Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

FRIDAY, 4 MARCH 2016

SUBJECT/S: charities commission; tax reform; economic indicators

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER, ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks everyone for coming. My name is Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer.

Over three years after the charities commission was created, the Coalition has finally decided they support it. Let's be clear: the charities commission was set up for practical reasons, and should always have enjoyed bipartisan support. The charities commission is good for charities who are able to be listed on the register setting out the charities who are doing the right thing. It's good for donors: someone turns up at your doorstep and you're wondering about whether they are legitimate, you can go to www.acnc.gov.au and check out their bona fides. And it's good for taxpayers to have the accountability of knowing there is a one-stop-shop charity register that provides everyone with the information they need to know who are the decent charities in Australia.

The charities commission came out of recommendations from numerous inquires going back to 1995. In 2006, a bipartisan Parliamentary inquiry recommend the creation of a charities commission. Malcolm Turnbull was one of the people who was on that committee, and signed of supporting the charities commission. In 2010, the Productivity Commission recommended a charities commission. 

Yet the Coalition's opposition to it has always been ideological. Under Kevin Andrews, Scott Morrison and for six months under Christian Porter, the Coalition has had its official policy: killing the charities commission. It's taken six months for Christian Porter to finally be able to say to charities commission that they get to stay. 

In today's Sydney Morning Herald, I review two new books about marathon running - Ed Caesar's Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon, and Catriona Menzies-Pike's The Long Run.

In the early-1980s, I remember watching Rob De Castella running a race through the middle of Sydney. At one point, a teenager on the nearby path tried to run alongside him. The kid was sprinting at top speed, but couldn’t keep up with Deek for even a hundred metres.

Watching top marathon runners on television, it’s easy to forget how blindingly fast they are. In 2013, Asics set up a treadmill ahead of the New York marathon to see how long people could keep up with the pace of the leaders. Most lasted only seconds. 

Government's ACNC Backdown a Win for Charities 

Media Release 

4 March 2016

More than three years after the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission began operation, the Coalition has finally bowed to public pressure and dropped its plans to shut it down.

The charities commission helps charities, donors and taxpayers, by reducing the paperwork burden and improving transparency. Since it started work on 3 December 2012, surveys have consistently shown that four out of five charities support the organisation. 

REINING IN TAX EXPENDITURES

Tax Institute National Convention, Melbourne 

4 MARCH 2016

*** CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ***

When I studied graduate public finance, one of my lecturers was Martin Feldstein. Feldstein was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan, and not exactly regarded as one of Harvard’s most progressive economists.

But as you know, there’s a surprising amount you can learn from someone of a different ideological persuasion. I liked Feldstein’s style – a meld of maths and war stories. Every now and then one of my classmates, Jason Furman, would get into a furious back-and-forth argument with Feldstein. At the time, it seemed a little impertinent. Less so now that Furman is serving as President Obama’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Lunar New Year and Poliversity 

3 March 2016

The 2016 Lunar New Year celebrations, acknowledging the Year of the Monkey, were recently hosted by the member for Berowra, the Father of the House, and me here in one of our courtyards. Members and senators were joined by community representatives including Sam Wong AM; Donni and Samuel Pho, from the Australian Salvation Army; Mrs Chin Wong; and Gary Lee, the 2016 New Australian of the Year. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, also spoke at the celebrations and welcomed the inauguration of what will hopefully be an annual fixture on the parliamentary calendar. We launched traditional floating lanterns into one of the parliamentary ponds—possibly the first time this has happened—and then moved to the public lawns on Federation Mall to enjoy the skills of David Wong's Prosperous Mountain Lion Dance group.

Canberra International Flights 

3 March 2016

Travel broadens the mind. One reason Canberra is such a cosmopolitan city is that it is a city of travellers. Canberrans have always traded confidently in the international marketplace of experiences and ideas—Nobel laureate and ANU Vice-Chancellor once told me that ANU is the only place that he could have done his internationally engaged research in astrophysics, because that is the way in which our city thinks.

