Andrew Leigh

On 3 November, I joined Sky Viewpoint host Peter Van Onselen to discuss economics, politics and the two big policy problems that keep me awake at night.

In my weekly video discussion for Breaking Politics I talked about the respected work of the Australian Electoral Commission and an expectation that within a generation it will adopt electronic ballots. Host Tim Lester also asked about same-sex marriage, climate policy and mandate theory. Here's the full transcript:

BREAKING POLITICS

4 NOVEMBER 2013

TIM LESTER: Western Australia is on course for an historic re-run of the 2013 senate election. To help us understand what's happening there and some of the other politics of the day, our Monday regular Andrew Leigh, the Labor Member for Fraser is in, and of course also Shadow Assistant Treasurer. Thank you for coming in Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH: Pleasure Tim.

LESTER: Is there a need for a new senate election in Western Australia?

LEIGH: It'll be a matter ultimately for the Court of Disputed Returns to determine it. But certainly I'm concerned about the over a thousand West Australian voters who appear to have disenfranchised through this process. The Australian Electoral Commission is a great national institution. It's one that I'm immensely proud of. When I lived in the U.S. for four years I thought many times, what the U.S. really needs is an institution of the calibre of the AEC. But even great institutions sometimes make mistakes and I think it's telling that the last time something like this occurred was a hundred years ago and perhaps that's the place we'll end up, ultimately having another election in W.A.

LESTER: So, how serious is this mistake, losing 1375 votes?

LEIGH: I think it's deeply concerning and certainly Ed Killesteyn, the Electoral Commissioner, has spoken of his embarrassment at the error that's taken place. I don't believe that there has been any intentional foul play that's taken place. It's simply an error by the AEC's hard working staff. The question is, what's now practically the best way of dealing with the situation we find ourselves in.

LESTER: There's also questions going forward as to the best way for us to deal, handle, so many votes. Isn't this screaming for electronic voting in some form?

LEIGH: Electronic voting has certainly got its appeal Tim, not just for making sure that we keep track of votes, the speed of recount, but also making sure that we bring down the informal rate. One of the things that troubles me is that the informal voting rate as steadily crept up in recent elections. It's harder to make a mistake, even with a large number of candidates on the ballot paper with electronic voting. In fact, you can structure the systems so it's impossible to vote informally.

LESTER: So, would you recommend we now take a serious look at electronic voting?

LEIGH: I suspect it'll be something that the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters looks into when the parliament resumes. Electronic voting is something that I'm sure we will have in 50 years’ time. The question is whether we have it in five years’ time.

LESTER: Or, whether we should have had in 2013?

LEIGH: There’s challenges with electronic voting Tim. There’s questions that you don't have the paper trail in place. There is a sense of security and stability that comes with paper ballots, this recent error notwithstanding. But I certainly think that the move towards electronic voting, an inevitability within half a century, has been accelerated.

LESTER: On balance, you’re a supporter?

LEIGH: I think it's worth exploring but I think you have to absolutely have to make sure that you get the data security issues right. Everyone's worst nightmare is internal software which is somehow able to tamper with results. We need to be absolutely sure that those machines are as secure as a paper ballot popped into a box as Australians have engaged in since federation.

LESTER: Right or wrong, Labor is about to take one hell of a pounding on carbon pricing, isn't it?

LEIGH: Our view Tim is that we ought to have a position which is grounded in science and getting lowest cost approach to dealing with the scientific problem that is climate change. We don't see climate change as a political problem, which is the way Mr Abbott approaches it. For Mr Abbott, you can go to the 2007 election promising an emissions trading scheme, advocate a carbon tax on national TV, then back-flip to say you don't even accept the science of climate change because it's ‘absolute crap’, then say that maybe you should have amendments to the CPRS Bill, then oppose it all together. He’s taking every possible position on carbon pricing, as Malcolm Turnbull says, he's a weather vane on the issue.

LESTER: Which is why I guess, I said right or wrong, from here to next July 1, the coming is going to bash you guys up on carbon. Every way you turn, they're going to saying, the Australian electors told you they did not want a carbon tax, and they're going to have a point.

LEIGH: Tim, the Australian electors voted for me in good part because I supported the evidence of the scientists and the economists. That's my own electorate and I believe that I have an ethical obligation to do after the election what I said I would do before the election. If I was to behave like a weather vane with my electors, I'd be no better than Mr Abbott, swinging with the political winds. We've just had the hottest summer of record, the hottest winter on record. We have to take action of climate change and the cheapest way possible. Mr Abbott's ‘soil magic’ Direct Action plan is not a plan that any serious economist believes can deliver results and start making a difference to bring down carbon emissions that can help to save the Great Barrier Reef in the way an emissions trading system can.

LESTER: So, are there any circumstances ever where you believe an Opposition after an election ought to change its policy based on the vote of the people? Is there no place for this idea of a mandate that we have?

LEIGH: A mandate simply says Tim that you should do after the election what you said you would do before the election. So, for example, a mandate says that when Tony Abbott went to the 2007 election campaigning for an emissions trading scheme he should have voted for one on the floor of parliament. A mandate doesn't say that when Tony Abbott went to the 2010 election opposing a mining tax that he needed to vote for a mining tax after the 2010 election. Indeed, he didn't. He voted against a mining tax even though Labor clearly had won an election campaigning for a mining tax. It is entirely appropriate that we do after an election what we said we'd do in the election campaign - not back-flip, not swing in the wind, not throw the science to one side and pretend, for the sake for our children and future generations that climate change doesn't exist. History would judge us very harshly if we did that.

LESTER: Right. So it sounds like you're saying there are no circumstances in which a new government can claim a mandate to force opposition to any issue to fall into line.

