Andrew Leigh

LINDA BURNEY MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR FAMILIES AND SOCIAL SERVICES

SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS

MEMBER FOR BARTON

SENATOR JENNY MCALLISTER

 SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMMUNITIES

 AND THE PREVENTION OF FAMILY VIOLENCE

 LABOR SENATOR FOR NEW SOUTH WALES

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CHARITIES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

SUSAN TEMPLEMAN MP

MEMBER FOR MACQUARIE

RESTORING RESPECT FOR THE COMMUNITY SECTOR

An Albanese Labor Government will support a stronger, more diverse and more independent community sector.

Through floods, fires and a pandemic, the community sector has stepped up to provide support to struggling Australians.

Despite this, the Morrison Government has repeatedly tried to devalue and silence community sector voices. At the same time, many community sector organisations have been working with less money, less funding certainty and increased stress.

If elected, Labor will change this.

AUSTRALIA'S LAWS MUST CHANGE TO CONTAIN PUTIN'S DIRTY MONEY

The Canberra Times, 12 March 2022

As advanced democracies tighten sanctions on Vladimir Putin, regulators are looking more closely at how the Russian President made his money. Some sources suggest that he may have $100 billion – others as much as $200 billion. That would put Putin’s wealth higher than the combined annual output of South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory.

One thing that we can be sure about is that Putin uses tax havens. In 2016, the leak of the Panama Papers revealed a complex web of transactions that Putin and his associates used to hide their assets, including helicopters, planes, a superyacht and a palace on the Black Sea. Tax havens like Panama helped conceal the true owners of these assets.

Nearly $20 billion in JobKeeper cash – or $2000 for every Aussie household – went to companies with rising revenue.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
6PR MORNINGS
WEDNESDAY, 2 MARCH 2022

SUBJECT: Tax havens and Russia.

LIAM BARTLETT, HOST: Joining us this morning is Andrew Leigh. Andrew’s the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities. How are you, Andrew?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: I'm terrific, Liam. How are you?

BARTLETT: I'm well, thanks. Look, I know you've been campaigning on this for a while, long before the invasion got underway. But how could the government make it easier to put a stop to this dirty money?

LEIGH: They could do three things, Liam. The first is to crack down on tax havens. The second is to tighten the anti-money laundering laws. And the third is to put in place a beneficial ownership register that would let people really know who owns Australian shares. All of those are straightforward transparency measures, and without those changes it makes it really hard to track down the sources of Putin's illicit cash. It's not as though they're all sitting in a big bank account marked ‘Vladimir Putin’. His cronies have stashed money in tax havens like Panama or the Bahamas. They're using illicit shell companies, and they're hiding the source of the transactions very deliberately. And Australia's laws just aren't up to date enough in order for us to be able to track down the sources of the dirty money.

ADDRESS TO MASTER BUILDERS ASSOCIATION ELECTION FORUM

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, 1 MARCH 2022

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

[Acknowledgements omitted]

It is a pleasure to be speaking today at one of the first pre-election debates that I’ve done. Congratulations to the organisers for delivering it well before deadline, and under Budget. I’d expect no less from the Master Builders.

Since we’re talking about housing today, let me start with the story of my maternal grandfather, Roly Stebbins.

Roly was born in a tent in 1922. His childhood was marked by the Depression and what we would now call the PTSD that his father suffered in World War I. Roly left school at age fourteen, and found work to help his parents get by. During World War II, he worked as a boilermaker.

It was a tough upbringing, but Roly’s eyes used to twinkle as he spoke with me about the bright days that came at the end of World War II - the sense of possibility and hope.

CHOOSING OPENNESS

ADDRESS TO ASIALINK SUMMIT

 PARLIAMENT HOUSE, 28 FEBRUARY 2022

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people on whose lands we're meeting today.

Dhawura Nguna Dhawura Ngunnawal.

Yanggu Ngala-ma-nyin Dhuni-ma-nyin.

Ngunnawal-wari Dhawura-wari Dindi Wanggira-lidji-nyin.

