Andrew Leigh

The Government has lurched so far to the populist right, it has now begun defending the economic policies of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation as mature and rational.

In a radio interview this morning, Trade Minister Steve Ciobo claimed that One Nation’s approach had a certain “economic rationalism…reflective of what it is to govern Australia in a fiscally responsible way,” and that theirs was a, “mature approach to economic policy.”

One Nation’s economic policies include:

• A flat 2% tax on every Australian.
• (But also) Exploring the removal of Federal taxation.
• Getting rid of penalty rates, ‘across the board.’
• Opposition to globalization.
• Opposition to free-trade economic policies.
• A promise to withdraw from international treaties.

Second reading speech

9 February 2017 

In my remarks today, I want to deal with the three arguments that the coalition has made for cutting the company tax rate: the first, that Labor once supported cuts to the company tax rate; the second, that other countries have lower corporate tax rates; and the third, that it will boost growth. I want to explain to the House in turn why each of these arguments is wrong.

The coalition first of all claims that Labor, in the past, has supported company tax rates. It is certainly true that Paul Keating took the approach of broadening the base so you could lower the rate. Against the opposition of Liberals and Nationals at the time, Paul Keating brought in things like capital gains tax and fringe benefits taxation. He ensured that our tax base was broader and, in so doing, was able to finance a rate cut. This broadening of the corporate tax base was the same philosophy that underpinned the Gillard government's approach, and then we said at the time we would support a modest reduction in corporate tax of one or two percentage points.

In a desperate attempt to distract attention away from their $50 billion tax cut to large companies, the Turnbull government attempted today to pretend that it is serious about reducing multinational profit-shifting.

 It is not.

 As usual with this government, you have to follow the numbers, not the spin. The Coalition’s diverted profits tax will raise just $200 million over the forward estimates.

Distracted by its own internal turmoil, the Turnbull Government’s silence in response to their latest online failures – a four day systems crash at the Australian Taxation Office - has been staggering.

The ATO's website was offline for days - and the agency can't explain why.

Australian voters are fed up with being ignored and having their time wasted by the Turnbull Government’s incompetence.

Disturbingly, no senior figure from the government has stepped forward to offer an explanation: not the Treasurer Scott Morrison or Revenue Minister Kelly O'Dwyer.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS, AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2017

SUBJECTS: Trumbull’s year so far; Bernexit; Clean Energy Finance Corporation investing in coal.

KIERAN GILBERT: With me now is Labor frontbencher, Andrew Leigh. There were reports over the break that Cory Bernardi will be leaving the Liberals and setting up his own Australian conservative movement and now the ABC is suggesting that is going to happen within 48 hours  Your thoughts and reaction on that story?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: We thought Tony Abbott had set the benchmark for a bad start when he knighted Prince Phillip but it seems Malcolm Turnbull is able to go one better. He has had a catastrophic start to the year, Kieran. A lack of policy direction, losing his health minister and now with Cory Bernardi and George Christensen clearly off the reservation. This is a Prime Minister who isn't even able to lead his own party let alone to tell the nation where he wants to go. Nor to answer that fundamental question: what's the point of the Turnbull Government?

Competition is the best way to fuel growth and end tacit collusion, Herald Sun, 5 February 2017

Do you know which day of the week is cheapest to buy groceries? Or which day of the week is cheapest to buy whitegoods, cars and home appliances? Spoiler alert: there isn’t one! So why is there a cheap day to buy petrol? If hundreds of petrol stations really are engaged in dog-eat-dog competition, why do they all raise prices on the same day of the week?

After decades of researchers trying to understand bowsernomics, a new study may have cracked the nut.  Economists David Byrne from the University of Melbourne and Nicolas de Roos from the University of Sydney analyse nearly 2 million daily petrol prices. Alarmingly, they find that petrol retailers have been engaged in ‘tacit collusion’, resulting in coordinated prices, less competition and higher margins for retailers.

