Andrew Leigh

I spoke in parliament about the importance of Closing the Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, focusing on the Wreck Bay community that I represent.

Closing the Gap: Prime Minister's report 2014, 26 February 2014

I rise to speak on Closing the Gap: Prime Minister's report 2014. Closing the Gap is not a mere slogan; it is a bi-partisan commitment to change lives for the better, and we owe this to generations of Indigenous people. Closing the Gap is about life over death, hope over hopelessness, resilience over ruin. It is an expectation that all Australians should flourish. Being an Indigenous Australian should not mean being marked by disadvantage. We are learning more all the time about the challenges and barriers facing Indigenous Australians. We are making some progress on overcoming them, but there is much more to be done. All of us in this House can make a difference in improving the poor health of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples when compared to that of the non-Indigenous population.

Since 2006 governments, Australia's peak Indigenous and non-Indigenous health bodies, NGOs and human rights organisations have worked together to achieve health and life expectancy equality for Australia's Aboriginal and Tones Strait Islander peoples. This is known as the Close the Gap campaign. Many of its targets were set to be reached by 2031. Seven years ago the Council of Australian Governments agreed to hold each other accountable for reaching a number of goals. They set out six specific targets for the Closing the Gap campaign: closing the life expectancy gap within a generation; halving the mortality rate for children under five within a decade; ensuring access to early childhood education for all Indigenous children in remote communities within five years; halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for children within a decade; halving the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020; and halving the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade

The most recent Closing the Gap report indicates mixed results on the goals articulated by COAG in 2008. Unfortunately, there has been little progress in closing the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The gap remains at 10.6 years for men and 9.5 years for women. Over the past five years the rate has dropped 0.8 years for men and 0.1 years for women. Currently the Northern Territory is the only state or territory on track to meet its 2031 target.

The goal of halving the mortality rate for Indigenous children under five is on track to be reached. From 1998 to 2012 the Indigenous child mortality rate dropped by 32 per cent, and, if this trend continues, the target for 2018 will be achieved. We are also on track in ensuring access to early childhood education within five years for all Indigenous children in remote communities—88 per cent of indigenous children were enrolled in pre-school in 2012, and the 2013 target is 95 per cent. Conversely, there has been very little improvement in halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy in a decade. Between 2008 and 2013, only two out of the eight categories showed significant improvement, namely reading in years 3 and 5. The goal of halving the gap in Indigenous year 12 attainment by 2020 is on track to be met. In 2011, 54 per cent of Indigenous Australians aged 20-24 had attained a year 12 certificate. This is a significant improvement from 2006, when the rate was at 47 per cent.

Sixthly, the target of halving the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by 2018 has shown no noteworthy improvement. In fact, data provided by the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey indicates that the proportion of Indigenous Australians aged 15-64 who are employed fell from 54 per cent in 2008 to 48 per cent in 2013. Moreover, there has been a statistically significant fall in CDEP participant levels from 2008 to 2013.

Education is our best antipoverty vaccine. Education helps an individual to become a valued member of the community who can participate and who has the self-esteem that comes from a great education. Meeting Indigenous targets is achieved through genuine partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, working with them as equals with compassion and a desire to understand conditions on the ground. I am proud to represent Jervis Bay Territory, which includes the community of Wreck Bay. In my first speech I spoke about its kangaroos grazing on an oval overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most picturesque parts of my electorate. I have the founders in Canberra to thank for the notion that no capital city is complete without a port. In socioeconomic terms, the Wreck Bay community is the most disadvantaged part of my electorate. I want to speak in particular about Jervis Bay Primary School and the Indigenous learning centre. Jervis Bay Primary has the lowest ICSEA score of any school in my electorate, but on a like-schools comparison it is one of the top-performing schools, if not the top performing school, in the ACT system.

I want to pay tribute to Principal Bob Pastor, who sets high expectations and is universally well spoken of throughout the community. Through the Learning 4 Life program he has engaged representatives from nearby Vincentia High School, the University of Wollongong, Noah's Ark, Booderee National Park and local preschools and childcare centres. This year I want to commend Bob Pastor for his reporting of school attendance rates, which are very much in line with the government's new Closing the Gap target for school attendance. Bob has made a commitment to publicly present his school's attendance record every week and see how it compares with the national average. For the first time in the school's 100 year history the year 5/6 attendance rate is at nearly 100 per cent, and many other classes are not far behind. On recent numbers, year 3/4 is tracking at 95 per cent, above the national average. I congratulate the Jervis Bay School for setting these high standards, and I commend them for their multifaceted educational experience, including an AFL Auskick program and visits from NRL club the St George Illawarra Dragons, who facilitate anti-bullying and rugby league skills sessions.

Also part of the Wreck Bay community is the Gudjahgahmiamia Early Learning Centre. 'Gudjahga' means child and 'miamia' means shelter. The Gudjahgahmiamia early learning hub is a vital part of closing the gaps in Wreck Bay. This centre ensures that children are based in friendly educational surroundings, and it is a centre which is absolutely vital to the educational performance of children in Wreck Bay and indeed to attaining Closing the Gap targets. The Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care has spoken to me about the importance of this kind of early learning centre. However, the centre faces an uncertain future beyond June 2014 because its funding comes out of the Australian government's budget based funding model. The Gudjahgahmiamia MACS Early Learning Centre is one of 38 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child and family centres set up across Australia.

If the Prime Minister is serious about closing the gap, I call on him to confirm funding for the 38 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child and family centres beyond the expiry of the national partnership agreement in June 2014. I am told by experts in the field that, without that budget based funding, falling back onto the funding approach which characterises most other early learning centres in Australia risks a high level of drop-out if families are unable to transition from the budget based funding model through to the childcare benefit and childcare rebate system. If children drop out of the early learning centre, it is going to make it more difficult for Jervis Bay Primary School to do the good work it needs to do. So it is absolutely fundamental that the government commits to funding the early learning centre in Wreck Bay. It is part of closing the gap.

I share the passion that was felt across the parliament when the Closing the Gap statements were delivered in the House. But passion is not enough. We need results and we need commitment to funding. The government must fund the early learning centre at Wreck Bay under a budget based model.