I also acknowledge any Indigenous people who are joining us today.

I'm somebody who's passionate about engagement with Asia, a passion that goes back a long time. When I was a kid in primary school, we were each required to do a history project. Some people talked about the history of the Holden Commodore, another researched the background of their grandfather. I wrote about the 1965 killings of hundreds of thousands of communist sympathisers in Indonesia. To this day, I'm not quite sure what my grade six teacher made of the assignment, but it reflected the fact that ours was a household where Inside Indonesia and the Far East Economic Review were routinely sitting around, and Asia was part of our everyday lives.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

5AA MORNINGS

TUESDAY, 1 MARCH 2022

SUBJECTS: The Liberals dragging their feet on reform and costing charities millions; Ukraine.

GRAEME GOODINGS, HOST: Well, the Prime Minister has been under attack on the fundraising front. Dr Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Charities, claims Scott Morrison's failure to act on fundraising reform is costing Australian charities millions. Let's get him to explain this to us. Dr Andrew Leigh, good morning to you.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Graeme. Great to be with you and your listeners.

GOODINGS: Yeah. What's your major grievance?

LEIGH: Charities have called for years for fixing Australia's outdated charitable fundraising laws. They were designed in a pre-internet age, and they're just not fit for purpose for online fundraising. Right now, if a charity wants to fundraise online, it needs to register in seven different jurisdictions - paperwork that takes them a week. That means that the cost to Australian charities in complying is over a million dollars a month. Yet the government, despite being told to fix it by the Royal Commission on Natural Disaster Preparedness and a bipartisan Senate report, has done absolutely nothing. So regular charities continue to have to jump through unnecessary hoops. Meanwhile, Peter Dutton sets up a fundraiser which if he was a charity wouldn’t be allowed under current fundraising laws.

ANDREW LEIGH MP
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CHARITIES
MEMBER FOR FENNER

ZHI SOON
CANDIDATE FOR BANKS

MORRISON GOVERNMENT FAILING AUSTRALIANS WITH UNDERPERFORMING ECONOMY

Stagnating wages and rising cost of living are forcing Australians to seek help from services like Oatley’s Allawah Care.

The volunteer-run service provides food and clothing to people in need, many using it as a “top up” to ease pressures on the household budget as underemployment and price hikes start to bite.

The hardworking people behind Allawah Care are doing vital work, but Australians should not have to be reliant on such services to make ends meet.

FASCIST FLAGS, QANON AND EXTREMIST TIES: THE MANY FACES OF ‘FREEDOM’ PROTESTERS

The RiotACT, 23 February 2022

Over recent weeks, far-right antivax protests have cropped up in Canada, Britain, France and New Zealand. But never have these protests come to a city with a higher vaccination rate than Canberra, where unvaccinated adults are as rare as UFO sightings.

They have a right to peacefully protest, but those of us who believe in science also have a right to point out that vaccines save lives and conspiracy theories can kill. Since the Morrison Government belatedly began rolling out COVID vaccines in Australia, these free vaccines have protected thousands of Australians from hospitalisation and death. COVID vaccines work. Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and Vitamin C do not.

HONEST AUSTRALIANS PAY THE PRICE FOR COALITION’S REFUSAL TO COME DOWN HARD ON TAX RORTS AND SCAMS

At its peak, the Stawell tyre dump held nine million tyres, making it one of the biggest tyre dumps in the world. After being inactive for more than a decade, the state Environmental Protection Authority finally stepped in and cleaned it up, recycling more than one million tyres, weighing around 10,000 tonnes.

Yet when they looked for someone to pay the bill, the government found that ownership of the dump had been transferred to an internet marketing company based in the tax haven of Panama.  Asked about the sale, the former owner admitted ‘I have never been to Panama and can't speak or understand any Spanish’. When the case went to court, Justice Karin Emerton called the sale of the site ‘outrageous’, suggesting that ‘It's open to infer that shifting assets between two companies, to a shelf company in Panama, is a device being used to avoid obligations under the fire preventions notice’.