Andrew Leigh

NOW TURNBULL WANTS HIGHER STATE TAXES TOO

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

KELLY O’DWYER: TAX CRUSADER??

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

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

That’s because their record speaks for itself.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SKY PM AGENDA

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

WEDNESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2016

SUBJECT/S: GST, tobacco excise 

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

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, David.

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

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

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

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

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

John Bannon

3 February 2016

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

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

Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 [No. 2], Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013 [No. 2]

3 February 2016

There is a central tenet here in this debate, and that is that workers in the building and construction industry should be subject to the same laws that apply to other workers. That is consistent with the principle of equality before the law—a principle with which the now Prime Minister would have strongly espoused during his time as a lawyer and possibly even as recently as last year. The principles underpinning the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 [No. 2] potentially jeopardise those goals of equality and the principles of natural justice.

On Fraser becoming Fenner, City News, 3 February

FOR the past five years, I’ve been fortunate enough to represent an electorate named after the great parliamentarian Jim Fraser. But after former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser passed away last year, the Australian Electoral Commission has decided to rename the ACT seat of (Jim) Fraser, with a view to creating a new seat of (Malcolm) Fraser in Victoria.

As of this week Fraser will become Fenner; for the remarkable Australian scientist and public health advocate Frank Fenner. Here’s five fascinating things you might not know about this electorate’s new namesake.

An antidote to disengagement, Northside Chronicle (Canberra), 2 February

Four decades ago, Roy Morgan began asking Australians whether they thought politicians were ethical and honest. Back then, only one in five said yes. Today, the figure is down to one in seven.

The drop worries me, particularly as it comes alongside other signs of disengagement. More people voting informal. Fewer people following the campaign through newspapers. Shorter soundbites.

For too many Australians, politics feels out of reach, and they’re frustrated that their politicians are out of touch.

But there’s one person I’ve never heard accused of being out of touch: Mary Porter.

Good govt requires more than mere memories, Canberra Times, 2 February

A little over a century ago, GK Chesterton wrote that ‘Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.’[1]

Well told, history is always more exciting than the present. In her latest Quarterly Essay, ‘Political Amnesia’, Laura Tingle demonstrates how a fine wordsmith can skip the dull bits, and compress the achievements of decades into a handful of pages. We’re treated to the best insights of the post-war economic policymakers known as the ‘Seven Dwarfs’. We hear about the creation of capital gains and fringe benefits taxes, over the objections of the naysayers. I challenge you to read Tingle’s description of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating’s achievements, and not want to carve their faces onto the side of Mt Ainslie.