnung’ - I used to take singing lessons for fun, and this is one I enjoyed singing


4. Carl Vine, 5^th Symphony, Part II (Tarantella) - a slightly crazed movement from the unique Australian composer

Here's a photo afterwards, with ArtSound general manager Chris Deacon (on the left) and Jim Mooney (on the right).

This month over a million Australian families will receive Labor's SchoolKids Bonus which helps low and middle income families meet the costs of school expenses. The payment will cease if the Abbott Government gets its way. Today, I issued a joint media release about this with my Federal ACT colleagues.

MEDIA RELEASE

SCHOOLKIDS BONUS COULD BE THE LAST FOR 12,800 FAMILIES IN THE ACT





If the Abbott Government gets its way, more than a million families will find it much more difficult to pay for school books and uniforms from next year.

This January, 1.3 million Australian families will be receiving the SchoolKids Bonus, a payment of $410 for every primary school child and $820 for every secondary school child.

The payment, developed by Labor when it was in Government, is made at the start of Terms One and Three to help cover the cost of items such as stationery, textbooks, software, laptops, bags, uniforms and shoes.

The SchoolKids Bonus also can help cover the cost of school camps, excursions and extracurricular activities such as music lessons.

However, the Abbott Government has introduced legislation to scrap the SchoolKids Bonus, which will affect 12,812 families in the ACT.

If this legislation passes the Senate, the January SchoolKids Bonus payment will be their last.

Federal Labor representatives in the ACT, Andrew Leigh, Gai Brodtmann and Kate Lundy say that since 2012 the SchoolKids Bonus has delivered much needed relief for low and middle income families struggling to meet the costs of their kids’ education.

Every one of these families will be worse off when the SchoolKids Bonus is scrapped.

The Coalition promised to increase employment and cut living costs. Instead, Canberrans are seeing employment cuts and increases in living costs.

The average family with two kids will be $1,230 worse off every year and $15,000 worse-off over the life of their children’s education.

This is a savage cut from a Government that clearly doesn’t care about Australian families or our kids’ education. The Abbott Government’s priorities are all wrong.

My Chronicle column this month is on the tension between the online and offline world.

Real world has warm people with offline lives, The Chronicle, 7 January 2014

In an article for the Weekly Standard last year, Matt Labash launched a broadside against social media, arguing that sites like Facebook, Pintrest and Twitter were turning our society into a "Twidiocracy". Labash bemoaned the fact that so many of us incessantly check our mobile phones for updates, rather than engaging with those around us.

As a pretty regular user of social media, I read Labash's column with a red face. If I'm catching a bus or plane, I'm much more likely to be plugged into a device than chatting with the person next to me. My wife Gweneth took a photo that makes me cringe, showing me at our kitchen counter, answering constituent email on the laptop while our boys (aged 1, 4 and 6) played under my feet.

Social media is terrific for staying in touch with friends on the other side of the world, or for linking up people with disparate interests. A year ago, I tweeted that I was looking for a researcher to collaborate on looking at long run trends in CEO pay. Melbourne economic historian Mike Pottenger got in touch, and we'd written an article together before we even met face to face.

But like lottery tickets, online technologies such as email, Facebook and Twitter work off what the psychologists call "variable interval reinforcement schedule". In other words, most of the time you get nothing, but occasionally a nice payoff comes along, in the form of a message from a long-lost friend, or praise for your work. It turns out that humans are particularly vulnerable to this kind of unpredictable reward, and are more likely to become addicted to it. If you've ever checked email more than once a minute, you know what I mean.

And then there's the negativity. Study after study has shown that people are more likely to say unnecessarily harsh things about one another on electronic media. There's something about impersonal technologies that have the potential to bring out our catty side. Read to the end of almost any long comments thread, and you'll find people duking it out.

So how can we capture the manifest benefits of email and social media without becoming slaves to the machine? Surprisingly, Silicon Valley may have some lessons. Some technology firms are now identifying times in each day when employees are not expected to reply to email. For example, 9-11am might be designated as time to think, write or code. I've started (with limited success, I admit) trying something similar in my own office.

Indeed, once you recognise that the technology has an addictive bent and a negative bias, it becomes a smidgin easier not to check in as often, and not to take criticism so seriously. Perhaps taking the kids to the pool might be a better use of time than responding to that twit-crit? Could a phone call to a lonely aunt be more valuable to the world than a Facebook status update?

More radically, I've been trying lately to implement "inbox zero"- the strategy of answering, filing or deleting all email immediately. It's hard at the outset, but does seem to help reduce the time you spend looking at the same message, deciding how best to answer it.

So if you can manage it this summer, check to see if you've got the balance right between the online and offline world. Because there are some terrific books and BBQs, parks and pools just waiting for your attention.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser and the Shadow Assistant Treasurer.