Andrew Leigh

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

ROSS HART MP

MEMBER FOR BASS

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

LAUNCESTON

MONDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 2016

SUBJECTS: Turnbull Government’s lack of investment in Northern Tasmania; inequality; backpacker tax; education

ROSS HART, MEMBER FOR BASS: Welcome everybody. It's a great pleasure to have here in Northern Tasmania Dr Andrew Leigh, who's the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, talking to people in the community about the importance of investment in jobs and infrastructure in the north of the state. I've taken Andrew up here to Ravenswood to show him the fabulous child and family centre, and to stress the importance of embedding these wraparound services into communities. If we're serious about creating jobs in a community like Northern Tasmania we really need to invest in people as well as infrastructure. Unfortunately, the Turnbull Government doesn't get the fact that you need to invest over a long period of time in order to see meaningful results in a community like Northern Tasmania.

Welcome Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks very much, Ross. Since Ross's election I've been asking him when I'd have the opportunity to come and spend some time in Launceston. Seeing the facility here in Ravenswood and speaking with Ross about the challenges in the community really does remind you that in the age of Trump, Brexit and Le Pen, the conversation around inequality needs to be richer and deeper.

Labor firmly believes that we need to do more to create more jobs. The unemployment rate in Launceston is now nine per cent. Many families are experiencing the frustration of teenagers leaving school not able to find a job. Labor wants investments that will ensure we have well-paying jobs now and into the future. We want to ensure we have a better healthcare system, that we have a better education system which provides opportunities in school, vocational training and universities.

In Ross Hart, the community of Bass has a fantastic local member. Somebody who understands deeply the challenges of inequality and who's committed in his heart to doing as much as he can to create a more cohesive community. Australia does benefit from our engagement with the world and Tasmanians know that – through exports of salmon and milk, and through the overseas students who come to study at the University of Tasmania.

But we need to make sure that globalisation works for everyone. That globalisation includes the wraparound social supports that ensure that the benefits of growth that flow from globalisation are fairly shared across the community. Labor doesn't believe that sharing is as fair as it could be. We believe that inequality is a signal challenge of our age that needs to be tackled and they're the issues that we need to be focused on today.

We're happy to take questions.

LOCKING SOMEONE UP COSTS AROUND $300 A DAY OR ABOUT $110,000 A YEAR,         The Canberra Times, 14 November 2016

You might not know it to watch the news, but on many measures, Australia is becoming safer. In the past two decades, the murder rate has fallen by one-third. The rate of armed robberies has dropped by one-third. Car theft is down by two-thirds.

And yet while crime is falling, our prison population is rising at an alarming rate. In June, 38,685 people were in jail. At the current pace, the prison population will soon pass 40,000. If our jail population were a city, it would be the 36th-largest city in Australia – larger than Albany, Bathurst or Devonport.

As a share of population, I estimate that Australia now jails 207 in every 100,000 adults. That's a higher incarceration rate than in most other nations. To take just a few examples, imprisonment rates in Australia are higher than those in Canada, Japan, France, India, Germany, Indonesia or Britain.

Curious to know how the current lock-up rate compares with Australia's past, I dusted off some old statistical volumes and started comparing the figures. I was shocked to discover that the last time our incarceration rate was this high was 1901. 

Representatives from the local community today met Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, and Member for Bass, Ross Hart, to discuss their concerns that Northern Tasmania is missing out on local jobs while the tax system continues to favour multinational companies and wealthy individuals.

“People in the Launceston community are really feeling the Turnbull Government cuts to childcare, aged care and education. Along with cuts to welfare and job-training programs, all of these decisions will increase inequality in Northern Tasmania,” said Mr Hart.

“They hear the government beat its chest every week about creating jobs­ ­– and they want to know why so many people in their community can’t find any work. 

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

 THURSDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2016

Those of us who sit in this House are here because people put their faith in our undertaking to represent their best interests. This bill, the Migration Legislation Amendment (Regional Processing Cohort) Bill 2016, would permanently exclude any person who comes here by boat from ever entering Australia. In proposing this measure, the government has made a political gesture that is in no-one's best interests—not those sitting in Manus and Nauru, not those refugees who have come to Australia in the past and not those Australians who are concerned to see that our tax dollars are spent wisely and our migration program is an orderly one.

This is gesture politics at its worst, with all of the effectiveness of the pledge by candidate Trump to build a wall along the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it. That is how effective this proposal would be. It asks people to make peace with the pettiest and meanest instincts, by dressing up those instincts as strength and certainty. It trades on fear and demonisation of the other, aiming to set up a dichotomy between us and them, hoping that Australians will forget the refugees who have come here in the past, who have helped to make Australia richer, more diverse and more interesting; refugees—from Anh Do to Frank Lowy to Les Murray—who have enriched our country.

