Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC TASMANIA MORNINGS

WEDNESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2017

SUBJECT/S; Rebuilding civic engagement, marriage equality.

LEON COMPTON: The Shadow Assistant Treasurer is in Launceston today, hosting a forum on social capital and civic engagement. I’m imaging that he wants to see higher levels of social capital and more civic engagement. It’ll be interesting to see what he learns as he meets Tasmanians. One of the incredible strengths of Tasmania is that high level of social cooperation, the idea that - I suppose on the one hand can be a negative, that fewer people move around over the course of their lives, but it’s also an incredible positive that people feel a strong connection to community here. So are the sorts of challenges that are tearing at the social fabric in other places present here and what can we do to build our social capital? Times are changing, stresses are changing - what can we do to meet those changes? Andrew Leigh, Shadow Assistant Treasurer, good morning to you.

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

COMPTON: Thank you for coming into the studio this morning. What is the issue that you’re actually looking at and talking about as you travel around Australia in your mind?

LEIGH: After the last election, Bill Shorten was kind enough to give me the portfolio of charities and not-for-profits. We’re the first political party to have a portfolio for charities and not-for-profits and it reflects Labor’s belief that we need to do more to rebuild the strength of civic life in Australia. You look over the last couple of generations, we’ve become increasingly disconnected from one another - less likely to donate, to volunteer, to join.  We’re less than half as likely to go to church, less than half as likely to be in a union than we were a couple of generations ago. If you look at many of the mass membership organisations of the past, they’ve shed members. So this Reconnected forum - and this will be the eighth forum we’re holding around Australia - with Ross Hart, Brian Mitchell and Justine Keay today is focussing on new ideas from Launceston community groups about how we can build social capital and boost civic engagement.

ANDREW LEIGH MP, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER and SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

JUSTINE KEAY MP, MEMBER FOR BRADDON  

BRIAN MITCHELL MP, MEMBER FOR LYONS

 ROSS HART MP, MEMBER FOR BASS 

LAUNCESTON RECONNECTED FORUM BUILDS COMMUNITY

Today, we held a terrific ‘Reconnected’ roundtable with Launceston charities and not-for-profits, exchanging ideas to boost social capital and community engagement. 

Recent decades have seen a decline in the share of Australians joining community groups, playing organised sports, attending church or joining a union. 

Through our forums, Labor is working to promote social capital, and share ideas about how to reverse the trend of declining social capital.

 ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER AND SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SENATOR PENNY WONG, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE AND SHADOW MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

SENATOR DON FARRELL, DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE AND SHADOW SPECIAL MINISTER OF STATE

 AMANDA RISHWORTH, SHADOW MINISTER FOR VETERANS' AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL

TONY ZAPPIA, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR MEDICARE

ADELAIDE RECONNECTED FORUM A SUCCESS

Today Adelaide charities and not-for-profits gathered for a successful ‘Reconnected’ roundtable, where ideas to boost social capital and community engagement were exchanged. 

Over the course of the last generation, we’ve seen some worrying trends. Australians are less likely to join community organisations or play organised sports. We’ve seen troubling drop offs in volunteering rates and donation rates in recent years.

These are the trends Labor is trying to reverse as we hear from charities and organisations about what they’re doing to foster community spirit and build social capital at a local level. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

FIONA PHILLIPS, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR GILMORE 

LABOR FOCUSES ON INEQUALITY AND POVERTY IN GILMORE

Poverty and inequality are significant issues in Gilmore, and the Turnbull Government is not doing enough to address regional disadvantage.

We met today with the Shoalhaven Anti-Poverty Committee, to discuss the challenges in the Gilmore electorate of social disadvantage.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR CITIZENSHIP AND MULTICULTURAL AUSTRALIA 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

LABOR LEADS THE WAY ON REMITTANCES 

Labor welcomes research released this week showing that unclear remittance structures are costing Australians $3.1 billion a year.

We have begun holding a series of community forums across Australia on this important issue. Already, we‘re hearing from the multicultural community that the current system just isn‘t working for them.

Labor wants to ensure that Australians who send money overseas get a competitive deal. But the number of remittance providers is shrinking and pricing can be confusing.

