Andrew Leigh

A Creative Capital over government

The Chronicle, 9 October 2018

For Dion Oxley, quizzes are about sparking the joy of curiosity.

Whether it's art, geography or history, her Quizling platform aims to use simple true/false quizzes to help children learn more about the world around them.

DRIVING A BETTER DEAL FOR AUTO DEALERS

Business Insider, 5 October 2018

A few years ago, a multinational car manufacturer told 25 car dealers that their franchise agreements would not be renewed. They hadn’t broken their agreements. They were profitable – some for decades, but some had not yet made enough money to cover their upfront costs. The manufacturer didn’t bother giving the dealers an explanation: the Franchising Code didn’t require it.

Car dealers may not be at the top of your sympathy list. But it’s worth understanding the pressures that Australia’s automotive retailers are under. Car selling is one of the few industries in our economy where the top four firms account for less than one-fifth of the market. Many of the 3500 new vehicle outlets are owned by individual operators or family groups.

But while car retailing is pretty competitive, car manufacturing is a good deal more concentrated. The largest four brands account for almost half the market. Manufacturers are massive global multinationals, who aren’t averse to putting the squeeze on car dealers to maximise their profits.

LABOR’S PLAN TO IMPROVE CEO PAY TRANSPARENCY: THIRD PARTY SUPPORT

“I would love to also see transparency inside industries, an annual ranking on what the pay rates are. Transparency is absolutely fantastic because it just tells the facts to shareholders, and then management and organisations are held accountability to facts.”

Domino's Pizza CEO Don Meij, whose realised pay last year was $37 million.

“ASA welcomes the ALP’s policy announcement to adopt a variant of US and UK measures to require larger publicly listed firms to publicly release (as part of their annual reporting requirements) the ratio of CEO pay to median employee pay.” 

The Australian Shareholders' Association.

WHY UNIONS ARE VITAL TO ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR

MAURICE BLACKBURN

MELBOURNE

2 OCTOBER 2018

I acknowledge that we meet on the land of the Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri) peoples of the Kulin Nation, and pay respect to their elders past and present. Special thanks to Emma Dawson for organising this Per Capita event, and Josh Bornstein and Ben Hubbard for the hospitality of Maurice Blackburn. Among the many hardworking unionists in the room, I want to make special note of the presence of Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus and president Michele O'Neil.

The Engels Pause

In the late-1700s, one of the most dramatic transformations in world economic history took place. Starting in Britain, the Industrial Revolution saw production move from hand work to mechanisation. Steam-powered factories massively increased the output of textiles. In previous centuries, economic growth had puttered along so slowly that shops would sometimes carve their prices in stone on the wall. With the industrial revolution, output per worker began to surge. Alongside the domestication of plants and animals, the Industrial Revolution marks one of the major turning points for the world economy.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

3AW DRIVE WITH TOM ELLIOTT

TUESDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2018

SUBJECTS: CEO pay transparency, housing.

TOM ELLIOTT, HOST: As I mentioned just a few minutes ago, the Labor Party's got a number of plans if and when they were elected to be the next government of Australia - and by the way I think they will be elected the next government so you get used to the idea that Bill Shorten will be our next prime minister. One of these plans is to require listed companies with more than 250 employees to disclose the ratio of their chief executive’s pay to that of a median employee. So the median is the middle employee in the list of employees from the lowest paid and the highest paid. They want to have a ratio of that person's salary to that of the CEO. Now, I’m just not sure what question this going to answer. However, the man who came up with the idea joins us right now. He’s the federal Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good afternoon, Tom. Great to be with you.

ELLIOTT: Well, thank you for joining us. Tell us, what is to be gained by calculating this ratio between the CEO's salary and that of the median employee's salary?

LEIGH: It gives you a sense firm-by-firm as to how that company is paying people. It gives you a sense as to whether the ratio of pay for people on the factory floor to the corner offer has gotten out of whack. This idea has a pretty long lineage. It goes back to people like Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory, who says that in his view 20 to 1 was about what you needed in order to not have things get out of kilter. What we’ve announced does no more than to follow what United States and the United Kingdom have already put in place.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 

RADIO INTERVIEW 

6PR RADIO 

TUESDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2018

SUBJECTS: CEO pay transparency, foreign currency exchange.