I spoke in parliament about the economic challenges facing the government, around jobs, growth and productivity.

JOBS, GROWTH AND PRODUCTIVITY

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
26 FEBRUARY, 2014

In these bills the government is requesting that parliament approve additional expenditure of around $14.8 billion, which largely reflects the government's decisions outlined in the 2013-14 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

Let me say from the outset that the Opposition do not oppose the passage of the three appropriations bills we are debating in the parliament today. Without denying this bill being read a second time, I move:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading the House notes that:

(1) the Government repeatedly stated before the election 'that if debt is the problem, more debt is not the answer';

(2) the 2013-14 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook showed a $17 billion blow-out in the 2013-14 budget deficit, which at the time represented a $167 million budget blow-out per day since the Government took office;

(3) 60 per cent of the predicted budget blow-out in 2013-14 was due to the decisions of the Government alone;

(4) the Government has sought to pave the way for deep cuts to the federal budget by deliberately blowing out the budget and establishing its Commission of Audit; and

(5) these cuts would be another example of this Government saying one thing before the election, and doing the complete opposite after it."

What we have continually seen from this government is that they do one thing after the election having said the complete opposite before the election. We have a litany of examples: the Renewable Energy Target, jobs, taxation, cuts to health and education, and this particular case—the budget.

MYEFO

We had a lot of slogans from the Coalition prior to the election and we still hear them today. There is one that I would like to bring up—the slogan: 'If debt is the problem, more debt is not the answer'. If more debt was not the answer, why did the government do a deal with the Greens to legislate for unlimited debt? And what about the issue of this budget emergency? We heard, saw and read an awful lot about that from the coalition prior to the election, but when we actually saw the Abbott government's MYEFO last year, the first budget document to be published under the new government, we saw a nearly $17-billion budget blow-out for 2013-14, more than a 50 per cent increase in the budget deficit, 60 per cent of which was due to decisions of this government. And that blow-out, with a deficit of $30 billion to $47 billion, represented a huge amount every day—$160 million per day.

The component of the budget deficit that did not represent increased expenditure was as a result, largely, of changes in assumptions. We learned yesterday morning from the Secretary of the Department of Finance, David Tune, when he spoke to Senate estimates, that the estimates in MYEFO had dropped the former Labor government's fiscal rules which limited real spending growth. Mr Tune confirmed to Senate estimates that this change in assumptions increased MYEFO's projections for the size of the budget debt over the decade to 2023-24.

So what MYEFO did was to deceitfully change the rules and then claim, lo and behold, to uncover a $667-billion debt figure. These politically biased assumptions had the effect of pumping up the debt and deficit projections—pumping them up markedly. The independent Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook clearly shows that, on the former government's policy settings, the medium-term projection had the underlying cash surplus growing after the forward estimates and reaching one per cent of GDP in 2020-21. Net debt was projected to return to zero in 2023-24.

That figure of a surplus of one per cent of GDP in 2020-21 is an important figure because we know that the terms of the National Commission of Audit were a requirement that the commission:

'… make recommendations to achieve savings sufficient to deliver a surplus of one per cent of GDP prior to 2023-24.'

But if you do not make the $9-billion grant to the Reserve Bank, if you do not give $700 million to multinational firms through tax loopholes, and if you do not relax the fiscal rules, you have got that surplus of one per cent of GDP happening in 2020-21. That surplus is there in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

PEFO

There have been a lot of games played with the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. These are games, ironically, which were played by the party that put PEFO into place. After the 1996 election then Treasurer Costello put in place a Charter of Budget Honesty. That is charter required the secretaries of Treasury and Finance to prepare a Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, PEFO, that ensured, as Treasurer Costello put it at the time:

'That the Australian people know the situation before an election begins and so that elections can be conducted on the basis of facts and not on the basis of deceit, as governments in the past have sought to do.'

PEFO was the fiscal equivalent of Mortein for spiders in the closet—it made it impossible for a new government to claim that, lo and behold, the state of the books were not what had been represented, because what PEFO does is that it ensures that the independent secretaries of Treasury and Finance sit down during the election campaign and set out the state of the books. The spider-free economy that the government took on had an economy with solid growth, unemployment low by historical standards and gross debt projected to peak at $370 billion in 2016-17. That is the spider-free economy that the Treasurer took on. That was underpinned by strong economic growth during Labor's time in office.

The Rudd and Gillard Governments

When Labor took office, our economy was the 15th largest in the world; when Labor left office our economy was the 12th largest in the world. In terms of income per person, we did better yet: we rose from 17th in the world when Labor took office to eighth in the world when Labor left office. In terms of infrastructure spending we did better still. As the member for Grayndler has articulately pointed out on numerous occasions, when we took office we were ranked worse than 20th in the OECD; in 2012 and 2013 we were ranked first by the OECD for our infrastructure investment. We also continued to benefit Australians in other ways. Lower interest rates for someone with a $300,000 mortgage meant a saving of over $100 a week. We made a series of tough decisions in our budget. In fact, I warrant that Labor's final budget not only will be the only budget in Australian history to have achieved a reduction in nominal spending, but will also keep that record. I find it very hard to imagine that another government will succeed in doing that. That was done in ways that ensured that, if spending had to be addressed, it was done in the fairest possible way and in a way that did not hit jobs.

When we cracked down on multinational profit shifting, we saved taxpayers billions of dollars. When we means tested the private health insurance rebate, we did so in a way that ensured it did not include those with the greatest means in the community. Those opposite foresaw doom: they said that private health insurance take-up would plummet as a result of the means test, but the data has given a lie to that claim. When we means tested and restricted the baby bonus the second and subsequent children, the now Treasurer said it was like China's one-child policy. He gives speeches about the age of entitlement, but when Labor came to put in place modest savings measures to ensure that savings were made in a way that shared the burden fairly across the community, all the member for North Sydney could do was to run scare campaigns—big speeches in London, scare campaigns in Australia.