It is a bill that demeans the elements of the coalition who have instigated it, and it is a bill that has incensed my electorate. As one of my electors wrote to me:

"I was so disheartened today to read of Mr Turnbull's plans to introduce legislation to the Parliament in the next session that any person seeking asylum who has travelled to Australia via a boat will be banned from ever entering this country...One of our dearest friends, who sadly died last year, was a boat person. He, with his family, escaped Hungary in the 1950s and made his way to Australia...Please do not bend to the far-right bigotry that is holding this government to ransom and do not vote for this ghastly piece of legislation." 

The Turnbull Government has broken its promise to Australian small business owners to hold an independent review into a key automotive repair industry agreement within three months of the 2016 federal election.

It has been reported today that independent car service and repair businesses are complaining that they get limited access to standard servicing information from car manufacturers, despite the 2014 Agreement on Access to Service and Repair Information for Motor Vehicles.

As a result, their ability to offer competitive or even cheaper car servicing prices to consumers faces significant restrictions. 

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

 THURSDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2016

In the 240-year history of the American republic, no candidate has ever before been elected president without previous military, executive or legislative office. Elections determine power, not truth. It remains true today as it was yesterday that Donald Trump has called women ‘pigs’ and has made fun of a reporter with a disability. He has advocated a ban on Muslim migration and has called Mexicans criminals and rapists. He has claimed that President Obama was born in Kenya and only admitted to Harvard through affirmative action. He has dismissed an American born judge as a ‘Mexican’ who would not fairly hear his case and attacked the parents of a Muslim soldier killed in action.

As Nick Kristof, the New York Times columnist, noted summarising Trump's behaviour over four decades, 'I don't see what else to call it but racism.' These remain facts and those who say that the people in Australia should refrain from stating these facts are effectively saying that when someone is powerful, we should not call out sexism and racism. It was reasonable for those on the other side of the House to describe Mr Trump as 'terrifying', 'kind of weird' and his comments on women 'loathsome'. And those who made these comments should not now refrain from them.

What should progressives do on the day after a Trump victory? A temptation is to retreat but it is vital to remember that reform is two steps forward, one step back. As the great American Martin Luther King once wrote, 'Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.' The great American Martha Nussbaum wrote that many of those who transformed their countries have drawn on the ethic of love including Jawaharlal Nehru, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. As the great American Barack Obama once put it, '… whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose.' And an increased partisanship cannot be met by increased partisanship.

Today is the day in which many progressives are naturally sad and angry, wishing to pull the blanket over their heads and retreat from political life. But I urge progressives to remember the words of another great American progressive, United States senator Cory Booker, who spoke about the politics of love at the recent Democratic National Convention. He concluded with a wry smile that 'love trumps hate'. Maybe not every day, but in the long run.

OLD PARLIAMENT HOUSE , CANBERRA

 WEDNESDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2016

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

Last month, Australian life expectancy hit a new high – 80.4 years for men, and 85.5 years for women. That means a baby born today can expect to enjoy about 30,000 days on the planet.

You can see this as a lot or a little. Compared with past generations, this is an extraordinary amount of time. In cosmic terms, it’s a mere blip.

But rather than asking “how long do I have?”, the better question is “what can I do with the time that I have?”. For most of us, that comes down to doing good work. A typical career lasts around 80,000 hours of work. How do we make the most of that time?

Adam Smith, one of the founders of modern economics, is best known for his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of 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 to be meritorious; that is, to deserve love and to deserve reward, are the great characters of virtue… The consciousness that it is the object of such favourable regards, is the source of that inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction with which it is naturally attended… Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or 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 do. Most people don’t just want to make money; they want to be the kind of person that others look up to. In Smith’s formulation, most of us want to be ‘lovely’.

The Labor Party has committed to a suite of innovative policy reforms designed to support Australia’s Cooperative and Mutual Enterprises sector.

A lack of competition for the big banks is one of the reasons that the rorts and rip-offs we’ve seen in the financial services sector continue to harm consumers. Mutual banks and credit unions can help increase competition to get better outcomes for Australians.

At the moment, member-owned firms like these are at a competitive disadvantage to corporations in accessing capital to expand their operations, competing on a level playing field, and staving off hostile takeovers.

Labor is making a commitment to implement key bipartisan recommendations in the Senate Economics References Committee’s March 2016 report into cooperative, mutual and member-owned firms.

These reforms will facilitate fairer access to capital for credit unions and building societies to compete effectively with large banks, clearly define mutual enterprises and director’s duties in the Corporations Act, and remove unnecessary regulations and thresholds.

Labor will:

Today the Turnbull Government has taken its attack on the public servants at the Australian Bureau of Statistics to the next level.

Agency management have just announced to its staff that up to 150 jobs need to be cut in the next few months.

The ABS is announcing these job cuts just two weeks after admitting to a Senate Economics Committee that it will be spending an extra $30 million trying to fix the 2016 Census – the worst census ever and one of Malcolm Turnbull’s biggest stuff-ups.

Now the very public servants who have worked so hard to rescue the census disaster are being forced to pay the price for the Turnbull Government’s mismanagement with their jobs.