GARETH PARKER, HOST: The Assistant Shadow Treasurer is Andrew Leigh. He joins me on the line. Andrew, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning Gareth. Great to be with you.

PARKER: I appreciate your time. Why should the government force companies to reveal what the boss earns?

LEIGH: We already have pay reported on the CEO and what we want to do is go one step further and to also say each firm needs to also say how much the typical worker earns. So then firms can be assessed in terms of the pay ratio – what’s the gap between the factory floor and the corner office? We know that experts like Peter Drucker have said that when that ratio gets too far out of whack then that can be bad for morale in the firm. He says a ratio of 20 to one is pretty reasonable.

LABOR WILL REQUIRE FIRMS TO REPORT THE RATIO OF CEO PAY TO MEDIAN WORKER PAY

A Shorten Labor Government would promote fairness and tackle inequality in the workplace by requiring all listed firms with more than 250 employees to report the ratio of their CEO pay to the pay of the median employee.

The call for CEO pay transparency follows a report which found that the average total pay of ASX100 CEOs rose by 9 per cent last year - four times the speed of average wage growth. The median ASX100 CEO earned more than $4 million.

The best-paid Australian CEOs, Domino’s Don Meij, made $37 million last year. This was after a year in which the Fair Work Ombudsman publicly complained that Domino’s had failed to comply with requests to provide information into claims that Domino’s franchisees were paying workers as little as $10 an hour. Mr Meij made $10 every eight seconds.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

CANBERRA

SATURDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2018

SUBJECTS: Banking Royal Commission interim report, the crisis in aged care, troop deployment, free trade.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for being here today. My name is Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer. It was in April 2016 that Labor first called for a Banking Royal Commission. Scott Morrison opposed it, voted against it 26 times in the parliament, called it a populist whinge. And it took until November 2017 before the Government finally announced the Banking Royal Commission. If the government had followed Labor's lead, we wouldn't now be discussing the Interim Report of the Banking Royal Commission – we would be implementing the final report of the Banking Royal Commission. I want to commend the many victims who have come forward and told their stories to the banking Royal Commission. But because the Liberals delayed a Banking Royal Commission for more than 600 days, many of these victims were hurt who wouldn't have been hurt otherwise. If the government had acted when Labor called for a Banking Royal Commission, some of the egregious wrongdoing that we've seen wouldn't have occurred.

Now, this Banking Royal Commission is important to air the wrongdoing that's been occurring in the banking sector. The Royal Commissioner has said the problem lies in greed. We're never going to see greed in the banking sector tackled by a prime minister whose role model is Gordon Gekko. If you take a 'greed is good' philosophy to government, as the Liberals do, you're never going to be able to implement the reforms that are needed to tackle the wrongdoing in banking.

This royal commission is an important economic reform. The Royal Commissioner has gone to some of the fundamental issues within the sector, issues around vertical integration and conflicted remuneration. Labor's hope is that out of this will emerge a stronger banking sector. Finance is, after all, the lifeblood of the economy. We're committed to a royal commission implementation taskforce within Treasury under a Shorten Labor Government. We've said that if elected, Chris Bowen would report regularly to Parliament on the progress of implementing the royal commission's recommendations.

A Banking Royal Commission is not only about exposing wrongdoing - it's about strengthening the economic fundamentals of Australia. Again, Labor got the big economic call right and the Liberals got it wrong. Just as we saw during the global financial crisis, when the Liberals got the economic call wrong by voting against the second tranche of fiscal stimulus that helped save 200,000 jobs and tens of thousands of small businesses. Just as we saw in the past, when the Liberals opposed capital gains taxation and Medicare and universal superannuation. Labor has gotten the big economic calls right and Scott Morrison has gotten them wrong. It’s time Scott Morrison didn't just call on banks to apologize but apologized himself. Scott Morrison needs to apologize to the Australian people for standing in the way of this Banking Royal Commission, for delaying it in a way in which we've seen more victims hurt and a significant delay in the implementation of these important reforms.

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

JENNIFER YANG

LABOR CANDIDATE FOR CHISHOLM 

LABOR TAKES THE WHEEL FOR MECHANICS IN MELBOURNE

COALITION DRAGGED TO ACTION ON DODGY PHOENIX ACTIVITY

More than a year after promising action, the Government has been dragged kicking and screaming to provide a timeline for legislation to tackle dodgy phoenix activity.