Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW 

ABC RN DRIVE

MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 2018

SUBJECTS: Levelling the playing field for first home buyers, Labor’s commitment to a National Integrity Commission.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: As house prices in Melbourne and Sydney continue to fall, there are fresh calls for Labour to abandon its planned changes to negative gearing. The opposition has proposed limiting negative gearing on existing dwellings, although the change would not apply to those already using the tax break. The government says the policy would hurt mortgage holders who've already seen the value of their home drop and they’ve won the backing of Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond, who described the impact as a nuclear bomb this morning. Andrew Leigh’s the Shadow Assistant Treasurer. Welcome back to RN Drive.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks, Patricia. Great to be chatting with you.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

6PR PERTH LIVE

MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 2018

SUBJECTS: Labor’s plans to fund free tax clinics, Labor’s commitment to a National Integrity Commission, levelling the playing field for first home buyers.

OLIVER PETERSON: Shadow Treasurer Andrew Leigh, good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good afternoon, Olly. How are you?

PETERSON: Very well. What brings you to Perth?

LEIGH: I'm here to announce a Labor policy of free tax clinics, building on some great work that Annette Morgan and her team’s been doing at Curtin University. They’re providing tax help for low income individuals who are often struggling with disputes with the tax office or complicated tax affairs. It’s a great way of helping people who are really not sure how to make their way through the tax system get the help they need. Millionaires and multinationals can afford to pay high priced accountants, but for many low income people caught up in problems with tax, they don't know where else to turn.

BHP DECISION BASED ON LAWS THE COALITION VOTED AGAINST

The Coalition voted against laws that helped secure a $529 million transfer pricing settlement between the Australian Taxation Office and BHP.

These laws, passed by the former Labor Government in 2013, were opposed by Liberal and National Party members on the grounds that they were ‘retrospective’. 

Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg owe the Australian people an apology. If they had their way, the budget would be millions of dollars worse off.

EVALUATOR GENERAL: ADDITIONAL THIRD PARTY SUPPORT

“The plan to establish an Evaluator General is welcomed by the preventive health sector. Public health experts have long relied upon scientific evidence to shape policy, but of late governments have become increasingly averse to acting on this evidence. An Evaluator General, making use of the best tests of effectiveness, like randomised control studies, should give confidence to decision-makers choosing evidence-based policy over the populist nonsense, which all too often passes for public policy. As an independent public health body responsible for injecting strategic research and advocating for evidence-based public policy, FARE supports establishing the Office of Evaluator General."

- Michael Thorn, Chief Executive, Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE)

"Sound policy evaluation is essential to ensuring that resources are spent efficiently and help achieve the best possible outcomes for those most in need."

- Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, School of Economics, University of Sydney

“Better evaluation and a stronger focus on outcomes and impacts can only strengthen government performance.”

- David Crosbie,  CEO of Community Council Australia

FREE TAX CLINICS WILL MAKE TAX LESS TAXING

A Shorten Labor Government will make our tax system fairer for disadvantaged Australians by funding 10 free tax clinics across the country.

While multinationals and millionaires can afford an armada of experts to navigate the tax system, low and middle-income Australians are often intimidated by the tax system, and unsure where to turn to get help.

Tax clinics will provide free tax assistance for disadvantaged communities. Each tax clinic will have volunteers, students and pro bono tax practitioners on hand to help low income taxpayers and microbusinesses with administrative tax matters, including completing tax returns and responding to queries raised by the tax office.

The former Inspector General of Taxation, Ali Noroozi, has stated that tax clinics “have the potential to be of significant assistance to vulnerable taxpayers”, noting the model of Low Income Tax Clinics in the United States.

EVALUATOR GENERAL: THIRD PARTY SUPPORT

‘The announcement of the Evaluator General is a very welcome one. The more we know about the effectiveness of public programs, the better they can be designed and the more efficiently public money will be used. Well-designed social programs benefit the neediest in society and contribute to making Australian society more equitable. Randomised controlled trials provide the most reliable evidence of policy impacts.’

- Professor Lisa Cameron, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne

CRAWFORD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, 13 NOVEMBER 2018

In 1958, psychologist David Weikart took up the job of being director of special education in Ypsilanti, Michigan. At that time, schools were segregated, and all the African-American students in the town attended one primary school - the Perry School. Weikart noticed that the school was run down. Instead of a playground, it had a field filled with thistles. Many of the African-American students ended up repeating grades, entering special education or leaving school early.

Yet when Weikart gave a presentation to school principals about these problems, users responded defensively. One sat with arms tightly folded; others stood by the window smoking; a few left the room. When he pressed them to act, they said there was nothing they could do. Black students were just born that way. So Weikart came up with an alternative solution: 'Because I couldn't change the schools . . . well, obviously you do it before school.'

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

JO BRISKEY

LABOR CANDIDATE FOR BONNER

LABOR CLEARS THE ROAD FOR MECHANICS IN BRISBANE

Labor is driving a better deal for car owners and independent mechanics with a plan to make timely access to technical information a reality.

No matter what you kind of vehicle you own, everyone should be able to choose where they get their car serviced. But independent repairers are struggling to get fair access to the standard service information they need.

BAHASA, BUSINESS EXCHANGES AND MATCH-FIT LEADERSHIP: DEEPENING THE AUSTRALIA-INDONESIA RELATIONSHIP

KEYNOTE ADDRESS, AUSTRALIA-INDONESIA BUSINESS COUNCIL

SURFERS PARADISE, 13 NOVEMBER 2018

Selamat pagi. It’s good to be with you today.

When I was anak kecil, I lived in Indonesia for three years. My father Michael was at Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, funded by the Australian Government to work on a special training program designed to improve social science research capacity throughout Indonesian Universities and Islamic Institutes. My mother Barbara was mostly looking after my brother and me, but was beginning the research into the Indonesian education system that would become her PhD thesis, and her studies of traditional Acehnese textiles that would become her book Tangan-Tangan Trampil / The Hands of Time.

It was a pretty extraordinary experience for a child to have. I attended the local Acehnese school, where lessons were conducted in Indonesian. We spent most of the day singing nation-building songs (with a burgeoning local independence movement, the Suharto Government was keen to remind people in Aceh that they were Indonesian first and Acehnese second). Then we played in the muddy playground. As my mother recalls it, the sole white kid in the class was the only one whose white shirt had turned brown by the end of the day.

BUILDING A BETTER FEEDBACK LOOP: LABOR TO ESTABLISH AN EVALUATOR GENERAL

A Shorten Labor Government will deliver better government programs by creating an Evaluator General.

The office of the Evaluator General, to be based within Treasury, will work with other departments to conduct high-quality evaluations, preferably randomised trials, of government programs.

Increasingly, policymakers in other nations are testing programs through randomised trials, with the same kind of control group used to evaluate new pharmaceuticals in clinical drug trials.