The Abbott Government

The decisions the government is making are decisions that are going to assist the most affluent and to imperil jobs. This is the first Treasurer to knock back a foreign investment bid by a US company, which potentially imperils jobs in Australia. The Treasurer's decision to give $9 billion to the Reserve Bank is bewildering, given that we have no evidence that the Reserve Bank asked for such a grant; and the Treasurer is defying a Senate order to produce the documentation that would support that. The Treasurer says that the reason he needed to give $9 billion to the Reserve Bank was that Labor had taken a larger dividend from the bank than was appropriate. Again, the data gives a lie to that claim. Adjusting for inflation, the Howard government took $3 billion a year from the Reserve Bank and  Labor $1½ billion a year. So, what Labor took from the Reserve Bank was half in real terms what the coalition when in office took from the bank. Of course, we know why the Treasurer has gifted $9 billion to the Reserve Bank; he wants the 2013-14 budget to be someone else's problem. He is like a coach who takes over the job a quarter of the way into the season and wants to be able to blame a whole set of decisions on his predecessor.

This is a man who has not made the transition into government. Like the Prime Minister, the Treasurer is the shadow Treasurer in drag. He is a man who is still out there attacking the economy, when he should be fighting for jobs. He is happy to come in here and play a game of high stakes poker with Holden, but when he loses he wants to blame that on someone else. At the same time he is making decisions which will cost the budget still further. Take the parental leave scheme, which his own backbench strongly opposes, for instance. Alex Hawke, the member for Mitchell, is the most articulate critic of the parental leave scheme on the other side. He argues, not unreasonably, that a scheme that gives $75,000 to a millionaire family to have a baby is probably a scheme that is pretty hard to justify to the average family when they are having their Schoolkids Bonus taken away.

What were the talking points when the coalition was putting this gold plated, diamond encrusted parental leave scheme in place? They told us that it was appropriate to have such a generous scheme, because it was an entitlement. That is why we had to support it—because wage replacement parental leave paid for by the taxpayer was an entitlement. So much the end of the age of entitlement! I think the age of entitlement is just getting going for those millionaire families. And it is just getting going if you are mining billionaire: you are going to see a very generous tax cut under this government—something in the order of $4 billion under the forward estimates is forecast by this Treasurer to be lost when the mining tax is repealed.

Commission of Audit

For the no-surprises, no-excuses government that the Australian people were promised, they are seeing something entirely different. The Prime Minister—who said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to the pension or to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS—is now facing off with the Treasurer who says that all options are on the table. Last Friday we heard reports that the Treasurer was flagging changes to Medicare, education and the pension age. Despite the fact that he spent an election campaign clutching a 'Real Solutions' pamphlet—which says on page 49 that the government would be more accountable to the Australian public—we now have a Commission of Audit, which has been sitting on the Treasurer's desk since Valentine's Day.

If it had been a bunch of roses it would be a little the worse for wear by now. The roses that I purchased for my wife on Valentine's Day have had to be consigned to the dustbin.

But the Treasurer has apparently been more interested in other reading. We have seen in recent media reports that he is halfway through a new biography of Margaret Thatcher. Perhaps while he is reading Margaret Thatcher's biography he could share with the Australian people the Commission of Audit report. Of course, that is what the Howard government did when they commissioned a commission of audit report. They had a commission of audit that was independent and which released its report to the Australian public at the same time as it did so to the Treasurer. But this is a government which is even more secretive than the Howard government, which, let us face it, did not set many international records for its commitment to transparency and openness. The Treasurer said that he would release the Commission of Audit report sooner rather than later. Well, Treasurer, the clock is ticking. This is, of course, the Treasurer who said he would give us a budget update in his first 100 days in office and failed to meet that deadline. So he clearly has form. That is right: MYEFO—not delivered in the first 100 days.

We hear a lot from those opposite about the state that Labor left the budget in. But the state that they claim was the state in which they received it is not what Peter Costello would have said. Peter Costello would have said: 'If you want to know the state of the books when you took over, look at PEFO.' Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann want you to look to MYEFO, a document delivered more than three months into the Abbott government.

When Labor left office, as independently verified by the Pre-Election Fiscal and Economic Outlook, there was to be a surplus in 2016-17. Labor had deficits across the forward estimates of $54.6 billion. But, by the time we got to MYEFO, those cumulative deficits over the forwards had more than doubled, to $123 billion. We saw, from the PEFO to MYEFO, Labor having net debt at zero by 2023-24 but, once the Abbott government had put in place their changes in expenditure which we are debating today and their shonky changes to the fiscal rules, net debt by 2023-24 was projected to be 14.3 per cent of GDP. So the fact is: Labor had the budget heading into surplus in 2016-17 and to zero net debt in a decade; this government, by decisions totally of its own accord, has blown that out of the water.

This debate is occurring in a broader context, and it is absolutely critical to recognise that context, which is that the government is trying to pretend that Australia is a different country from that which it is. The social services minister, Kevin Andrews, has been found by the ABC Fact Check unit to be false in his claims that Australia's welfare system is not sustainable and in suggesting that there is a European-style fiscal crunch coming within a decade.

Size of Government

The simple fact is that, when we look at how Australia compares with other countries and at the size of government in Australia, Australia is a relatively low-taxing country. Do not take my word for that. In 2006, then Treasurer Peter Costello—I cannot quite believe I am quoting him twice in this speech, but there you go; even a stopped clock is right twice a day—requested a run-down on how our tax system compared with those of other countries. The report, which was co-authored by Peter Hendy, now the member for Eden-Monaro, concluded simply:

'… Australia is a low-tax country.'

That report pointed out that we do not have wealth, estate, inheritance or gift taxes. It found that, for individuals, we have one of the lowest income-tax burdens in the developed world. Since then, federal Labor has delivered significant personal income tax cuts. When Peter Costello was describing Australia as a low-tax country, the federal tax to GDP ratio was 24 per cent. After six years of Labor, that ratio had fallen to 23 per cent. Add in state and local governments, and the tax ratio is around 33 per cent of national income. To put that in perspective, New Zealand and the United Kingdom currently have a tax take that exceeds 40 per cent of GDP, and they have got conservative governments in charge.

So let us see this for what it is: the size of our government is much more similar to those of Korea or the United States, not, as ideologues on the right would have you believe, in the league of Finland and Switzerland. So, when this government attacks expenditure, and when it says that it is unsustainable to have a Schoolkids Bonus, to have income support payments, or to ensure that low-income earners get a fair deal on their superannuation and do not pay a higher tax rate on super than they pay on wages, then you are listening to an ideological agenda. When the chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council, Maurice Newman, describes DisabilityCare as 'reckless', he is striking fear into the hearts of thousands of Australians with a disability.