LEIGH: I'm sure there are instances Tim when an Opposition may choose to change its position after the election. We'll have sensible reviews of our suite of policies and we won't take to the next election precisely the same set of policies we took to the last one. But I think Mr Abbott is engaging bully-boy tactics and indeed his own writings after the 2007 election explicitly urged the Coalition then to ignore the talk of mandates. So Mr Abbott is a weather vane even on the issue of what mandate theory means.

LESTER: Is the High Court the right place for Australia to settle the same-sex marriage issue?

LEIGH: I don't believe so Tim. I think this is fundamentally a political issue and I think there's something cowardly in Senator Brandis running off to the High Court to attempt to strike down the ACT's same-sex marriage laws. I don't see two men or two women walking down the aisle as something which is so extraordinarily threatening to Australia that the Commonwealth needs to take the unusual action of a High Court challenge, a challenge that would normally be brought, if by anyone, by a private citizen. If he wants to challenge it on the floor of the federal parliament, he can bring such a bill. I certainly hope Malcolm Turnbull is right when he says that there would then be a conscience vote within the Liberal Party.

LESTER: Give us a quick read of what's going on politically here Andrew Leigh inside the Liberal and National parties on this issue. Where are they up to do you think?

LEIGH: Well, as I understand it, there are a number of people who support same-sex marriage within the Liberal Party party room – people like Kelly O'Dwyer, Malcolm Turnbull, Simon Birmingham – and they had their hands tied the last time the issue came before the parliament. They were forced by Mr Abbott to vote against their own conscience. The Liberal Party prides itself in being a party which allows people to vote their conscience. They ought to let people like Malcolm Turnbull vote in favour of same-sex marriage as indeed conservative leaders have done in New Zealand and in Britain over recent months on the basis that marriage is a stabilising institution which can be good for the fifth of lesbian couples who have kids in the home. We're going to have same-sex marriage in half a century's time Tim. That's an inevitability. The question is when we get to it. Mr Turnbull is clearly reflecting the position of the future. Mr Abbott the status quo of the past.

LESTER: Andrew Leigh, thank you for your time this morning.

LEIGH: Thanks Tim.

My Chronicle column this week looks at the issue of scarcity, as it applies to time, food and poverty.

Passionate About Poverty, The Chronicle, 29 October 2013

Consider three scenarios.

A busy academic misses deadlines on projects she had promised to complete months earlier. One day, she promises herself that she won’t commit to another project until the backlog is finished. The next day, she gets an offer to contribute a paper to a conference, and accepts on the spot.

A man is struggling to lose weight. He plans a low-fat diet, then joins some friends for dinner at a pub. Everyone else orders chips with their meal, so he joins them. At the end of the night, he figures the diet is ruined, so he might as well stop off at the petrol station for an ice cream.

A couple in poverty are trying to pay off their bills. They know what they should be doing: minimise expenses, pay off the high-interest loans first, and slowly get the finances under control. One month, they decide to get a payday loan to give them some breathing room. But soon the loan starts to snowball, and the debt load is bigger than ever.

In Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir make the point that time management, food management, and money management all share a common theme: when we’re facing scarcity, we sometimes make bad decisions. Drawing on a smorgasbord of research, they show that scarcity can lead us to place too much emphasis on pleasure now, even if it leads to regret tomorrow.

The solution, Mullainathan and Shafir argue, is to build a bit of ‘slack’ into our lives. They describe a hospital that was operating at full capacity, where emergency cases would throw the system into chaos – delaying scheduled procedures for hours. The solution, it turned out, was to leave one operating theatre empty, except for emergencies. This meant that emergency cases didn’t ripple through the system, and ended up increasing the number of patients treated by the hospital.

Among the problems that Scarcity explores, poverty is the one I’m most passionate about. I had it in my head when I spoke at an anti-poverty week forum organised by Kippax Uniting Church and chaired by Lin Hatfield-Dodds. Alongside the formal speakers (Andrew Barr, Richard Denniss and myself), we heard first-hand from West Belconnen residents Kyla McLean, Sienna Chalmers, Michelle Mayer and Glenn Thomson. Their stories about transport challenges, housing stress and school bullying reminded me of how complex poverty is.

As Mullainathan and Shafir point out, the difference between poverty and other problems of scarcity is that while you can take a day off from a busy job or a diet, you can’t take a day off from poverty. The answers to reducing poverty in Canberra aren’t easy, but we need to recognise that this can be a hard place to be poor. We need to tackle the challenges – such as icy winters and high house prices – with creative solutions. Because all of us are diminished by poverty in our shared community.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.

I write in today's Canberra Times about the Abbott Government's planned changes to Labor's Low-Income Superannuation Scheme.

OPINION - A superannuation blow for low-income earners

The Canberra Times

Thursday 31 October 2013

Canberra resident Carol is 48 years old. She works as a cleaner, toiling on Sundays to earn some overtime. She earns less than $37,000 a year.

It would be blow to her if Labor’s Low Income Super Contribution Scheme was axed by Tony Abbott as planned.

“They’re just grabbing from everywhere, to make themselves look better, but it’s only a short term fix, like a band-aid,” she says.   “A lot of the cleaners aren’t on great wages, and they aren’t full-time.”



In his victory speech on election night, Mr Abbott reminded us that good government is one that governs for all Australians including what he called ‘forgotten families’. “We will not leave anyone behind”.

So it’s very disappointing that his government still wants to scrap a measure that sees low-income Australians pay less tax. Axing the Low Income Superannuation Contribution will hit 3.6 million low-income workers, of which nearly two-thirds are women.

Superannuation policy must be more equitable. One of the policies to achieve this – championed by Bill Shorten – is the Low-Income Superannuation Contribution. The policy introduced last year and recommended by the Henry Tax review cuts contributions tax to zero for workers earning up to $37,000 and puts the money into their super instead.

