Andrew Leigh

Today's Breaking Politics segment featured Senator Simon Birmingham and I going head to head over the government's unfair budget, its unecessary Paid Parental Scheme and signs of a welcome back-down on the GP co-payment. Here's the transcript:

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

FAIRFAX BREAKING POLITICS

MONDAY, 4 AUGUST 2014

SUBJECT/S: Tony Abbott’s unfair Paid Parental Leave scheme; federal budget; government back down on GP co-payment

CALLUM DENNESS: I’m joined by Andrew Leigh, the local member for Fraser in the ACT, and Simon Birmingham, the Liberal Senator for South Australia. Good morning to you both. Simon Birmingham, the government has delayed introducing its legislation for the paid parental leave scheme, this is Tony Abbott’s signature policy. Why?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM, PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: Well it’s not about whether the legislation is introduced that matters, it’s about when a policy takes effect. We've always said that the paid parental leave scheme – which is of great benefit to working Australian women, particularly to low and middle income women – will take effect from 1 July 2015. That's still our policy intent and we'll legislate in a way to give effect to that. Right now in parliament, our priority is to work on the delivery of our budget measures to bring the budget back under control and particularly to make sure that we reign in the debt and deficit disaster left to us by the previous Labor government.

DENNESS: Why not introduce the legislation so people can see the details, see how the policy works, so that questions are answered. Isn't this a sign that your colleagues may not vote for it?

BIRMINGHAM: Well, the previous government was shambolic in the way it did many things. We want to be orderly in the way we do things and our approach has been, of course, to get on with those initial policy commitment with took effect from 1 July this year like the repeal of the carbon tax.  We managed to get that through in a manner where households will benefit from that repeal backdated to 1 July this year. We also, of course, want to see our budget measures implemented and that's what we are focusing on now, to bring the debt and deficit back under control, and we want to see programs like the Paid Parental Leave Scheme in place from 1 July next year, so we'll legislate that in due course, in a timely way, to have it take effect. But obviously it comes after those budget measures.

DENNESS: But you haven't yet legislated the mining tax, the carbon tax...

BIRMINGHAM: We have brought the mining tax to the parliament 

DENNESS: Yes, sorry, it hasn't passed the parliament yet. The carbon tax took longer than expected. These two policies were there was broad support across the chamber. On something like the Paid Parental Leave, wouldn't it have made sense to introduce it as early as possible?

BIRMINGHAM: It’s important to understand the implementation date difference - the aim for the mining tax and the aim for the carbon tax was to take affect effect from 1 July 2014. The aim for the Paid Parental Leave Scheme is to take effect from 1 July 2015. In between that we have a lot of budget measures we want to see delivered as well. So of course these things have to be taken in an orderly, sequential way. That's all that's happening, no surprises here.

DENNESS: Dean Smith is the latest Liberal to come out and criticise the policy. Are you afraid that your colleagues might not vote for this?

BIRMINGHAM: No, this is a policy we've taken to two elections. All Liberal and National Party MPs have stood on the platform of this policy.

DENNESS: Yet they continue to criticise it...

Inside Story is currently featuring an extract from my new book 'The Economics of Just About Everything', which looks at the unexpected benefits of Australia's gun buyback scheme. Read on...

THE UPSIDES OF THE BUYBACK

On the chilly Melbourne evening of Sunday 9 August 1987, nineteen-year-old former army cadet Julian Knight drank several beers at the Royal Hotel in Clifton Hill then packed a bag with an M14 semi-automatic, a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic, and a Mossberg pump action 12-gauge shotgun. As he later told the police, “I wanted to see what it was like to kill someone.”

Most bullets are less than a centimetre wide, but when they enter a person’s body they make a far larger hole. One reason for this is that, once inside your body, a bullet begins to “yaw,” or tumble. Because bullets are a few centimetres long, the tumbling effect is far more destructive than if the bullet had continued to travel in a straight line.

In addition, a cushion of air known as a “pressure wave” precedes the bullet, temporarily creating a cavity inside the body that can be much wider than the trajectory of the tumbling bullet. The combined impact of a tumbling projectile and a pressure wave means that the entry wound can be as small as a fingernail, while the exit wound can be as large as a tennis ball.

The Australian Financial Review was good enough to publish an extract from my new book 'The Economics of Just About Everything', which you can read here.

If you like what you see, why not support your local independent bookstore by buying a copy?

AN ECONOMIST'S GUIDE TO ONLINE DATING 

What’s a desperate and dateless economist to do? The economics of dating comes down to three simple rules:

1. There is no ­per­fect match, but some matches are definitely better than others.

2. You won’t know how well suited you are to someone until you get to know them.

3. Time is scarce, so a decision based on limited information is probably better than no decision at all.

The challenge of dating is that you don’t have enough information and you don’t have enough time to get it. To give you an idea of just how severe the problem is, let’s imagine that you’re aged 18 to 25, and you’re trying to find the person you’re best suited to in that age range.

To begin, there are about 1.5 million men and 1.5 million women to choose from in Australia. If you picked a sex, and spent only three minutes with each of those people, then it would take 25 years of speed dating to find the person you liked the most. Things are harder still if you want more than three minutes to assess each person, if you’re bisexual, if you want someone older or if you think true love resides overseas.

Fortunately, economic theories are rarely deterred by problems involving large numbers. Better yet, economists are familiar with precisely this kind of problem. It’s called an “optimal-stopping problem”.

