Andrew Leigh

TIM HAMMOND MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSUMER AFFAIRS

SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING FOR RESOURCES

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR PERTH

DR ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

MEMBER FOR FENNER

 PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION BACKS IN LABOR’S CALLS FOR INCREASED PENALTIES FOR ANTI-CONSUMER CONDUCT

The Productivity Commission has today added its voice in support of Labor’s plan to increase penalties for businesses engaging in anti-consumer conduct under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL).

 The Commission’s report, Consumer Law Enforcement and Administration, found that

“Maximum financial penalties available under the ACL are small relative to the benefits that a business can accrue by breaching the ACL.” (Finding 4.5).

 “There are a growing number of voices supporting Labor’s policy of a significant increase in maximum penalties under the ACL,” Mr Hammond said.

SUBJECTS: Census data; Adani mine; native title changes; housing affordability

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer. He joins me now to talk about these issues, and no doubt a couple of others, including housing affordability. Welcome back to RN Drive.

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

KARVELAS: You continue to have doubts about the quality of the census data. The ABS does assess the quality of its own data post the Census. What will you be looking for in that assessment to give you confidence that this is good data that can be used?

LEIGH: Patricia, there's two things that are absolutely known for sure. One is that on Census Night last year, millions of Australians lost hours of their time trying to fill out the Census. And we also wasted millions of dollars in having to fix up the botched Census. As a result, rather than filling in the Census on Census Night, as has been the norm, many Australians ended up filling in the Census well afterwards. That creates the potential for duplication, which wouldn't necessarily always be picked up by the Bureau of Statistics. 

KARVELAS: The ABS says that they had a very, very strong number of people who participated – what, I think it was 98 per cent? An incredibly high participation rate. Doesn't that show that despite the bungle, and no one's contesting that there was a pretty extraordinary bungle, that Australians did participate even though they were clearly grumpy about the process?

LEIGH: They've done their best to fix this bungle, but let Australians be in no doubt as to how we got to this situation. The position of Chief Statistician was left unfilled for nearly a year. There were three ministers responsible for the Census just in the year beforehand. None of them willing to take responsibility. Basic due diligence around making sure that Australians were protected against the inevitable denial of service attacks wasn't done. The government dropped the ball, and then – immediately – looked around for someone else to blame. 

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

 MEMBER FOR FENNER

THE HON ED HUSIC MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
MEMBER FOR CHIFLEY

CENSUS DATA RELEASE A REMINDER OF ANOTHER

TURNBULL GOVERNMENT DEBACLE

The Australian Bureau of Statistics today revealed the “typical Australian.” Remember when the typical Australian couldn’t even log onto the Census website?

Today’s release of the Census data is another reminder that the Turnbull government fails repeatedly when it comes to managing digital government.

When the Australian Bureau of Statistics website went down on Census night 2016, millions of Australians lost hours of their time. Everyone remembers the frustration of being told to log on at home to a website that was crashing.

Many people had completed their form, but were unable to submit it. Fixing this bungle cost millions of dollars.

After the farce of Census night the Turnbull government spent days see-sawing about whether there was a hack, a distributed denial of service attack or just a mistake that caused the site to crash.

To be clear – the Census 2016 debacle was the fault of the government, which left the post of chief statistician unfilled for nearly a year, and had three different ministers responsible for the Census in the year leading up to it.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS ON THE HOUR WITH TOM CONNELL

TUESDAY, 11 APRIL 2017

SUBJECT: Housing affordability.

TOM CONNELL: There's another litany of stories about housing affordability today, with the Coalition seemingly wrestling over just what to do. We know Labor's plan – it's been settled since before the last election – they will reduce the Capital Gains Tax discount and keep negative gearing only for new homes. Of course, grandfathering both of those measures. We've seen house prices climb a lot higher since then – in Sydney, in Melbourne – is the policy still fit for purpose? Joining us now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Thanks for your time today.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, Tom.

CONNELL: The plan that you've got at the moment. The intention – we're talking about stalling house prices. Do you need more than that in Sydney and Melbourne given 15-19 per cent increases? Do you need prices lower?

LEIGH: Tom, let's just look at what happened at the end of last year where house prices in Melbourne and Sydney were rising nearly ten times as fast as wage growth. So you get this phenomenon – I've struck it with young couples in my electorate – where they'll come to me and they'll say, 'I nearly had the deposit and then a few more auctions went by and suddenly I was priced out of the market.' The challenge is not driving house prices down, it's just making sure we don't continue to see this massive mismatch – terrible wages growth and house prices going gangbusters because investors are now half of the new buyers. 

ONE YEAR ON FROM PANAMA PAPERS,

WHAT HAS THE COALITION DONE TO STOP MULTINATIONAL TAX AVOIDANCE?

This week marks the first anniversary of the unprecedented Panama Papers leak that detailed the legal twists, turns and loopholes multinational companies and individuals use to avoid tax.

Multinationals who feared the Turnbull Government would be jolted into action will be popping corks on the Dom Pérignon.

Hard-working Australians who expected the Turnbull Government to close tax loopholes and increase tax transparency are left bitterly disappointed.