It allows workers to better save for their retirement, providing security and dignity later on in life while also taking pressure off the aged pension. Low Income Superannuation Contribution is worth up to $500 per annum, but with compound investment returns, the effect on retirement payouts is worth far more.

Worse, under the planned changes these workers will be hit retrospectively on contributions they’ve already made.  It’s bad enough to jack up taxes on the people who can least afford it – but it’s downright cruel to make it retrospective.

Boosting superannuation for low-income workers isn’t just a good way of reducing wealth inequality; it’s also one of the most important reforms for reducing gender inequity. Although women’s wages are four-fifths of those of men, women’s superannuation payouts average one-third of men’s - a gap that particularly hurts single women.

The impact of scrapping the Low Income Superannuation Contribution will be disproportionately felt more in certain occupations; cleaning and construction, retail and hospitality, child care and aged care.

Australia’s superannuation system is both unfair and unsustainable.  It subsidises those who need it least, yet penalises low income workers building a nest egg for retirement.

Treasury has estimated that 36.1 per cent of the $14.2 billion tax concessions for superannuation contributions went to the top 10 per cent of income earners . Yet the bottom 10 per cent were actually penalised, rather than subsidised, by around $130 million in the same year.

Most Australians would agree that it’s unfair for people on low or modest incomes to have to give up more to increase their superannuation savings.  Why should people on low incomes disproportionately subsidise people on higher incomes?  In fact, it also makes little economic sense to give a bigger subsidy to high income earners who need it least because they’re going to save anyway.

Put simply, the low income earner would have to give up almost 90 per cent more after tax than a high income earner to boost their super saving by the same amount. How is that fair to forgotten families?

Indeed, while the Coalition rails against Labor for ‘class warfare’, the biggest class warrior in Australia today is Mr Abbott. He is cutting income support payments (effectively a reduction in the unemployment benefit), axing the Schoolkids Bonus (a targeted measure to help families), and talking about outsourcing DisabilityCare. Meanwhile, he wants to give a $4 billion tax cut to mining billionaires, pay millionaire families $75,000 to have a child, and give the private health insurance rebate back to those on seven-figure incomes.

Under Mr Abbott, the more you have, the more government will do for you. But the less you have, the more you’ll have to fend for yourself. Not only is this a major move away from the ‘fair go’ principle of the Labor Government, but it’s also far removed from the philosophy of past Liberal Governments. Can anyone imagine that Robert Menzies would have thought it was decent and just to reduce payments to the unemployed so he could give a tax cut to a billionaire?

Another Canberra constituent, Penelope, is a student who dips in and out of work in the hospitality and security industries. Retirement is a long way off but the prospect of losing the Low Income Superannuation Contribution is on her mind.

“I need superannuation for when I grow up so that I don’t put pressure on my kids, in regards to medical and living expenses… Cutting the policy will not be good in the long-term, because if they’re not taking care of workers now, they’re going to have to pay for it later through pensions.”

Published in today's Daily Telegraph is my opinion article on how Joe Hockey is using a massive Reserve Bank capital injection in an irresponsible attempt to make his performance as Treasurer look good.

HOCKEY BORROWS COSTELLO ATTACK

The Daily Telegraph

Thursday 31 October

In the final rounds of the AFL, a team with no chance of making the finals will sometimes be tempted to play more poorly in order to get a better draft pick the next year. It’s called ‘tanking’, and it’s against the rules and spirit of the sport. When it looks like teams are deliberately underperforming – as in the famous Carlton versus Melbourne match at the end of the 2007 season – the result is frankly a bit embarrassing to watch.

And so it is with this year’s budget deficit. As anyone who’s been awake this past five years knows, the world has gone through the greatest slump since the Depression. Rather than drastically cut government spending – and damage economic growth – the federal Labor government chose to save jobs. Consequently, we have national debt equivalent to a bit over one-tenth of our annual income: one of the lowest levels in the developed world.

Yet for the past few years, the Coalition has focused its attention not on the 200,000 jobs saved when the Global Financial Crisis hit, but creating a farcical idea that Australia has a ‘problem’ with ‘debt and deficits’. Any serious economist would tell you this type of claim is just codswallop.

But from doing press conferences in front of a ‘debt truck’ to giving speeches about a ‘budget emergency’, the Coalition has left no fear campaign untested in their crusade to scare Australians about the state of the nation’s public finances.

Now that they’re in government, the game continues. Last week, Treasurer Joe Hockey provided the Reserve Bank of Australia with a cool $8.8 billion for its reserve fund with a flick of a casual afternoon press release. Justifying such a massive sum, Mr Hockey blustered ‘It's money that should have been allocated by the Labor Party in government but they didn't… Despite the warnings, they didn't do it and they should have done it.’

The exact opposite is true. Six months ago, Treasury advised the Labor Government that to give the RBA a capital injection could ‘risk undermining the credibility of the RBA as an operationally independent institution’.

$8.8 billion is a massive sum – more than the federal government spends on the army, childcare or housing. Because Australia has to borrow the money, Treasurer Hockey’s ill-advised decision will cost you, the taxpayer, around $1 million a day just in interest payments alone.

So why would Mr Hockey borrow more money to give the RBA a capital injection they don’t need?

First, because he wants to put himself in a position where he can get large dividends from the RBA in future years. As respected economic commentator Stephen Koukoulas has pointed out, the Howard Government took out an average dividend from the RBA of $3 billion a year, after accounting for inflation. By contrast, the Labor Government took out an RBA dividend of $1.5 billion in real terms. Mr Hockey clearly wants to go back to the days of the Howard Government, which in real terms extracted twice as much from the RBA than Labor.

But the second purpose of Mr Hockey’s strategy is to make the 2013-14 deficit look as bad as possible. Right now, he’s piling unnecessary costs onto the budget like a business owner who’s just sold his company and knows that the buyer will pay the bills.  The secret of Mr Hockey’s economic management is that he doesn’t care about debt, and is only worried about deficits when he can’t blame them on someone else.