This government has engaged in backflips on school funding and backflips on debt. This is, after all, a government that went from holding press conferences in front of a debt truck to striking a deal with the Greens for uncapped debt. It is hard to tell whether BA Santamaria, Friedrich Hayek or the Marx Brothers are in charge. And you do not need to take it from me. Peter Costello—

Mr McCormack:  Three times!

Dr LEIGH:  It's three times the cock has crowed, isn't it! Peter Costello famously replied, when asked if he had endorsed Tony Abbott, 'Oh, not on economic matters.' And he was said, in private, to describe the Prime Minister as economically illiterate. His former employer, John Hewson, has covered off the other side of the basic skills test by describing the Prime Minister as innumerate.

This is a government which needs to recognise the broad context in which it sits—which needs to recognise a report from the mid-2000s which describes Australia as a low-tax, low-spending nation.

Productivity and Jobs

The vital debate in Australia at the moment is over productivity and it is over jobs. If you are serious about jobs, you have to get the short-term settings right and the long-term settings right. In the short term it is absolutely vital that we do not withdraw demand from the economy at a time when employment is fragile. This is a government that came to office with a target to generate a million jobs in five years, yet since it won office we have seen very modest growth in part-time jobs but backsliding in full-time jobs: 63,000 full-time jobs lost since this government came to office. So the net result is 7,000 net jobs gone. That million jobs target is slipping away by the day. Partly that is because—and I am sure the minister at the table may have something to say about this—this is a government that said no to foreign investment in GrainCorp, said no to foreign investment that would have generated jobs in the rural sector.

[Mr McCormack interjecting]

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Mitchell):  The parliamentary secretary can have a go later if he likes.

Dr LEIGH:  Did I just promote the parliamentary secretary? He can make a personal explanation later. This is a government which is withdrawing regional jobs as it closes ATO offices. A government which is serious about jobs ought not to be firing public servants left, right and centre, particularly not as the growth in public sector employment under Labor was slower than the population growth. The growth in the number of public servants was smaller than the growth in population. Most public services are deployed on the basis that you need a certain number of people to look after the population, whether that is the hardworking public servants in the Centrelink offices, Family Assistance offices or Medicare offices. Anyone who argues that Australia has a bloated public employment problem ought to say that doubly of the Howard government, which had more public servants per capita than we have today.

So in the short term the government is withdrawing demand and it is cutting jobs at a fragile time for the economy. But it is the long term that worries me even more. In the long term if you want to sustain employment you need to make the investments in skills and in infrastructure. You need to make the investments in the National Broadband Network and in urban rail, both of which this government is walking away from. Having breached their solemn pledge to the Australian people to deliver 25 megabits a second to Australians by 2016, they have now said that, disappointingly, that that is impossible to deliver on. Having said that he wants to be the infrastructure Prime Minister, the Prime Minister has now backed away from Infrastructure Australia, a process designed to put infrastructure decisions at arm's length. And he is being criticised by members of the business community for being unwilling to fund urban public transport, something which is fundamental to city productivity.

Then there is what they are doing on education. You need investment in great schools if you are to build the jobs of the future. This is where Labor said, 'We're going to strike a deal with states where we put in $2 of federal funds and the states guarantee a dollar for federal funds.' This government's funding deal is, 'We'll put in $2 of federal funds and if you want to take out your funds at the same time, feel free.' That is a very different deal to the unity ticket that Australians were promised on school funding and it is fundamental to Australia's economic prosperity. We cannot be a high-skill, productive nation in the future if we are slashing into schools, if we are getting rid of trades training centres and if, as this education minister has suggested, we walk away from the demand-driven model which has allowed children first in their family to attend university and which has benefited particularly rural and regional students.

These hits to Australia's productivity and to our short-term growth prospects are deeply disturbing. We need the government that we were promised before the election, a government of no surprises and no excuses that takes responsibility, steps up to the plate as an adult government and is willing to make the decisions that the Australian economy demands.

On 25 February, I joined host Peter Van Onselen and Liberal MP Steve Ciobo to discuss how the Abbott Government has managed to blow out the 2013-14 budget deficit by more than 50 percent.

I spoke in parliament yesterday about the Active After-School Communities program.

Active After-School Communities, Members' Statements, 24 February 2014

In the electorate of Fraser, the Active After-School Communities Program is a terrific way of keeping young people engaged with sport. In 2014, a number of schools in my electorate have joined the program: Gold Creek School, Burgmann School, Kingsford Smith School and Maribyrnong Primary School; as well as Emmaus Christian School and Mount Rogers School at the end of last year.

Primary school children in the ACT engage in Active After-School Communities sports across 27 schools, in sports ranging from cricket, touch football, golf, frisbee, fencing, rugby league, martial arts, tennis, gymnastics, dance, athletics, basketball, lawn balls, AFL and softball. There is a range of teachers who work with these programs. When I visited, I was greatly impressed by the regional coordinator, Liz Chester, and the team of coaches that she has working with her. Mentoring provide an opportunity for senior students to develop skills in leadership and in sports coaching; it also provides the opportunity for junior students to engage with their peers and to build bridges within the school. It is a great example of how sport can build social capital, and I commend all those involved in the Active After-School Communities Program.

I spoke in parliament yesterday about Brendon Morrison, an ACT Labor stalwart who passed away recently.

Brendon Morrison, Members' Statements, 24 February 2014

I rise to pay tribute to Brendon Morrison, a life member of the ACT Labor Party, who unexpectedly passed away last week. Brendon was a regular fixture at so many of our community events. He was an amputee and somebody whose presence was immediately apparent. I remember chatting away to Brendon with my son Sebastian there, and Brendon very happily talking with Sebastian about what it was like to be an amputee. I remember standing by the stone that sits out the front of the building commemorating the founding in 1913 of Canberra, and Brendon there talking about his long links to the region.

Brendon was an active member of the Weston Creek sub branch and had been a member of the Labor Party for 20 years. He supported candidates in ACT and federal elections and was involved with a number of unions including the CPSU and the Plumbers Union in the ACT.