But, up until now, the doorway to the rest of the world has been at the end of a three-hour drive. Canberrans struggle along the M31 and the M5 before finally ending up in the traffic clogged bad lands of the Airport East Precinct. And when you return, jet-lagged and unwashed, you face the same choices: a domestic connection or pushing on, somewhat hallucinating, on a bus a car trip back down the Hume.

Tax Laws Amendment (Norfolk Island CGT Exemption) Bill 2016

2 March 2016

In rising to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Norfolk Island CGT Exemption) Bill 2016, I move:

That all the words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

'while not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House calls on the Government to make Australia’s capital gains tax regime fairer and more sustainable.'

Labor supports the measures in this bill, in the same spirit with which we supported the initial suite of legislative changes in the Norfolk Island Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, passed by this parliament with bipartisan support last May.

Matter of Public Importance Debate

Housing Affordability

Tuesday 1 March

 *** CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ***

I was holding a street stall recently when a young couple came up to chat about their troubles buying a first home. She was a teacher, he was a builder, and they were thinking about having a family but they were worried that they would not be able to meet the mortgage repayments when their two incomes went down to one. Despite being in their late 20s, this couple were looking at moving back in with their in-laws. Changing nappies and juggling sleepless nights under the same roof as their in-laws was not their idea of the Australian dream. But their story is, sadly, typical.

Since the early 1980s the share of 25-34 year olds who own their own home has fallen from about 60 per cent to about 30 per cent. It used to be the case that the top fifth were just as likely to own a home as the bottom fifth but now there is a 15 percentage point gap in home ownership rates between the top and the bottom. In the early 1980s the average home loan for a first home buyer was $81,000. Now, it is $308,000. Over just the last two years we have seen house prices in Australia go up 20 per cent and yet we have got the slowest wage growth in 18 years. As the young Canberra couple said to me, 'It's hard to afford a mortgage when the prices are going up so much faster than your income.'

Those opposite want to pull up the ladder of opportunity on young Australians. The gap in homeownership is another part of the growth in inequality that Australia has seen over the course of the last generation, where earnings have risen three times as fast for the top 10th as for the bottom 10th, and where the wealthiest three Australians now have as much wealth as the poorest one million Australians.

Seeking Social Capital Stories, The Chronicle, 1 March

Six years ago, the year I entered parliament, I wrote a book titled Disconnected, about the collapse of community life across Australia. In the decades leading up to 2010, Australians became less likely to join community organisations – a trend that can be seen in membership data from bodies as diverse as Rotary, Lions, Scouts, Guides and Apex. We became less likely to go to church and less likely to join a union. We became less likely to know our neighbours, and the average Australian reported fewer close friends.

Since becoming a member of parliament, I’ve met hundreds of passionate social entrepreneurs, and hoped that the trends might reverse. But if anything, new data suggest that the drop is continuing. Since 2010, Australians are less likely to be involved in social groups (down from 63 to 51 percent) and political groups (down from 19 to 14 percent). We are less likely to give money to charity (down from 71 to 65 percent), play sport (down from 74 to 70 percent) or volunteer (down from 36 to 31 percent).

Hidden heroes who should be household names, Canberra Times, 1 March

The Lucky Country is fortunate to be served by so many inspiring public servants.

When Bob Stirling started working as a public servant, he probably never imagined that his skills as a dog breeder would come in handy. But thanks to him, beagles became the friendly face of Australia’s quarantine regime.

They ultimately helped him design and manage the detector dog program that put beagles as the friendly face of Australia’s quarantine regime. As Stirling once observed, ‘‘even people who are afraid of dogs are not afraid of beagles. Beagles are cute, they have a brilliant sense of smell and they are single-minded to the point of stubbornness.’’

These days, beagles have been replaced by labradors but, thanks to Stirling’s creative approach to solving a problem, Australia turned security screening into a positive public outreach effort that continues to set our airports apart today.

When you start looking, stories like Stirling’s pop up from all over the Australian Public Service