Despite inheriting one of the best-performing economies in the developed world, Mr Hockey wants to cast Labor as the villain in his pantomime play.  Although he became Treasurer just one-quarter of the way through the year, Mr Hockey doesn’t regard the 2013-14 tax year as his responsibility. He thinks it’s in his political interests to make the current budget outcome as bad as possible.

Again, this is a move straight out of the Costello playbook. In 1996, the Howard Government confected a story about a ‘$10 billion black hole’, by adding up every possible spending program that Labor might have implemented – including some that had been rejected by the Keating Government. The ‘$10 billion’ number was a fiction, but with enough repetition, it caught on.

Today, Treasurer Joe Hockey is playing the same political games as Peter Costello. Step one: attack Labor’s legacy. Step two: appoint big business leaders to a Commission of Audit. Step three: cut programs that middle Australia depends upon (like the Schoolkids Bonus) and hike taxes on low-wage workers (one in three will pay higher superannuation taxes). Step four: deliver tax cuts to magnates.

But just as AFL fans are quick to smell a team that’s tanking, Australians are too smart to be fooled by Mr Hockey’s political diversions. If you’re a coach who’s taken over a quarter of the way into the season, you’d better step up and start leading. You can’t go into the big game blaming your predecessor.

This is the full version – the article as published was slightly abridged.

This morning I spoke with Radio National Breakfast's Political Editor, Alison Carabine, about my contributing essay in the revised and expanded version of Mark Latham's Not Dead Yet: What Future for Labor? The book published by Black Inc. hits bookshops today and sets out areas for continued reform and renewal.  Here's the podcast. The transcript is below.

TRANSCRIPT

ABC RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST

WEDNESDAY 30 OCTOBER 2013

TOPIC: Labor future

FRAN KELLY: It's nearly two months since the ALP's heavy loss federally and the ideological battle for the future of the party is underway. A new book out today titled Not Dead Yet is a collection of essays by some of Labor's best and brightest thinkers. And that includes the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. The Canberra-based MP makes a strong pitch to his colleagues to reject Tony Abbott's style of negativity when it comes to Opposition. And, in a bid to democratise Labor he also proposes large scale plebiscites to select candidates and other important party positions. Andrew Leigh is in our Parliament House studios and he's speaking with our political editor, Alison Carabine.

ALISON CARIBINE: Andrew Leigh, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Alison.

CARABINE: There is a certain arrogance that underpins your essay. You open with the bold deceleration that Labor Governments do more, Labor is the party of ideas and reform, but by contrast the Coalition is the defender of the status quo. Considering the election result it would appear that voters embraced the status quo much than they do ideas and reform.

LEIGH: I think Alison that's to confuse electoral success with policy achievement. Fundamentally the broad contours of the Australian story, over the last century or so, are those of a succession of Labor achievements. And whether that's putting in place the Snowy Hydro Scheme, whether it's opening up the economy, whether it's indeed bringing the troops back in World War Two to defend Australia, or the achievements of DisabilityCare and finally solving the Murray Darling Basin mess, those too were Labor reforms. I think that reflects the fact that ours is a party which is founded on the notion that government has an important role to play in improving the country. Conservatives are far more often comfortable just defending the status quo.

CARABINE: You won't achieve much policy success from Opposition. So the question is 'where to from here?'. In your essay, you set out three possible strategies for the party. The first goes to negativity. You say this is the most predictable path for Labor to take. It did work a treat for Tony Abbott. But you're not recommending it for the ALP. Why not?

LEIGH: Alison, if you think of politics as being Coke and Pepsi, then when the other brand pursues a successful strategy you should ape that strategy. But politics isn't like that because I believe that fundamentally Labor plays an ideas-based role. I think for us to pursue a pure strategy of negativity would be to negate our very reason for existing. Our role in Opposition needs to be a role of composing as well as opposing. It needs to be a role of carving out policy space and using that time also to develop the next set of reforms for the next Labor government.

CARABINE: You are of the view that negativity crowds our policy development for the next term of government. The 24/7 media cycle doesn't help either and in this new media landscape. You have identified rather David Attenborough-like, a new sub-species, that is, the back-bencher as rottweiler, can you explain what you mean and also maybe name some names.

LEIGH: [Laugh] I'm not sure I'd go so far as naming names. But I think there is a sense in which backbenchers follow the mould that their leader lays out. So, when Malcolm Turnbull was leader you saw a plethora of Liberal Party backbenchers looking to put creative ideas and opinion pieces into newspapers. When Mr Abbott became leader, with a very focused negative strategy, you saw backbenchers tripping over themselves to come up with a witty put-down of Julia Gillard of Kevin Rudd. I think that it's important that Labor doesn't go down that trajectory. One of the great Labor achievements of course is Medicare but we sometimes forget how quickly the Hawke Government put Medicare in place. They had Medicare up and running 11 months after the 1983 election and that's because they didn't waste time during Opposition. They'd spoken with the interest groups, they worked out precisely how Medicare would work and they hit the ground running when they won office in 1983. I think there's a good lesson in that for today's Labor Opposition.

CARABINE: Your preferred model for Labor Opposition what you describe as 'open Australia' - Labor embracing open markets, free trade, immigration and multiculturalism, support for social liberty and equality. Your agenda borrows heavily from small 'l' liberalism. Do you think Vladimir Lenin got it right when he said the ALP should be renamed the Liberal-Labor Party?

LEIGH: Well even a stopped clock is right twice a day and I think Lenin was right about that. I think ours is definitely a party of markets and multiculturalism. My colleague Chris Bowen has put this extremely articulately in the book that he put out earlier this year. We'll of course always be the party of egalitarianism, the party that tackles inequality and believes in a fair go. But on top of that I think we also have an important role to play, defending the role that markets have, whether that's in the Murray Darling Basin or dealing with climate change. Or indeed, just in raising prosperity across the board.

