Andrew Leigh

BARNABY WANTS THE PRICE OF MILK TO GO UP 

BARNABY JOYCE, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: If I go to a place and say ‘Well, I’m just going to start selling cases of beer at $15’ and say that’s the case. I know if I keep doing that, I’m going to send out every bottle shop in the district. People will say, well in the short-term didn’t they get a better price? Yeah, sure, and when you think they’ve all gone do you think they’re going to keep the price of that case of beer at $15? Of course not.

JOURNALIST: If I could change this term, what about dollar milk?

JOYCE: Well, this has been a discussion that’s been around for quite a while. I obviously believe that the proper price of milk is above a dollar. They say they are not selling it below cost. What I say is that in many instances, it’s a loss-leader that is bringing people into the shop and they pick up the money in buying other products. The way we had to deal with that in the Department of Agriculture is by starting to open markets into China and we sell that same litre of milk to China for up to $11.

TURNBULL BACK FLIPS ON ECONOMIC POLICY WITH BAD EFFECTS

By supporting the ‘effects test’, a deeply divided Cabinet has come to a decision today that will chill innovation and investment. The only beneficiaries of this decision will be lawyers.

Malcolm Turnbull has totally capitulated on the effects test after earlier arguing against it.

Twelve months after the Harper Review was released and following a Cabinet brawl, the Government has adopted a thoroughly bad piece of economic policy.

Labor has consistently opposed an effects test, which will threaten legitimate competition and see higher consumer prices.

The Prime Minister talks a lot about innovation in the economy. Yet Australia’s largest employer, Wesfarmers, said in its response to the effects test that it is deeply concerned about the negative impact of an effects test on investment, innovation and growth.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
ABC 24, CAPITAL HILL
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
TUESDAY, 8 MARCH 2016

SUBJECT/S: Tax reform, Labor’s economic leadership, chaos in the Coalition, moving the budget for pure partisan politics, double dissolution.

GREG JENNETT: Labor's Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, joins us now.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good afternoon, Greg.

JENNETT: Good afternoon. Looking at the calendar and the constitution seems an odd way to be governing but that's the situation we find ourselves in at the moment. Does an early budget seem likely to you?

LEIGH: It seems now like a live option, Greg, and that is just adding one more piece of chaos to what has been a terribly scrappy start to the year for the Government. The budget process, as you well know, is one which involves a range of different interest groups with each of them having their time to feed in over an agreed timetable. Then within the departments of Treasury and Finance - I've spent time seconded in the Department of Treasury - the Budget process is a huge machine. To now say to everyone working on that process you have to move not for economic reasons but for partisan politics just seems crazy.

JENNETT: Can they respond to that in your experience, having done a bit of work around there? Can they actually meet a deadline of a week earlier?

LEIGH: I'm sure they can, but the question is will the quality of economic advice be as good as it would be if the Government stuck to the timetable we have had for the last 20 years. The answer to that is surely: no. 

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.