In our community, there are plenty of people working long hours to send money back to relatives in Manila, Moresby or Mumbai. According to the World Bank, remittances to developing countries are worth half a trillion dollars annually – twice the value of foreign aid.

But according to a previous study, a person who tries to send $1000 from Australia to a developing country will see $77 eaten up by transaction fees and exchange rate spreads. A full-time worker who wanted to send half her salary home would be toiling away for more than a week every year just to pay financial middlemen.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER and SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

LUKE GOSLING OAM MP, MEMBER FOR SOLOMON

DARWIN RECONNECTED FORUM A SUCCESS

Today, we held a successful ‘Reconnected’ roundtable with Darwin charities and not-for-profits, exchanging ideas to boost social capital and community engagement.

Over the course of the last generation, we’ve seen some worrying trends. Australians are less likely to join community organisations or play organised sports. We’ve seen troubling drop offs in volunteering rates and donation rates in recent years.

These are the trends Labor is trying to reverse as we hear from charities and organisations about what they’re doing to foster community spirit and build social capital at a local level.

Today‘s was the sixth Reconnected Roundtable, following on from successful forums in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne.

LABOR’S LAWS MAKING THE MONEY, NOT THE TURNBULL GOVERNMENT

The claims

“We have introduced a number of laws that crackdown on these companies that ensure they actually pay the right amount of tax. As you said, $4 billion in the last financial year alone, we have been able to claw back in terms of the assessments raised. Around $3 billion of that came from just seven multinational companies alone.”

-       Kelly O’Dwyer, August 23 2017

“Around about $2.9 billion coming from just seven companies alone and there’s more to come.”           

-       Kelly O’Dwyer, August 22 2017

The facts

Labor legislation is being applied in all seven cases cited by Minister O'Dwyer.

Specifically the cases involve Labor’s Taxation Laws Amendment (Countering Tax Avoidance and Multinational Profit Shifting) Bill 2013 and the Tax Laws Amendment (Cross-Border Transfer Pricing) Bill (No. 1) 2012.

The Coalition voted against these bills in both houses.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

360 ON MIX 104.9 DARWIN

TUESDAY, 22 AUGUST 2017

SUBJECTS: Reconnecting communities, marriage equality survey.

KATIE WOOLF: Joining me on the line right now is Dr Andrew Leigh, who is of course the Shadow Assistant Treasurer federally. Good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning, Katie. It’s great to be with you.

WOOLF: Great to have you on the show. Now I know you’re going to be holding a roundtable with Luke Gosling on social capital and building communities, basically brainstorming what we can do to get people involved in their local community and the benefits of doing this. You’ve been holding these all around Australia, haven’t you?

LEIGH: That’s right. This is the sixth one of these forums we’ve held. Their purpose is to bring charities together to discuss the shared challenge of social connectedness. We know that over the course of the last generation, we’ve seen some worrying trends in Australia. We’re less likely to join community organisations, less likely to play organised sports, half as likely to go to church and half as likely to join a union. We’ve seen drop offs in volunteering rates and donation rates in recent years. The challenge to that partly lies in government action. I’m the Shadow Minister for Charities and Not for Profits, so I’m very interested in that as well. But I’m also keen to bring together charities as well to have the conversation about what’s working in their organisations.

WOOLF: It is always good to have locals want to volunteer and want to be part of different events. I organise a fun run that happens every year on Father’s Day and I’m always surprised by the number of people that do actually want to help, just out of the goodness of their heart.

LEIGH: That’s fabulous, Katie. In our own neighbourhood, my wife and I organise a street party once a year and I’m sure as you find with the fun run there’s a great joy in bringing people together. A life spent with others is just a better life. But sometimes work gets too busy or we get too addicted to spending time on Facebook and our smart phones and we forget about the importance of building human connectedness. We’re healthier when we’re connected with others, we’re happier when we’re connected with others. So this is about trying to reconnect Australia through these volunteering and charitable groups, many of whom are doing fabulous work right now.

WOOLF: What do you think is the best way for us to really do this?