CARABINE: You also put in your essay the case not just for more open policy making but also open party structures. You've caught the current fever that's going around to democratise the party. You've taken it to a new level. You want not just rank and file ballots for delegates at party conferences and also for all senators. But you also want electorate-wide plebiscites. In what circumstances would they be warranted?

LEIGH: Well I believe that it's important that we look at the extent to which the party structures remain democratic. I think if we've got strong party membership, allowing party members to select candidates and delegates is actually a pretty effective strategy. But where that party membership has dwindled down too far to a point where it just can't be reasonably claimed to be representative, then I think opening things up to a broad plebiscite of the electorate makes sense. There's a sense in which that's a small 'l' liberal reform as well,  a reform in the spirit of openness which I think is in the best of the Labor tradition going back through Gillard, Hawke, Keating.

CARABINE: Andrew Leigh, you also think it's time for Labor MPs to be given the opportunity to cross the floor and not face expulsion from the party. Is that one area where you would concede the Liberals are more advanced in their thinking than Labor?

LEIGH: Well, the Liberals have a sort of funny rule where they try and hold people as tightly as they can but if they lose one then there's no sanctions. I think that's actually not much more advanced than the Labor position which says we will hold our candidates in all circumstances except if it's a conscience vote. What I'm advocating is what the British Labour Party calls 'a three-line whip' in which different votes are categorised as being [either] extremely important - so they're underlined three times; reasonably important - underlined twice; or what is now a conscience vote and then the whip would be underlined once. That allows a little more flexibility in particular votes. There would still be strongly binding votes. There's no question that if you're voting on the budget then that has to be a three-line whip. But it allows an additional gradation to what we have at the moment and moves us from the system of conscience votes which are really just restricted to those with religious overtones. They reflect a divide that was appropriate to a Labor Party of the 1950s but I don't think necessarily of the Labor Party of the 2010s.

CARABINE: Well just finally and briefly, is it easier for you to go out on a limb and make such bold recommendations since you're not a member of a faction. You're one of only three Labor MPs who are non-aligned. Does that help?

LEIGH: I think there's many people who are having these conversations within the Labor Party today. I mentioned Chris Bowen who's in a faction. Jim Chalmers, as well, has made thoughtful contributions. Clare O'Neil has written a terrific piece for The Age recently and I know that Melissa Parke and Lisa Singh have been advocates for change. So there's thoughtful conversations taking place - with an important respect for our traditions and our history, for the valuable role that unions have played in the party and for the recognition that we want to move cautiously - but that this is a good time for having a conversation for what Labor stands for and where we go.

CARABINE: Thanks so much for coming in and having that conversation on Radio National Breakfast. Thank you Andrew Leigh.

LEIGH: Thank you Alison.

FRAN KELLY: Andrew Leigh, shadow assistant treasurer speaking with Alison Carabine, our political editor in Canberra. And the book Not Dead Yet: What Future for Labor? It's released today. It's published by Black Inc. and Andrew Leigh's essay also has a few ideas about what Labor should be thinking about in terms of asylum policy and climate change.

I have a chapter in a new Black Inc book on the future of the ALP. Here's an extract, plus the endnotes (for anyone who's interested in that sort of thing).

Labor must continue to follow road of openness, The Australian, 30 October 2013

Labor must never forget that our brand is not interchangeable with that of the Coalition. The two parties play fundamentally different roles in the Australian political system. Labor’s role is to take the initiative, to defend those whom life has treated unfairly, to carve out an activist role on the global stage. By contrast, the Coalition parties are defenders of the status quo, more likely to be heard supporting vested interests than those on the margins of society, and largely untroubled if people turn off politics entirely. Australian politics isn’t Coke versus Pepsi. To become a Labor version of Mr Abbott’s Opposition would be to repudiate the essence of what our party stands for. Labor must continue to be the party of ideas and reform.

There are three possible futures for federal Labor. The first is negativity. One lesson that will inevitably be drawn from recent Australian political history is that the way to win office is by denigrating the government, while minimising your policy differences with the party in power.

Negativity corrodes the sense of hope, idealism and common purpose that is so vital to being a successful parliamentarian. It also crowds out policy development. If your sole focus is on demonising the government, then the hard-heads will argue that putting forward your own ideas will only distract from the main task at hand. Yet we know from history that carrying out policy development in the full light of public scrutiny tends to make for better results.

The second possibility is ‘closed Australia’. During the twelve decades since Labor’s founding, our party has been wrong on immigration for longer than we have been right. It took Gough Whitlam’s leadership of the ALP finally to put the party’s worst racist tendencies to bed. A similar story applies in the case of trade.

The pressures of economic nationalism are never far from the surface. While the 1996–98 electoral term saw federal Labor operate as a unified and effective Opposition, it was also a period in which the party too readily distanced itself from the economic reforms pursued by Hawke and Keating. As Lindsay Tanner noted of this period, “Labor has continually offered support to disgruntled producer groups at the expense of consumers. Every time we do this, we take another small chunk out of our economic credibility.”

Advocates of a closed Australia come in different flavours. Some oppose imports, migrants and foreign investment. But more commonly, people advocate raising the walls in just one or two domains. Some want higher tariffs but more migrants. Others demand less foreign investment but support more aid. And there are those who believe we should have a smaller population but take more refugees. Whether the “closed Australia” model comes in part or as a whole, this is not a strategy that should tempt the ALP.

The third and best approach for the ALP is to embrace the record of openness that has been the hallmark of Labor at its best. Whether through support for individual liberties or belief in open markets, social liberalism has a prominent place in the story of the Australian Labor Party. This is an approach that is particularly appealing in light of the Liberal Party’s steady abandonment of small-L liberalism. To adapt a US quip, theirs is a LINO Party – Liberal In Name Only.

