Andrew Leigh

MEDIA RELEASE

LABOR RISES TO THE CHALLENGE OF THE SHARING ECONOMY

Labor today launched a new Discussion Paper on the rise of the sharing economy to help release the in this innovative new sector.

Australia has a housing affordability crisis, yet there are nine million spare bedrooms across the nation.

Some of our major cities are in gridlock, yet the majority of cars carry only one person. Many people own a power drill, yet use it less than an hour a year.

Sharing economy services can help us make more efficient use of the world’s existing stock of bedrooms, cars, tools and more.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 23 MARCH 2015

SUBJECT/S: Emissions reductions targets; Budget; Moss Review; Pyne the ‘fixer’

KIERAN GILBERT: This is AM Agenda, thanks very much for your company. With me now, the Assistant Defence Minister Stuart Robert and the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Good morning gentlemen. First on the carbon emissions target, is the nation on track to meet the 5 per cent reduction by 2020 despite all the warnings of the Labor Party and other critics that direct action would not be enough?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Well Kieran, from all the data I've seen, emissions have been increasing not decreasing under this Government, you look at the official emissions data and they fell under the period of the carbon price, reductions around the order of around 1 per cent a year clearly on target, since then emissions have been tracking back upwards. If the Government's getting any future reduction emissions it's probably through their goading the car industry to leave and overseeing the death of manufacturing in Australian rather than because they actually have good policies. We're still yet to find a credible economist who thinks that paying polluters is a better way of reducing emissions than a market based approach.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

CANBERRA

MONDAY, 23 MARCH 2015

SUBJECT/S: Government’s lack of budget strategy; Lee Kuan Yew; Homelessness funding; Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Today the Parliament will be honouring Malcolm Fraser, a prime minister whose record on multiculturalism and on issues like apartheid is certainly to be admired. He was somebody who helped thousands of Vietnamese refugees settle in Australia and when other countries were fragile on questions of race, he took a very clear stance on the moral issue of apartheid. We'll also be now just a few days away from the next budget coming down. Extraordinarily, Australia is still talking about the unfairness of the last budget. We've got Tony Abbott, who when debt was one-seventh of national income, thought it was appropriate to drive debt trucks around, now thinks it's ok when debt is heading to half of national income. To my mind, that would require a debt aircraft carrier rather than a debt truck. This is a government which has lost the confidence of the Australian people because rather than being focused on the long-term future of 24 million Australians, it is obsessed by the short-term political prospects of 20 Cabinet ministers. Happy to take questions.

An Australian Republic 

17 March 2015 

Walter Scott said:

Breathes there a man with soul so

dead, Who never to himself hath said;

This is my own, my native land.

These fine words have never been uttered by any Australian head of state about Australia. Under our Constitution, they never could be uttered. That is because, while no British citizen can ever be Australia's head of government, only a British citizen can ever be Australia's head of state.

This bill brings the monarchy into the 19th century. It ensures that the sexism inherent in the current arrangements is no longer present, that a firstborn girl can succeed in preference to her younger brother. It ensures that marrying a Catholic is no longer a bar to ascending to our head of state. But it fails to ensure that any of my three little boys—Sebastian, Theodore or Zachary—could one day aspire to be Australia's head of state or, indeed, that any of the 800 children born today could be Australia's head of state.

Public service cuts and Abbott's disregard for Canberra

19 March 2015

Prime Minister Abbott told a press conference this week that the upcoming budget would be 'much less exciting' than last year's. This suggests to me that the Prime Minister found it exciting to end the jobs of 11,000 public servants. Many of them reside in my electorate. This cut to the Public Service is the deepest yearly cut since John Howard's first term as Prime Minister.

Many Commonwealth agencies are currently reluctant or unable to take on full-time permanent staff, due to restraints on recruitment. But they are spending more on hiring contractors. I have spoken in this place before about a couple who approached me at my mobile office in Gungahlin. They said that the only thing holding them back from starting a family was the fact that due to the hiring freeze she had not been granted an ongoing job, and without the security of maternity leave, they did not feel they could start a family. So much for a family-friendly government.

Corporate Taxation 

19 March 2015

Since coming to office, the Abbott government has given $1.1 billion of tax breaks back to multinationals while cutting family payments for low- and middle-income households and cutting the wages of the cleaners who clean their offices. With so much recent speculation and concern about how much tax big companies really pay, there is a need for hard numbers to better inform the public debate.

At present there is simply no way to find out how much tax the largest companies pay or easily compare the reporting of publicly listed ones. A Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance has underlined the need for greater tax transparency in Australia. A third of the submissions to that inquiry backed the public release of more information on how much tax companies really pay. A majority of those submissions raised concerns about the availability and accuracy of corporate tax data. It is clear that the Abbott government needs to act to improve tax transparency.

Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014

18 March 2015 

I rise to speak on the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014. In considering any bill before the House, it is absolutely vital that we first recognise the status quo. On the issue of telecommunications data, as much as on any issue since the 1999 republican debate, misunderstandings about the status quo have bedevilled the debate about proposals for changing that status quo. So I want to begin by talking about the situation as it currently exists, before the passing of this bill.

At the moment telecommunications companies keep a lot of data about Australians. They keep information about call histories and about the mobile phone towers with which our mobiles have communicated. They keep this information for varying periods of time, sometimes up to seven years.

MEDIA RELEASE

LABOR’S TAX EXCHANGES NET $730 MILLION

Labor welcomes word from Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan that bilateral information exchanges signed under the previous Labor Government have added $730 million to multinational tax revenue over the past two years.

Commissioner Jordan will today tell the Tax Institute’s annual conference that information sharing with other countries about the tax affairs of big multinationals netted $480 million in 2012-13. A further $250 million was collected in 2013-14.

MEDIA RELEASE

COALITION TO HELP BIGGEST COMPANIES HIDE FROM TAX SCRUTINY

Leaks out of today’s Liberal party room confirm the Abbott Government is gearing up to dump transparency laws which would let Australians seen how much tax big multinationals pay.

Because of reforms introduced by Labor in 2013, the Australian Tax Office is getting ready to release information about the taxable income and tax paid for companies earning over $100 million.

But in today’s party room meeting, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg reportedly announced he is working on plans to roll back the transparency laws.

There are many lessons that other Australian cities can learn from their Bush Capital. Canberra leads the nation in a number of measures of community contentedness and this is exemplified on occasions such as the Canberra Show, Enlighten, and the Multicultural Festival. Every year I host my own community event, Welcoming the Babies, which brings new parents, professionals and service providers in the field together at a community barbecue. I hope to see you there!

16 March 2015 

Federation Chamber 

Since the 1960s many measures of social capital in Australia have waned. On average Australians have fewer friends and know fewer of their neighbours. We are less likely to join organisations, to attend church or to be part of a union. As a nation we are more disconnected. But Canberra bucks that trend. The nation's capital is also our social capital. As we forge ahead with an Australian civic renaissance, Canberra has many lessons to teach the rest of Australia.