LEIGH: One of the challenges is trying to make sure that we use new technologies to connect us, rather than disconnect us. Sites such as MeetUp.com allow us to use online engagement of foster offline engagement. We also need to think differently about community spaces. What’s funny about libraries these days is there are fewer books in them and more meetings taking place. So repurposing libraries for a digital age is a real challenge. You’ve seen some fascinating trends around Australia with the growth of rural choirs and the interesting phenomenon of atheist churches popping up on Sundays for the one in three Australians who don’t believe in God but who recognise there’s that need to have a social connectedness that churches have traditionally provided.

TIME FOR ACTION, NOT TALK, ON TAX TRANSPARENCY

The Senate Economics Reference Committee is today hosting a public hearing into corporate tax avoidance and will hear from Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google.

But what they really need to hear is the Turnbull Government’s support for Labor’s plans crack down on multinational tax dodgers, including:

• Tightening debt-deduction loopholes used by multinational companies, improving the Budget by $4.6 billion over the decade.
• Removing tax advantages and inconsistencies between Multiple Entry Consolidated Groups (consisting of Australian-resident entities that share a common ultimate foreign owner) and Australian-owned ordinary consolidated groups.
• Delivering more tax transparency by restoring Labor’s $100 million threshold for public reporting of tax data for private companies. This threshold was raised to $200 million by the Liberals and Greens, exempting two-thirds of private firms from tax transparency.
• Appointing a community sector representative to the Board of Taxation to ensure community sector voices are heard in tax design and review processes.
• Introducing public reporting of country-by-country reports. High-level tax information about where and how much tax was paid by large corporations (over $1 billion in global revenue) should be released.
• Providing protection for whistleblowers who report on entities evading tax to the Australian Taxation Office. Where whistleblowers’ information results in more tax being paid, allow them to collect a share of the tax penalty (a reward of up to $250,000).

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 21 AUGUST 2017

SUBJECTS: Newspoll; Marriage Equality; Citizenship, Amazon and competition laws.

KIERAN GILBERT: With me now on AM Agenda the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. The polling shows that most people, nearly 50 per cent of people surveyed in the Newspoll support the postal plebiscite, did Labor get it wrong?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Kieran, I think we just need to get on and legalise same-sex marriage. We need to move from being the last advanced English-speaking country that doesn't have same-sex marriage to actually legislating and allowing couples to tie the knot. I had a constituent write to me recently who said that she hoped that both her grandparents could be there at the wedding. But her grandmother has now passed away and her grandfather is unwell. She's worried that every month that we delay, it decreases the chances that she'll have a grandparent there on the big day.

GILBERT: It does look like the numbers are promising though for those that want change. According to this survey, 70 per cent of people say they are going to vote and of those that will vote about 70 per cent said they will vote yes.

LEIGH: We had a marriage equality forum with Tiernan Brady at the Australian National University recently. He was saying the popular opinion in favour of same-sex marriage in Australia is as strong or stronger than in many other countries that already have same-sex marriage. That's why it just makes sense just to do this through Parliament. We didn't have a plebiscite for the last 20 changes to the Marriage Act and we didn't have one for the Sex or Race Discrimination Acts. Same-sex couples shouldn't have to ask the permission of the rest of Australia to marry the person they love.

GILBERT: Now that this is where they're heading, are you encouraged by those numbers in terms of the majority saying they will embrace the vote but also vote yes?

LEIGH: I've always thought that the popular support was there and the support is indeed there in the Parliament as well. All that is holding it up is the opponents of marriage equality. Of course that's why they've designed this plebiscite process. It's a process designed of opponents of marriage equality in order to keep it at bay for as long as possible.

GILBERT: Is it important that those that vote that are voting and advocating a yes vote that they reassure people about religious freedoms? 

LEIGH: Religious freedoms are important and certainly religious organisations can do things that secular organisations can't. If you're a secular organisation and you told a woman that she couldn't be promoted simply because of her gender, you'd be in breach of the law. But certain religious organisations are able to do that in some circumstances. We have to constrain these exceptions very carefully - discrimination is inherently ugly and we want to minimise it.