Labor will always be the party of egalitarianism. Too much inequality can tear the social fabric, threatening to cleave us one from another. In also taking on the mantle of social liberalism, Labor states our commitment to open markets as the most effective way of generating wealth.  A commitment to social liberalism would also pledge Labor to an open and multicultural Australia.

Over the past six years, Labor has many policy achievements of which we can be proud. On the international stage, we won Australia a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Our economy grew from the fifteenth-largest to the twelfth-largest in the world, productivity ticked up, and inflation and unemployment remained low by historical standards. We moved to cap carbon pollution, and struck an agreement that allowed the Murray to flow again.

Openness may be the right road for Labor, but it is not the easy one. After losing government to what Anthony Albanese has tagged “the Noalition,” it will be painful for Labor in opposition to adopt a more positive approach. Perhaps some of our supporters will argue that the real reason Labor lost the 2013 election was that we did not embrace economic nationalism across the board. But if Labor is to serve its core mission – of raising living standards, spreading opportunity and encouraging diversity – then we should pursue openness in our policy settings and our party structures.

Andrew Leigh is the shadow assistant treasurer. This is an edited extract from Not Dead Yet (Black Inc).

On ABC666, I spoke with host Adam Shirley about Labor's continued commitment to putting a price on carbon pollution through an emissions trading scheme. Here's a podcast. The transcript is below.

Adam Shirley: Andrew Leigh is the  Shadow Assistant Treasurer and also the Member for Fraser,  Dr Leigh good after afternoon to you this afternoon.

Andrew Leigh: Good afternoon, Adam, how are you?

Shirley: Very well thanks. You support removing the Carbon Tax and replacing it with a trading scheme.  If Labor helps remove the tax, the Government will not introduce a trading scheme, so no price on carbon in that scenario.  Correct?

Leigh: Well, Adam, you're talking about a hypothetical there my .....

Shirley: A likely hypothetical I would argue.

Leigh:  My view is that we should do after the election what we said we would do before the election.  Which is to move a year earlier from the fixed price period into the floating price period.  Now every emissions trading scheme typically has a fixed price period. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the one the Greens voted down  in the Senate, that had a one-year fixed price period and the current scheme has a three-year fixed price period.  All we said in the election is let's make that fixed price period two years rather than three years.

Shirley: Mm

Leigh:  So there seems to be a little bit of a storm in a teacup going on today, because what's been reported is exactly what we said in the election.  We think the fixed price period should finish a year earlier. That's got some advantages: it allows Australia to get emissions abatement on the European market, to cap our pollution but to do so at a lower cost.

Shirley: But in effect Labor will assist the Government in removing a price on carbon.  Is that a fact because there will be no ETS under the Prime Minister, under Prime Minister Abbott?  He has said that pretty clearly.

Leigh: Adam, we will do in the Parliament what we said we would do in the election, which is to support moving from the fixed price to the floating price a year earlier.  We are not going to go out there and support getting rid of the cap on carbon pollution altogether.  That wouldn't make much sense, particularly when the alternative that Mr Abbott is putting up is a Direct Action plan that hardly any serious economist thinks will do the job.

Shirley: So is Labor's, I guess, want to remove the Carbon Tax conditional on an ETS staying in place?

Leigh: That's right.  We believe, we believe that we ought to move away from that fixed price period and go to the floating price.  But Labor has been committed to an Emissions Trading Scheme for the best part of the decade.

Shirley: We know the Government, the current Government will not support an ETS, so where is the way out here?

Leigh:  Well, I believe that they ought to see the light on that.  Their Direct Action Plan is being bagged left, right and centre, and justifiably.  If you want to do the job via Direct Action, the Grattan Institute thinks that you need $100 billion and as Malcolm Turnbull has pointed out, the greatest virtue Direct Action has to recommend it is that it is easily dismantled.  This isn't a good economic policy, it's not a good way of dealing with climate change.  If Mr Abbott wants to deliver what he pledged of getting rid of a ‘carbon tax’, then he should do that very precisely.  He should move away from the fixed price period and go to the floating price. But why would you get rid of the cap on carbon pollution when electricity emissions are already down 7%; when 4 out of 5 industrial energy users say that a carbon price has had a significant impact and when the Climate Institute says that the carbon price has had an ‘undetectable impact’ on the nation's overall economic performance.

Shirley: Andrew Leigh, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Direct Action, the Government  has consistently said that's its plan - they said it in the lead-up to the election; they've continued that theme afterwards. Labor appears to again be modifying its position on the carbon price.  Is this because your party is more interested in focus groups and polls than maintaining a consistent policy on climate change?

Leigh:  Adam, the question as you have phrased it is misleading to your listeners.  You can do better than this.  What you need to be clear with your listeners is that Labor is saying nothing more now than we did before the election.

Shirley:  The effect of getting rid of the Carbon Tax will not be what you were saying prior to the election, because the Government will not support an ETS.  That is a fair point, is it not?

Leigh:  No, it's not, Adam.  What we've said is that if the Government wants to move away from the carbon tax and to an emissions trading scheme, then we are happy to support that.  But we have not said that we are happy to scrap the carbon pricing mechanism altogether - to get rid of the cap on carbon pollution.  Labor has been committed to emissions trading.  We have voted for it consistently in the Senate, including in 2009 when the Greens and the Liberals voted it down.  We will continue to be committed to carbon pricing because it's  the most efficient and effective way of dealing with climate change.

Shirley:  I guess my question is what will happen, what will happen if the Government is not committed to an ETS, as seems likely.