He was involved with children's groups and the Rural Fire Brigade and had argued for greater support for ACT amputees from government. He heckled with great wit and was somebody whose sense of warmth was palpable to all of us around him. I pass on my condolences to his wife, Diane Jackson, and other family and friends. There will be a mass for him this week, which I am sure will be well attended.

I wrote the foreword to Peter Dawson's terrific new book on innovation in Canberra. If you'd like to buy a copy, contact [email protected].

Foreword to Peter Dawson, Creative Capital: Bureaucrats, Boffins, Businessmen, Haldstead Press, 2014
Andrew Leigh

Ask a non-Canberran what words they associate with ‘Canberra’, and it’s London to a brick that they’ll come back with ‘politics’ or ‘government’. Yet as those of us who live here know, this is a city that’s considerably more than the seat of government. If I had to devise a single notion that sums up smart bureaucrats, connected academics and innovative start-ups, it would be that Canberra is an ‘ideas city’.

Peter Dawson’s account of creativity in Canberra is informed, modest and connected – a little like the city itself. You’ll read about the Australian National University’s role in dating rocks from Apollo 11, Vikram Sharma’s work on quantum cryptography and Alex Zelinsky’s machines that prevent drivers from falling asleep. You’ll learn about Chris Parish’s cancer research, Peter Gage’s HIV research, Charmaine Simeonovic’s work on diabetes and Tim Hirst’s breakthroughs on influenza. And you’ll find out about environmental breakthroughs: Andrew Blakers on solar photovoltaic cells; Stephen Kaneff, Peter Carden and others on concentrating solar.

But the book is much more than an absorbing collection of stories – it also draws out broader themes. One of these is to think carefully about our city’s place in the world. Some argue that in a ‘hub and spoke’ world, Canberra may aspire to be a hub. But the book also quotes Alex Zelinsky’s observation that it may be no bad thing to be a ‘spoke of Silicon Valley’. After all, Canberrans tend to have a bevy of international linkages. I also appreciated the fact that Peter Dawson resisted using the term ‘world class’, a cliché most often used to describe things that are not.

Flattery, the psychologists tell us, works best when it appeals to the fragile side of a person’s character. We’re told to compliment the intellect of the handsome, and praise the grooming of the nerd. In the case of Canberra, many of us are used to thinking of it as a city of government. So it’s particularly flattering for locals to have Peter Dawson praising Canberra’s entrepreneurial flair.

The typical Canberran might well know about CSIRO’s success in developing wi-fi, a bestselling diet book, printable solar cells and a vaccine for the Hendra virus. But Peter Dawson goes beyond this to tell the stories of commercial entrepreneurs Adrian Faccioni, who developed GPS devices for sportspeople; and Glenn Keys, who created a medical practice that helped save the life of former Timorese President José Ramos-Horta. He describes Scott Rashleigh’s development of optical fibre, Ben Greene’s work on tracking space junk, and Marcus Daw’s work on carbon capture. In the military arena, we learn about Peter Moran (wearable computers), David Gaul and Ian Croser (radar) and Canberra firm X-Tek (body armour). The only thing missing are stories of a plethora of innovative Canberra women – perhaps something that can be redressed in the next edition.

Peter Dawson’s book made me proud to be a Canberran. But it isn’t just a puff-piece for the city. The book also raises the question of how policymakers should seek to foster innovation. Without advocating either model, it raises the question: should we follow Richard Florida’s advice, and create funky artistic precincts? Or is it better to do as Canberra entrepreneur Ben Greene suggests, which he says to government, ‘you take care of the schools and hospitals and I will take care of the rest’?

Much as I love hip downtown areas, the work of urban economists like Ed Glaeser has led me to doubt the claimed connection from Bohemian places to innovation. That’s not to say we shouldn’t encourage a groovy Braddon and a hip New Acton. But we should primarily encourage such developments because they make our city more enjoyable – not in the hope that they will make us richer.

To create more start-up firms in Canberra, it’s vital to boost educational outcomes. As the 2012 OECD PISA results show, ACT school performance has fallen in maths, reading and science over the past decade. Moreover, the drop has been at least as large as the average decline across Australia. Making Canberra schools work better must be a top innovation priority. It would also be terrific to see more students studying high-level maths and science at school, and taking on engineering and technology courses at university.

Canberra’s universities are already doing some fascinating work, but there are valuable lessons in Peter Dawson’s accounts of the early days the Australian National University: for example the focus on personnel over architectural blueprints. And as the stories of Howard Florey, H.C. Coombs, W.K. Hancock and Mark Oliphant illustrate, Canberra’s universities – at their best – can perfect the balance between theory and practice; between policy work and pure research.

Beyond getting education right, government should be modest about its ability to redress problems such as Australia’s comparatively low patenting rates (by OECD standards). To the credit of the Gallagher Government, it has trialled a variety of solutions, including the newly formed innovation space Entry 29. Like a good start-up in the private sector, it’s wise for governments not to think they have all the answers in solving a challenging problem such as the disconnect between Canberra’s universities and local businesses. Experiment, experiment, experiment.

Peter Dawson – and his wife Elizabeth – are immersed in Canberra’s social and intellectual life. But the story he tells has relevance outside the 2300 square kilometres that make up the ACT. Canberra isn’t perfect, but it’s a beautiful city in which to live. And as Peter Dawson teaches us, it has produced not just clever bureaucrats, but innovative boffins and creative businesspeople too.

Andrew Leigh is the Federal Member for Fraser and a former professor of economics at the Australian National University. His books include Disconnected (2010) and Battlers and Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Australia (2013).

Breaking Politics host, Chris Hammer, invited me and regular sparring partner Liberal MP Andrew Laming into the Fairfax Media studio to discuss this morning's news.  Today's agenda includes worrying reports that the Abbott Government may weaken legislation requiring companies to report on the gender of employees and progress of workplace gender equality measures.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

BREAKING POLITICS – FAIRFAX MEDIA

MONDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2014



SUBJECT/S: Manus Island; Cambodia and the Refugee Resettlement Agreement; G20 growth target and multinational profit shifting; Qantas future and jobs; Company gender reporting.