Despite the Abbott Government's promise before the election that there would be no forced redundancies in the Australian Public Service, there are reports today that The Treasury has launched a 'spill and fill' process that will lead to up to 40 forced sackings. Here's my comments in response:

MEDIA RELEASE

DON'T SACK TREASURY MUMS

The Abbott Government has broken yet another of its pre-election promises, with news that staff at The Treasury are being forced to take part in a ‘spill and fill’ process that will result in up to 40 forced redundancies.

Before the last election, Tony Abbott promised that any jobs lost in the Australian Public Service would go through ‘natural attrition’, and stated:

“I really want to stress that we are not talking about forced redundancies, we are talking about not replacing everyone who leaves, that’s all.” 

— Tony Abbott, 11 October 2012

This morning I spoke with Mark Parton on 2CC's Breakfast program about the government's moves to force up to 40 Treasury workers to accept involuntary redundancies. Here's the transcript:

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2CC CANBERRA

THURSDAY, 31 JULY 2014

SUBJECT/S: Forced redundancies at The Treasury

MARK PARTON: The Canberra Times is reporting this morning that The Treasury is forcing nearly all of its staff – including newly-recruited graduates and women on maternity leave – to reapply for their jobs. They've gone with this so-called 'spill and fill' to dismiss about 40 staff, with the central agency conceding that its voluntary redundancy process has run out of steam. We always thought that would be the case!

Andrew Leigh is the Federal Member for Fraser and he's on the line right now, morning Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning Mark.

PARTON: There was always talk about this being done naturally, but the plans of this government – and indeed, it must be said, the plans of you blokes when you were in power – there was always going to be a point where the voluntary stuff just didn't cut it.

LEIGH: Mark, we were always clear before the election that there wouldn't be forced redundancies, as were the Liberal Party. It was their pledge beforehand, and when we said there was going to be more than 12,000 jobs cut and that we'd see forced redundancies, they called us liars. But frankly this is another broken promise from Mr Abbott, who is now making all the Treasury staff re-apply for their jobs. Including women on maternity leave, new graduates who have just been hired - it's a pretty shocking way to treat some of Australia's best economic minds.

This week I've been launching my new book 'The Economics of Just About Everything' with a series of public lectures around Australia. Here's the text from the Canberra launch, which was generously hosted by my old colleagues at the Australian National University:

SPEECH

WHAT DO DATING, DIETING AND SPORTS STATISTICS HAVE IN COMMON? 

LAUNCH OF 'THE ECONOMICS OF JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING'

ANU, CANBERRA, 29 JULY

Can I of course acknowledge that we are meeting tonight on the land of the Ngunnawal people, and recognise their elders past and present. There are so many good friends present in the room tonight, but I wanted to particularly acknowledge Bob Gregory and Rabee Tourkey for putting this together, and Beth Lawton and her team for making tonight happen. It was an event whose boundaries continued to expand and I'm very grateful to all of them for allowing that.

This book, 'The Economics of Just About Everything' comes from being at ANU and having extraordinary colleagues. I see many of them here around me in the room today, and in some sense this is your book as much as mine because I had such interesting and productive collaborations with many of you. 

As Bob said, the book is  'The Economics of Just About Everything', and when I mentioned this to my seven-year-old son, Sebastian, he said: 'Has it got dragons in it?' Sadly, I had to say: 'No, it doesn't have any economics of dragons.' And likewise, it doesn't have anything on the economics of Liberal Party leadership, or indeed on Labor Party leadership. But there are other contributions that you'll have the chance to read about.

This morning I talked with David Lipson and Alan Tudge about the Abbott Government's harsh new Work for the Dole requirements (and also snuck in a plug for my new book, The Economics of Just About Everything!). Here's the transcript:

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW

This morning I spoke with Fairfax Media's Breaking Politics program about the government's harsh new Work for the Dole requirements and the inequality in Joe Hockey's budget. You can watch the full conversation here:

I recently sat down with Jonathan Pryke from the Development Policy Centre to talk about inequality and how developing countries can manage this important challenge as their economies grow. Here's a quick summary, but you can also listen to the full discussion here: 

Inequality: should developing countries be worried? An interview with Andrew Leigh MP

by Jonathan Pryke and Andrew Leigh

I began by asking Andrew why he sees inequality as such an important issue:

I think inequality is a public good… I’ve always liked the John Rawls Veil of Ignorance way of thinking about this, where he asks you to imagine what sort of an income distribution you’d want if you were in utero and about to be born into a society where you didn’t know if you’d be born into the top 5^th or the bottom 5^th. Would you want the kind of Australia where the top 5^th has 62% of the wealth and the bottom 5^th has less than 1% of the wealth? If you knew that there was an equal probability of you ending up in either of those two quintiles, would you maybe want a more egalitarian distribution of income?

My latest opinion piece in The Australian looks at how increased diversity in our community can enrich Australians socially, culturally and economically. Here's the details:

Urgent case for a diverse nation, The Australian, 24 July 2014

This is no longer enough. Our ideas must expand beyond platit­udes about multiculturalism giving us good places to eat. We need to recognise the real economic and social benefits that flow from diversity and acknowledge the challenges so we can find ways to maintain cohesive societies in the face of these.

To see the positive impact of diversity, go to Silicon Valley. Half of all start-up teams include a first-generation migrant, from Russian-born Sergey Brin at Google to Hungarian-born Andy Grove at Intel.