Leigh: Well that will be a matter for them to negotiate with other parties to try and find a majority for a scheme which is going to be much more expensive to households; and do much less for the environment; which runs out in 2020; and has no long-term plans for abatement;  which is best thought of as 'soil magic', ironically from a party which has already been committed to markets.  If you are committed to markets, if you are a small-l Liberal as the Libs claim to be, then you ought to be committed to an emissions trading scheme, because it is just the most effective and practical way of getting the job done.

Shirley: So as far as you can see, Dr Leigh, is it likely that Labor will push to remove the Carbon Tax and push for an ETS when it comes time for a vote in Parliament.

Leigh:  Adam, that is, that's always been our policy to move from a fixed price carbon price to an ETS in the long run.  We said we would do that after 1 year when we came up with the first plan.  When we came up with this plan, we said we'd do it after 3 years; and earlier this year we said we'd actually make that a 2 year period.  The precise time period, fixed price period is not a critical question.  What you want to do....

Shirley:  Why isn't it a critical question?

Leigh:  Because there's no great science over how long you want the fixed price period in place.  The fixed price period gives business certainty as you begin to introduce the emissions trading scheme.  But the floating price gives the critical cap on carbon pollution and allows you to link in with the international markets.  It allows you to achieve lowest-cost abatement because this is a global problem, and so a tonne of carbon abated anywhere in the world has the same impact on the environment.  But an emissions trading scheme is just the right way of dealing with carbon pollution.  That's why you are seeing cities like Shenzen in China moving to an emissions trading scheme.  In fact it's likely that by 2020, China will have nation-wide carbon trading markets.  It's kind of ironic, right,  you've got a nominally communist country moving towards emissions trading with a nominally free-market Liberal and National parties prefer a command and control system in Direct Action which is much less effective than what the Chinese Communist party is supporting.

Shirley:  Dr Andrew Leigh, I think it is the first time I've spoken to you since you got the Shadow Assistant Treasurer gong, one of my guesses, I think, if memory serves correct.  Thank you for speaking to us on 666 Drive this afternoon.

Leigh:  Thank you Adam.

Shirley: Thanks a lot.  Dr Andrew Leigh there, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Member for Fraser on 666 Drive, this afternoon.

This morning, I spoke with Tim Lester about some of the stories making news today: surveyed economists rejecting the government's Direct Action policy to limit climate change, the unwelcome prospect of Australia Post delivering Centrelink services and Tony Abbott's uncouth comments in a Washington Post interview. Here's the transcript:

TRANSCRIPT

BREAKING POLITICS WITH TIM LESTER

MONDAY 28 OCTOBER 2013

Subjects: Centrelink and Australia Post, Direct Action, Foreign Affairs.

TIM LESTER: Has the Abbott Government found a viable way of saving money by shifting the front office operations of Centrelink to the control of Australia Post. It's likely to cause plenty of discussion in politics this week. Labor MP Andrew Leigh, the member for Fraser here in the ACT, joins us in the Breaking Politics studio to discuss this and a few other issues on a Monday. Andrew, welcome in, appreciate your time.

ANDREW LEIGH: Thank you Tim.

LESTER: Is it a good idea to the front office operations of Centrelink and put them in Australia Post outlets?

LEIGH: Tim, the work that Centrelink does is pretty high level work. It's not simply dispensing payments. It's working through the appropriate payments for someone at a time of crisis in their life. People come into a Centrelink office after having lost a job, after having experienced a family breakdown and some of the clients have mental health issues. It's a time of great vulnerability and that's why Centrelink officers are trained professionals. The notion that they could simply be lining up in an Australia Post office, dodging through the stands of calendars and express post envelopes misses what Australia Post does. It's the kind of thing you would expect from a Government that's just gotten rid of the income support payment, effectively a cut to payment for unemployment benefits to now say now to some of the most vulnerable Australians including those with mental illness, just go the Australia Post Office instead.

LESTER: So you see a real danger in mixing these two?

LEIGH: I think some of the most vulnerable Australians will be hurt by this Tim and I think that, unfortunately, it seems to be so much of a pattern with this Government. Taking away the Schoolkids Bonus, taking away income support payments, giving more money to millionaires to have families, giving big tax cuts to mining billionaires. It's the wrong philosophy for an Australia founded on the 'fair go'.

LESTER: The Government faces criticism this morning in Fairfax Media publications at least that it seems an overwhelming number of economists believe that the direct action plan to reduce carbon emissions will not be nearly as effective as the current plan, the market based plan that the Labor Government put into place. Does this surprise you?

LEIGH: It's not a great surprise Tim. We saw this in a survey of the Australian Conference of Economists a couple of years ago. As Chris Caton said in response to the survey today, any economist who believes the 'command and control' system of Direct Action is going to be a better plan ought to hand in their degree. I notice of the 35 economists, there are only two that support Direct Action. One because he doesn't believe that humans are causing climate change and another because he doesn't believe Australia should do anything about it and therefore thinks that Direct Action is the right plan to achieve that goal.

LESTER: It's kind of like asking a dairy farmer, 'Is cheese a good thing?', isn't it. Economist to comment on whether they like a market scheme as opposed to an essentially a non-market scheme was always going to deliver this kind of an answer, wasn't it?

LEIGH: As much Tim as if you ask scientists the scientific question whether humans are causing climate change. The overwhelming majority will say 'yes'. Economists have been studying ways of efficiently spending taxpayer dollars in order to achieve the best outcome. The problem with Direct Action is it costs more and it does less. Every serious economist will tell you that and it has again been replicated in the survey today. That's why Labor put in place a market based mechanism and it's why we've argued so strongly that Australian households cannot afford 'direct action'. Instead they need a cap on pollution.

LESTER: And yet for all this, there's a great deal of political pressure on Bill Shorten and Labor at the moment to bend to the apparent will of the Australian people at the last election and let direct action come into being, scrap the market system. How is Labor handling the pressure at the moment?