CHRIS HAMMER: One week after an Iranian asylum seeker died on Manus Island the story is still front page news. That's largely because of Saturday, Border Protection Minister Scott Morrison that he had been misinformed and in turn had misinformed the public about what had happened last Monday night on Manus Island. Well, to discuss that and other issues, I'm joined by Andrew Leigh, the Labor Member for Fraser in the ACT and also Assistant Shadow Treasurer and Andrew Laming, the Liberal Member for Bowman in Brisbane.

Andrew Laming, to you first, it now seems highly likely that the Iranian asylum seeker died within the detention centre on Manus Island. Doesn't that make his death wholly the responsibility of the Australian Government?

ANDREW LAMING: If that information's correct it's extremely alarming. Everyone would regret this occurrence from last week. Look, Scott Morrison's a star minister. He's provided information as soon as he reliably could. They'll try and work out why he was potentially given incorrect information. Everyone will want absolute safety for those that are detained on Manus. I'm confident that that centre can achieve that and continue to be an important part of our border protection.

HAMMER: So, you'd concede that it is the Australian Government's responsibility, the death in a sense -

LAMING: We'll be a key player in getting to the bottom of that matter. And we are obviously responsible because we hire the contractors who run that camp.

HAMMER: And the matter that the Minister was misinformed initially, that's also the responsibility of the Australian Government, isn't it, because it sets up he mechanisms and management of the detention centre?

LAMING: I'm sure the ministry will be getting to the bottom of those, what actually happened.

HAMMER: Andrew Leigh, Labor cannot be too critical because it was the Labor Government that set up this arrangement with Papua New Guinea, reopened the Manus camp, hired the contractors etc.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Manus Island is fundamental to the Refugee Resettlement Agreement, which saw asylum seeker boat inflows drop 90 per cent prior to the election. But I'm concerned that the Australian people in Scott Morrison aren't getting a minister who's willing to front up. We've gone through his Sergeant Schultz routines of being unwilling to speak about on-water matters, to now this kind of Get Smart routine, where he's bumbled over the extent to which his policy has caused incursions into Indonesian waters and gotten fundamental facts wrong over this asylum seeker tragedy.

HAMMER: If he's misinformed, you're not claiming that he deliberately missed informed the Australian public are you?

LEIGH: I'm not but there are many issues on which Scott Morrison has underperformed. Don't just take it from me, take it from Liberal Party elder John Fahey who expressed his deep concerns to the Fairfax Press. The performance of Scott Morrison and this Government has been subpar and we need an independent investigation that will report back as quickly as it's able to do so.

HAMMER: Well, The Greens are calling for his resignation. Is that something Labor supports. I'd like to see the results of an independent investigation. I certainly don't think though that any reasonable observer of Australian politics would be ranking Scott Morrison's performance as among the best we've seen from ministers of the crown over the last couple of decades.

HAMMER: Well, what's the test? When are ministers required to resign?

LEIGH: I certainly think people are raising reasonable concerns about Scott Morrison's performance: being unwilling to answer questions in parliament about how naval vessels are being used, is, I believe, inappropriate. I think it's inappropriate he's pursued a policy that's caused half a dozen incursions into Indonesian territorial waters and I'm troubled that he made claims which later turned out to be false about the circumstances of the death of this Iranian asylum seeker.

HAMMER: Okay. Andrew Laming, both sides of politics are committed to off-shore processing of asylum seekers. It's now reported the Government has approached Cambodia as a possible site for off-shore processing. Do we need to be doing deals with countries like Cambodia that have a rather ineffective history on human rights, rule of law, etc.?

LAMING: Australia needs to be working with all its near neighbours. I don't know about an approach. There's been reports about a discussion of foreign ministers. Potentially Cambodia has actually said they're ready to start assisting in the process and the more partners that are involved the better. You need to remember that there are minority groups from those parts of southern and central Asia, which are only a couple of borders away from each other. So, the Rohingya minority for instance are already located in parts of Indochina and they may be an important part of the puzzle. These are just early discussion and I'm glad that they're being had.

HAMMER: But if we can't guarantee that the safety and security of asylum seekers in PNG and Nauru, how could we do in Cambodia?

LAMING: Well in every nation we know that we're doing absolutely everything they can to guarantee that safety. The word guarantee is thrown around a lot and we know that different countries do things in different ways. I think what's important is that they're doing everything possible, everything within their power to resettle these populations. Otherwise, we have the ridiculous alternative where there's nowhere safe for anyone to go.

HAMMER: Andrew Leigh, Labor was happy to do a deal with Malaysia, so it'll have no problem doing a deal with Cambodia?

LEIGH: The Refugee Resettlement Agreement was always designed to encompass a regional solution to what is a global problem. Seventeen million refugees and 42 million internally displaced people in the world means that we need to work with other countries. We won't be responding to every thought bubble that gets floated in the paper without quotes from the Government, but certainly we will scrutinise any proposal that comes up and we'll be taking human rights concerns into consideration as we do so.

HAMMER: If we can change subjects, the G20 meeting in Sydney over the weekend. Andrew Laming, this growth target. Isn't this merely a motherhood statement? You'd be surprised if finance ministers were saying 'oh, we don't want growth'. What's the point of it?

LAMING: Well to talk about two per cent extra growth over five years, which obviously is just under half a per cent per year, it's good that our major trading partners are committed to building respective economies and the trillion dollar dividends that could potentially flow. So, they're on the same page. Don't forget, this was a Coalition election commitment to get our economy going again. I'm pretty glad that the other G20 nations hold a similar view. That's a big tick for Joe Hockey.

HAMMER: But since when as any government said 'we don't want growth'?

LAMING: Well it makes you wonder how you achieve targets apart from supportive policy to make it happen. It simply means that, I think, we’re dealing with like-minded economies around the G20 table. That’s good news.

HAMMER: And Andrew Leigh you must congratulate the Treasurer for pushing the issue of clamping down on international tax avoidance.

LEIGH: I’d certainly congratulate him for dealing with the issue Chris, but I’m concerned that he hasn’t come forward with a full suite of proposals. Labor took a $4 billion dollar package to last year’s G20 on multinational profit shifting. Joe Hockey has come back this year with a $3 1/4 billion package. He’s decided not to pursue three-quarters of a billion dollars of crackdown on multinational profit shifting and he’s decided not to pursue the transparency measures which would have seen the biggest 200 companies report the tax that they’d paid as a way of prompting them to do the right thing.