To be clear, these experts are not alleging the type of collusion that involves secret meetings, fake moustaches and disposable mobile phones. Rather, it is ‘tacit’ collusion where, through a gradual and unspoken process, firms slowly converge on the same pricing strategy so as to maximise revenues.

Sifting through the data, the researchers produce the economic equivalent of an Agatha Christie novel. They find that the dominant firm, BP, performed the role of the price leader. BP’s prices acted as a focal point for the broader market to converge on. Through a long process of trial and error, by 2010 all petrol stations had adopted the same pricing strategy.

Here’s how the game ended up being played. Every Thursday prices went up by 15-20 cents per litre. Then, for the next six days, the price fell by 2 cents each day. Like clockwork, the cycle repeats itself week after week. The only change was in 2015, when all petrol stations switched from Thursday price jumps to Tuesday price jumps.

As the most recent Australian Taxation Office website outage enters its third day, Australians are beginning to wonder why the Turnbull Government seems incapable of that most basic of 21^st century technological functions - keeping government websites online.

After last December’s three-day outage, the Turnbull Government assured Australians that it had fixed the problem. Then the website was taken offline three more times - for “maintenance”. And now, just eight weeks later, the website is down again.

The increasing participation of Australians in the sharing economy shows no sign of slowing down, as a report today has made clear.

This is why Labor announced our National Sharing Economy Principles in October 2015 and took them to last year’s election.

However, the absence of any leadership from the Abbott-Turnbull Government on the issue has remained.

In the past couple of years, dozens of Australian companies such as Car Next Door, Parkhound, GoGet and Camplify have sprung up to help Australians make better use of our spare rooms, and unused tools, or tackle problems like traffic congestion and parking shortages by sharing resources around. 

After sweltering through the hottest year on record, many Australians would love to get a backyard pool. But who could imagine that the Turnbull Government is letting some taxpayers write their swimming pool off as a tax deduction?

According to reports today, new swimming pools installed on rural properties are being claimed as tax write-offs – if they are described as 'water storage facilities'.

Sixteen months after taking over as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has allowed net government debt to increase by nearly $40 billion – or $1600 for every Australian. And yet his government seems relaxed about allowing the pool rort to continue, with a spokesperson for Minister O’Dwyer blithely referring queries to the tax office. 

Labor supported the asset purchases deductions measure for small business when it was proposed in the 2015 budget, but we expected the government would carry-out the standard due diligence.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS, AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 23 JANUARY 2017

SUBJECT/S: Housing affordability; Medicare levy; Visit to refugee camp in Myanmar/Burma

TOM CONNELL: Joining me now is Labor's Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Thanks for your time this morning on the program.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, Tom. Happy New Year to you and your viewers.

CONNELL: And you, I hope you enjoyed a nice break before we got back into it all. What a way to start, housing affordability. I know it's something you enjoy talking about. The Government, reportedly the Treasurer is looking at this plan that has been rolled out in the UK, he is sounding out various ideas and it does look like it will be a priority for the Government in 2017. This plan could give billions in loans towards projects or agencies who are trying to build affordable housing, like the CEFC making projects that maybe would not have got finance from banks get the tick, what do you think of this plan?

LEIGH: Tom, housing affordability is a first order issue. The home ownership rate is now the lowest in Australia it has been in 60 years. For young people, the share of them owning their home is way down on where it was just a couple of decades back. You've got to distinguish between a policy which builds a small number of homes at the bottom end of the market and one which could make a difference right across the wide swath of the market. So sure, we should look at innovative financing solutions but let's not pretend that that's going to make it easier for middle Australia to buy a house. Here you need to look at something else the Conservatives have been doing over in the UK. In the 2015 budget the British Conservatives decided to make changes to negative gearing. The British Conservatives, against a scare campaign in which some of the tabloids said it was going to drive down house prices saw through significant changes to negative gearing of the kind that Labor has been proposing in Australia.