LEIGH: We went to the last election saying that we would get rid of the carbon tax, that fixed price period, go straight to the floating price, straight to the scheme that puts a cap on pollution, something Direct Action doesn't do, and to the scheme that's cheapest for Australian households. I don't think we would well serve our voters to say to the people who elected us, knowing we were campaigning for a cap on pollution, that we no longer believe that Australia ought to cap its emissions and that we now think it's okay to slug households $1300 each for the expensive and ineffective direct action plan.

LESTER: You must be seeing some dissent in Labor ranks on this question, this must put some Labor MPs under a deal of pressure?

LEIGH: After elections you'll always have good robust conversations about where the party is going and it's wise to take a moment to take stock.

LESTER: And this has been a good robust one?

LEIGH: This has been a robust internal conversation. But I think the overwhelming majority of my colleagues back the cap on pollution, back the notion that Labor ought to continue to campaign for dealing with climate change in the most effective way and not behave as Mr Abbott describes himself as a weathervane on climate change, blowing whichever way the political winds will go.

LESTER: Now, Mr Abbott has told The Washington Post that the previous government, the government of which you were part was 'wacko', among other things. There's a number of people saying he shouldn't have said it to a foreign media organisation, certainly not the in the U.S., but at least he's consistent in his language isn't he? He's not telling one story in Australia and another abroad.

LEIGH: Mr Abbott will always be a political strategist first and a statesman second. You can never imagine Robert Menzies going overseas after beating Ben Chifley and saying to an international audience that Ben Chifley's Government was ‘wacko’. Menzies and Chifley had a big battle over nationalising the banks but Menzies and many other conservative leaders have been of the kind that they feel that when we go overseas we need to behave in statesperson-like fashion. Don't forget that Prime Minister Gillard received a standing ovation when she addressed Congress. I used to work for the late Senator Peter Cook and he had a saying: "When we go overseas, we're 'Team Australia'". We carry a sense of national interest with us first and we leave behind the partisan games. I just wish Mr Abbott was able to take Senator Cook's advice.

LESTER: What's the danger though from Tony Abbott doing what he's done? What's the negative effect? America's one of the world's most robust democracies. It knows politics and it knows the game of politics. It's going to recognise what's going on here, isn't it?

LEIGH: We had a scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, Norman Ornstein, saying that he thought U.S. audiences would find this pretty shocking; that in the United States there is a tradition of respect to one's predecessor and a sense that it is important we show a sense of unity for Australia. Let's face it on the objective indicators Australia under Labor did extraordinarily well, whether it's the OECD’s Better Life Index, the UN's Human Development Index, whether it's our robust growth at a time when other economies are shrinking or whether it's our low debt levels relative to the rest of the world - objective indicators suggest Australia is doing very well. So it doesn't help to have the leader of the nation going overseas describing previous governments as 'wacko'.

LESTER: What does it tell about Tony Abbott and his style and his suitability for the job?

LEIGH: Well Mr Abbott has always struggled with the statesman's role. You saw this on those moments before the New Zealand Prime Minister addressed the parliament, in the moments before the U.S. President addressed the parliament, where both Prime Minister Gillard and Mr Abbott had opportunities to make remarks. Prime Minister Gillard made broad statesperson-like remarks. Mr Abbott couldn't help injecting a note of partisan politics, a little partisan dig at the other side. He seems to forget that he has become prime minister now and that actually it is in his interests and very much in Australia's interests for him to try, for once, to rise above the partisan fray.

LESTER: Andrew Leigh, we're grateful for your time on Breaking Politics. Thank you for coming in today.

LEIGH: Thank you Tim.

History was made today with the passage in the ACT Assembly of the momentous Marriage Equality Same-Sex Bill.  My congratulations to my ACT Labor colleagues and all those who helped make this win happen.

MEDIA RELEASE



Andrew Leigh

Member for Fraser





TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER 2013

Andrew Leigh welcomes milestone ACT same-sex marriage law



Federal Labor Member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh, has congratulated his Australian Capital Territory colleagues for the successful passage today of the trailblazing Marriage Equality Same-Sex Bill.

“The irony is that this bill is only possible because the Howard Government amended the federal Marriage Act in 2004, restricting it to cover only heterosexual marriage.

“As a result, today’s ACT bill simply fills in the gap – allowing same-sex marriages by ACT couples.”

Dr Leigh said the federal Attorney General’s plan to challenge the ACT law in the High Court is “mean-spirited”.

“There’s nothing in the Constitution that says states and territories can’t pass laws on marriage. In fact, until the 1960s, marriage was principally a state and territory matter.

“A High Court challenge like this is extremely unusual, and would normally come from a private citizen, not the federal government.

“This legal challenge is a diversion from what is fundamentally a political issue. If the Abbott Government wants to try and quash this law, then same-sex marriage should be debated in the federal parliament with the Liberal Party allowing its members a conscience vote, not binding them as it did last time around.”

Dr Leigh urged Australian conservatives to look to their friends in Britain and New Zealand where same-sex marriage has been passed by conservative governments.

“I am reminded of the words of conservative Maurice Williamson who said during the debate in Wellington ‘I give a promise to those people who are opposed to this bill right now… The sun will still rise tomorrow…You will not have skin diseases or rashes or toads in your bed. The world will just carry on’.”

“What the ACT has done is simply allow two people who love each other to have that love recognised by way of marriage.  It isn’t going to weaken heterosexual marriages like mine. This is going to make us stronger as a society.

“George Brandis calls himself a small-L liberal, but I’m concerned that one of his top priorities is to attempt to tear up ACT same-sex marriage certificates. Instead, Senator Brandis should be celebrating with the many same-sex couples in the ACT who can now wed their loved ones.” said Dr Leigh

ENDS