HAMMER: But isn’t some movement better than none?

LEIGH: Some is good but if he’s going to make this a signature issue let's see him implementing the entire reform package. It’s a bit like the growth target: great aspirations but we’d like to see the Government actually walking the talk.

HAMMER: Okay, the economy locally in Australia, Qantas’s results are out later this week. There are reports that it considering job cuts between 1000 and 3000. Andrew Laming, does Qantas deserve government support or is the age of entitlement over?

LAMING: Well I’d like to see some of the restrictions around ownership and board directorships reviewed. I think there’s a national conversation about that at the moment which is important. Many of Qantas’ competitors are saying that not being the national airline is some form of disadvantage. So what do we want? We want a thriving aircraft sector in this country where airlines can compete globally. We know it's one of the toughest sectors in the world and so sustainability, if it's not founded upon direct transfers by government is probably the important target.

HAMMER: Well what are the limits here? What are the sorts of things that government can consider, assistance it can consider giving to Qantas and support you'd have to rule out straight right away?

LAMING: There’s nothing we’ve ruled in our ruled out but there a conversation around the restrictions around current legislation of Qantas. But we do know that the other major competitors for Qantas do have significant advantages in their own hubs. So effectively being an outlying-based airline like Qantas we’re always going to be disadvantage over the large hubs operating out of Asia. If they’re also getting favourable government treatment in their own airports then that’s a real challenge for us. Qantas operates in that space with great difficulty and we’re going to have to consider that fine balance very carefully.

HAMMER: Andrew Leigh, if the government does extent some type of assistance to Qantas must is also extend it to virgin and other competitors of Qantas?

LEIGH: Let's see what type of proposal comes out of the Government. Andrew has summed up, I think very nicely the strategic dilemma the government faces. But the Opposition aren’t going to be responding to every thought bubble that Joe Hockey throws out to tables of multinational investors. We’re concerned about jobs at Qantas and were concerned about jobs across the board. I mean this is a Government that came to office with a target to generate a million jobs but since then we’ve seen 63,000 full time jobs go, some small growth in part time jobs but still they’re down 7000 jobs. So their million job target is now a one million and seven thousand job target. It's receding rather than getting closer.

HAMMER: Okay, well what should be on that table what assistance should an Australian Government be extending to a big iconic company like Qantas?

LEIGH: It’s a matter for the Government and I will leave it to the Government to put concrete proposals forward and we will respond to those. But this is just one part of the economy the Government ought to be focused on. At the moment it’s looking at making some savage cuts to spending which will hit those who have the highest what we call in economics ‘propensity to consume’. So if you cut back the SchoolKids Bonus then that’s less money that goes straight into consumption, into boosting the economy. And if you cut back on long term investments such as great schools, training centres, the National Broadband Network, then ultimately you sap the economy’s long term potential. So the talk about jobs and growth is great but the action seems to be in exactly the wrong direction.

HAMMER: Okay, well one area where the Government is trying to boost economic growth is by cutting red tape. It seems that it's going to relax gender reporting requirements. At the moment companies with a hundred or more employees need to report on the gender balance of their employees. The government is thinking about increasing that to a thousand employees. That’s a good move isn’t it? It's cutting red tape. It’s going to encourage investment and employment?

LEIGH: This is not a serious piece of red tape Chris. This is a requirement which allows us to make sure that firms are making the most productive use of both genders in the economy. We know that in corporate Australia, at the board level, women are badly under-represented but that has improved over recent years quite markedly, largely because of public reporting. To instead say let’s throw the cloak of secrecy back over the representation of women in large Australian firms, is I think, taking us back to the 1950s, rather than the  mark of a progressive Australia. Perhaps that's what you get when you have a Government without a dedicated minister for women.

HAMMER: Andrew Laming, why make this move? It's hardly a massive administrative burden for a company that employs more than a 100 people.

LAMING: Companies with a hundred employees that I know would differ. These are significant burdens of reporting. They are very rigorously enforced. A number of companies are very disappointed that this burden remains on them to this day, particularly when they're doing the right thing any way. True, they might not have anything to fear, but many of them operate in a space where the number of females working in the technically component of their firm is almost impossible to compare reasonably with other firms next door. Many would just say, look if you want to know what we're doing with female employees, you can always ask, but the mandatory reporting I think is the problem. So, we have a decision to be made by regulation by April of this year and I'm glad that we're having this discussion. The best thing you can do is have paid parental leave for young women. I think that's the best move that the Abbott Government has made. This extra reporting and red tape I don't see any great benefit in.

LEIGH: Let's be honest, we've got a paid parental leave scheme. It's a flat rate paid parental leave scheme that gives the same to everyone. I'm unpersuaded Andrew that if we move to a system which gave five times as much to the most affluent as to the worst paid workers, that we'd get a big productivity gain. Certainly someone like Saul Eslake says the same.

LAMING: Sure. And I would say that most high income earning women already have their income replacement through their corporations and public service. This legislation is about looking after mostly low to middle income earning women, who at the moment in the private sector have nothing. So the legislation picks up that sector.

HAMMER: Okay, gentlemen, I think that debate is one we are going to cover again before this year is out. In the meantime, Andrew Leigh and Andrew Laming, thanks so much for joining us.

LEIGH: Thanks Chris. Thanks Andrew.

LAMING: Thank you.

ENDS

MEDIA CONTACT: Toni Hassan 0426 207 726

Joining a cycle of doorstops at Parliament House this morning, I spoke to reporters about the Group 20 Financial Ministers Communique that commits leaders to boosting GDP. Ultimately the success of the G20 in Australia will be judged around tangible results including job creation.