The past year has seen the Turnbull Government launch a phoney war on tax avoidance. They want middle Australia to think they’re getting tough with multinationals, while at the same time they give their mates a $50 billion tax cut.

The Turnbull Government’s failures on tax avoidance include:

THE HON ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION AND PRODUCTIVITY

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CHARITIES AND NOT-FOR-PROFITS

SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE IN SERVICES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

THE HON MARLENE KAIROUZ MP

MINISTER FOR CONSUMER AFFAIRS, GAMING AND LIQUOR REGULATION

MEMBER FOR KOROROIT

2017 IS THE YEAR FOR CHARITY FUNDRAISING REFORM – BUT NOT IF YOU’RE MALCOLM TURNBULL

 Outmoded charity fundraising laws are holding back innovation, jeopardising trust and wasting valuable resources in the sector. 

At today's #fixfundraising event, leading voices in the sector made it clear that bringing charitable fundraising regulations under the Australian Consumer Law is the answer to the problem. 

As the sixth Coalition Minister to take responsibility for the charity sector in four years, Michael Sukkar must make it his first priority to be clear with the #fixfundraising alliance by answering one simple question: does the Turnbull government believe the Australian Consumer Law is the right regulatory framework for fundraising?

SPEECH TO JUSTICE CONNECT’S

‘FIX FUNDRAISING’ EVENT

WEDNESDAY, 5 APRIL 2017

MELBOURNE

 ***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

 Thank you for the generous introduction. You were good enough to run through my various titles, but for the purposes of today only one of those matters. I am proud to be the first Shadow Minister for Charities and Not-for-Profits. Under a Shorten Labor Government, I would be the first Minister for Charities and Not-for-Profits. I have had consistent responsibility for that portfolio since Labor lost office in 2013.

I note that Assistant Minister Michael Sukkar has just taken over responsibility for charities in the Turnbull Government. I look forward to working with him - as I've done with his five predecessors over the past four years. 

Adam Smith, one of the founders of modern economics, is best known for his book The Wealth of Nations, but in an earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith gave what I think is one of the best answers to the question of how we should spend our lives. He wrote, 'to be amiable and be meritorious, that is to deserve love and deserve reward, are the great characters of virtue. Man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely. To be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.'

Talking with people in business, I'm often struck by how well Smith's words encapsulate what we aspire towards. Most people don't just want to make money, we want that sense of inner tranquillity that comes from feeling that we are decent, ethical and admirable. In Smith's formulation, most of us want to be 'lovely'. Being involved in charities and philanthropy is one way we can do that. The typical career lasts only about 80,000 hours, and most of us want to make a contribution in that time.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS - AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 3 APRIL 2017

SUBJECT/S: Newspoll, Scott Morrison’s tax cut for big business.

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda, with me this morning is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Just in terms of that point there, the 10 point support for Greens, 10 point support for One Nation, does it show as David and I have been suggesting that the two major parties are on the nose right now?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning, Kieran. I think it's always important for major parties to continue to press our case and to the question of bipartisanship Labor has worked constructively with the Government where we can see ways that are making fair budget savings. We've supported over $100 billion of savings where they were reining in payments going to people in the higher end of the spectrum. But that doesn't mean we need to support a GP co-payment, cuts to pensions, cuts to Medicare – those sorts of things run directly counter to Labor values and we've stood up on those. If you look at the Newspoll today I don't think it's a great surprise that after a week spent fighting for tax cuts for the top end of town and for penalty rate cuts for those working on Sundays and to weaken down racial hate laws that Malcolm Turnbull is on the nose for many Australians.

GILBERT: In the idea of that grand bargain notion between the major parties, I think that that would go down well for the vast bulk of the population wouldn't it? In areas where there are common interest here in terms of the two major parties and your view of the national interest?

The person who handles my media is moving on, so I’m inviting applications for a Canberra-based media adviser who can assist me with publicly communicating on issues of economic policy.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AUSTRALIAN AGENDA
SUNDAY, 2 APRIL 2017

SUBJECT/S: Company tax; Trade policy; Sugar code; Investment; Protectionism; Government debt; National Broadband Network; Renewable energy

DAVID SPEERS: Alright time to bring in our next guest this morning, Labor's Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh a very good morning to you and thank you for joining us. Let me go straight to what Jennifer Westacott was suggesting earlier, what is Labor's plan for boosting business investment, productivity and economic growth given that you do support now a higher company tax rate, a higher tax on capital gains, a higher tax on high income earners personal income tax rate. Where is the plan to grow the economy?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: David, I'm happy to go to any of those particular challenges but in terms of our long-term plan it's around investment in infrastructure and skills. Labor believes that we need to invest in our schools, not rip $30 billion out as the Coalition want to do. We're in favour of a stronger vocational education system at a time when apprenticeships have fallen in half. We want to make sure that every kid who has the smarts to get a place in university can go there. On infrastructure, we want to see cost-benefit studies used more rigorously in determining what we spend on. We don't have an ideological bias against rail as the Coalition has in the past. We want to see Infrastructure Australia given more weight in choosing projects because if we make smart infrastructure investments - including broadband - we can boost prosperity in the long run.