TRANSCRIPT, DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT HOUSE

MONDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2014

SUBJECT/S: G20 growth target; multinational profit shifting and tax; Manus Island; Craig Thomson; Sydney’s second airport

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER AND SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION: We've seen the headline recommendation coming out of the weekend G20 meetings as being a two per cent growth boost. Now, no one can object to that. Two per cent more growth is of course a good thing. But, an aspiration is not a plan. And from Joe Hockey, what we're getting is hints of a set of policies that are going to cut into growth at the same time that he aspires to more growth. If I came out here and told you that I'd like my running times to be two per cent faster, but I was going to sell my jogging shoes and sack my jogging partner, you'd have reason to doubt me. So, when Joe Hockey tells you that he's going to boost Australia's growth rate but he's not going to build the NBN, not build urban rail, hacking into school funding and Trades Training Centres - and potentially demand driven universities - Australians have a right to ask 'well, how serious are you are you about this growth target?'

The other thing we saw out of the G20 was a proposal to move on multinational profit-shifting. It's essentially the same proposal that Wayne Swan and David Bradbury took to last year's G20. But three-quarters of a billion dollars has been dropped from it because the Government wasn't willing to go hard on multinational profit-shifting. So that's $700 million, around the cost of a new hospital, which has got to be made up for in service cuts or tax increases. The Government is walking away from good moves on multinational profit shifting and they're walking back on transparency of multinational tax paid, which has really got to leave you asking the question, ‘how serious are they about making sure that all companies pay their fair share of tax?’

JOURNALIST: Do you think Scott Morrison should be sacked?

LEIGH: I think we need a proper investigation on what's occurred on Manus Island. It's a location that is integral to maintaining the refugee policy which Labor put in place and which saw a 90 per cent decrease in boat arrivals before the election. And that investigation needs to happen quickly. It needs to be independent and not in a matter of a year or so, but happen speedily.

JOURNALIST: Would you agree with the Greens calling for a royal commission?

LEIGH: I sometimes feel as though this parliament is doing nothing but calling for royal commissions. I think a quick acting independent investigation can allow us to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. When you've got the Minister coming out at nine o'clock on a Saturday night admitting that he misled the Australian people, we need a quick and independent investigation.

JOURNALIST: Are there any merits to the [inaudible] Cambodia [inaudible]?

LEIGH: I'm not in the business of responding to thought bubbles from the Government. If the Government has a serious policy proposal they want to put to the Opposition, we're happy to entertain those.

JOURNALIST: It's more than a thought-bubble. The Foreign Affairs Minister is canvassing the option.

LEIGH: If the Government has proposals we will talk to them about those and we'll apply to those the principles that we brought to bringing about the Refugee Resettlement Agreement.

JOURNALIST: Do you have any concerns about Cambodia specifically? It's been described as an authoritarian regime.

LEIGH: If the Government has a serious proposal to put to us, we're happy to do that. But this is a Government that takes great joy in floating ideas, whether they're economic or foreign policy. We'll respond to serious policy proposals.

JOURNALIST: What about a motion to investigate whether Craig Thomson has misled parliament. Would you support that?

LEIGH: Well as Tony Burke has already said this morning, Labor supported that motion in the last parliament. And if it needs another motion of parliament to get it up, we're happy to support it.

JOURNALIST: Do you support a second Sydney airport at Badgery's Creek?

LEIGH: Certainly I think that Sydney needs a second airport and sorting out the precise location is a matter that will be nailed down by NSW colleagues. But you get a strong sense that Sydney Airport is at capacity and that that's a real brake on the productivity of the region. It's one of those infrastructure issues I spoke about before. Unless you get the infrastructure right, it's hard to see why we should take aspirational growth targets seriously.

JOURNALIST: And do you understand why Western Sydney MPs are so upset about it though?

LEIGH: There's invariably politics around the locations of airports. I do think it's important to expand the air transport capacity of our biggest city - the gateway to the region for many Australians. If you're not willing to make those tough calls, and it's not just on airline infrastructure, it's also on urban rail which the Government has walked out of, it's also about the National Broadband Network. If you're not willing to make those calls, then you're not serious about growth.

JOURNALIST: So, Bill Shorten's right in backing that then?

LEIGH: The details of location would be a matter for Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten and my NSW colleagues but my firm view is that Sydney needs another airport. Thanks folks.

ENDS

On 24 February, I joined host David Lipson and Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham to discuss the G20 growth target, and why Joe Hockey's growth aspiration lacks a plan to back it up.http://www.youtube.com/v/IfxeZ4hNCX0?version=3&hl=en_US

International tax rules are not keeping pace with changes in the digital age and the realities of doing business in our globalised world. Rapid and dramatic shifts in global economic activity, driven largely by e-commerce, pose very real and significant risks to Australia’s corporate tax base and the tax bases of countries right around the world.

Multinational companies can take advantage of slow-moving tax laws by shifting profits to low-tax countries. This is particularly true for digital companies that don’t sell physical goods. This has obvious implications for tax revenue: companies avoiding their fair share of tax mean higher taxes or reduced services for you and me. Equally important, however, is the disadvantage incurred by local businesses which lack either the savvy or the scale to implement these complex taxation avoidance schemes.

Local Australian digital media companies such as Mi9, together with the corporate heads of websites such as ninemsn, RAE and realeastate.com.au, have called for action on multinational profit-shifting ahead of this week’s G20 Finance Minister’s meeting. With the job losses that we’ve seen at Holden, Toyota and, this week, at Alcoa, it’s vital that Australian media companies are competing on a level playing field so that they can create the jobs of the future.

Since coming to office, the Abbott government has talked a big game on multinational profit-shifting. Unfortunately, all it’s done is water down Labor’s sensible reforms to ensure that multinationals pay their fair share.

On 14 December 2013, Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos announced that the government would abandon a $700 million measure to prevent multinational firms reducing their tax bill. On 4 January 2014, Senator Sinodinos announced that the government was considering abandoning measures that required 200 of Australia’s largest firms to disclose their total income, taxable income and tax paid. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue lost that could go towards Australian hospitals, schools and infrastructure.

The Abbott government must walk the talk. Labor advanced a fair agenda to combat tax avoidance and evasion. It’s up to Joe Hockey and Arthur Sinodinos to take up the baton left by Wayne Swan and David Bradbury so multinationals pay their fair share of tax. Until they do Australian households and businesses will have to take on a higher tax burden. This not only means less in the pockets of Australian taxpayers, but also fewer jobs in the innovative companies that represent the future of the Australian workforce.