Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

CANBERRA

MONDAY, 29 FEBRUARY 2016

SUBJECT/S: Tax reform, multinational tax

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning everyone. Today I'll be introducing into Parliament a private member's bill to toughen the penalties on multinationals. I want to say a couple of words about how we got here. In 2013, Labor in office introduced the biggest ever package cracking down on multinational tax avoidance. The Coalition voted against it. We introduced changes that provided more tax transparency and we saw the first data released last December. The Coalition voted against those too. In the first half of this Parliamentary term, Labor put together a $7 billion multinational tax plan carefully costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office and informed by the OECD. The Coalition are refusing to implement it. When the Coalition bring to Parliament their plans, they just have asterisks where the budget numbers should be. The Coalition are yet to bring a serious multinational tax plan to the Parliament. 

Last week we saw Labor in the Senate amend multinational tax laws to provide more transparency and therefore ensure more tax paid by multinationals. And today I will be introducing a private member's bill that will ramp up the penalties. Because right now, for a multinational that fails to lodge its country by country accounts, the fine is $5400. To a billion dollar company, that represents 0.00054 per cent of their revenue. It's a slap on the wrist when we need a serious penalty. When we say to a company ‘obey the law or pay the fine’, we don't want them to chuckle out the side of their mouth and just go off and pay the fine. My private member's bill will increase the penalties on multinationals 50-fold from $5400 to $270,000 plus triggering an audit if firms don't comply. Australians have had enough from firms who don't play by the rules. Labor is the only party who is serious about tightening rules on multinational tax.

Yet again, Labor is leading the debate on tax. The chances of Malcolm Turnbull coming up with a fair, pro-growth tax plan are like the chances of Godot turning up midway through a Samuel Beckett play. Malcolm Turnbull is simply incapable of providing the tax leadership and the economic leadership that he promised before he got rid of Tony Abbott. Labor is serious about tax, we have a hundred billion dollars of carefully costed savings plans on the table and we're providing the economic leadership that Malcolm Turnbull promised but has failed to deliver. Happy to take questions.

UP, DOWN; RICH, POOR: IT’S THE TURNBULL HOKEY-POKEY

Having seen how well running two contradictory scare campaigns worked out yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull has decided to add even more confusion to his Government’s chaotic position on negative gearing.  

Just as Malcolm Turnbull argues Labor’s negative gearing policy can simultaneously drive prices up and down, apparently it can be both an attack on the wealthy and a gift for them all at once.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWSRADIO

THURSDAY, 25 FEBRUARY 2016

SUBJECT/S: Lowest wage growth on record under the Coalition Government’s economic management; Tax reform

MARIUS BENSON:  Andrew Leigh, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning, Marius. How are you?

BENSON: I'm well. Do you share that view – I guess it's not a view, it is an Australian Bureau of Statistics fact – that we are getting poorer?

LEIGH: It’s a real concern, Marius. I think the reason this has come about is people have been focussing on the headline GDP number for many years. But GDP doesn't account for population growth. We are one of the fastest-growing countries in the OECD in terms of population. When you take that into account, you can look at something like Net National Disposable Income per person and that has actually fallen 3.5 per cent since the Coalition came to office. That is one of the best measures of living standards that we have.

MORE TRANSPARENCY, SOONER FOR BIG FIRMS THANKS TO LABOR 

The Senate has today passed Labor amendments that will give the Australian Tax Office access to information about big companies’ financial affairs sooner, and improve public transparency.

The Common Reporting Standard is an important global agreement for cracking down on multinational tax avoidance. It allows tax authorities to automatically exchange information about the contents of company and individual bank accounts.

Until now, multinational companies and wealthy individuals have often been able to avoid paying tax in one country simply by sending their money offshore to another jurisdiction so that tax authorities cannot see it.

Team Leigh is looking for a Media Adviser

The person who handles my media is moving on, so I’m inviting applications for a Canberra-based media adviser who can assist me with publicly communicating on issues of economic policy.

I have a pretty broad range of ways through which I engage on policy issues - from books to speeches to interviews to op-eds to tweets.

Along with my other four staff, my media adviser helps draft, coordinate, and project those ideas. This involves drafting media releases, speeches and op-eds, chatting with journalists, and working in with the rest of the Labor team. The hours tend to exceed 40 hours a week, and can be unpredictable - for which there's an overtime allowance.

TURNBULL KEEPS DIGGING ON SCARE CAMPAIGN

 Joint Media Release with Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen

“When you’re in a tax hole, stop digging” – Malcolm Turnbull, Question Time, 23 February 2016.

Mr Turnbull might want to take his own advice. His Government is split wide open on tax and its ‘scare campaign’ against Labor’s policy.

Malcolm Turnbull’s not so scary campaign that Labor’s policy will “crash housing prices” has been torpedoed by the Assistant Treasurer.

The Assistant Treasurer said on Channel 7’s Sunrise this morning:

“The Labor Party has a very irresponsible campaign, they have got a policy that will increase the cost of housing for all Australians, for those people who own a home and for those people who would like to get into the housing market through their negative gearing policy.”

John Brudenall

24 February 2016

On 27 January, John Brudenall passed away, aged 77. John was the Deputy Parliamentary Librarian, having served in the Parliamentary Library from 1966 to 1996. Margaret Reid described him as 'the father of the modern Parliamentary Library'—as having moved that library from a card index to the internet. He was, as Bob Halverson noted on John's retirement, 'a visionary in his enthusiasm for the library's being at the forefront of information technology'. John began his career serving the National Library of Australia, and continued working in library services after his time in the Parliamentary Library, serving the library of the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia. He and his wife, Sue, lived in Argyle Square, and his quiet work was of a piece with so many of the great parliamentary librarians who continue to serve us. In his eulogy for John Brudenall, Alan Wilson said, 'John was always fair, honest, kind, reasonable, trusting and understanding.' Frances Cushing said, 'He valued all of us in such a personal way that I think it made us want to be better than we were, and that is a wonderful quality in anyone.'

Doctor John Hirst 

22 February 2016

I want to acknowledge the passing of historian and public intellectual John Hirst, who passed away recently aged just 73. John Hirst was at the La Trobe University history department from 1968 to 2006—a history in itself. He was head of the department, and author of 16 books which have shaped our understanding of Australia. Among them are The Oxford Companion to Australian History, Australian History in 7 Questions and The Shortest History of Europe, which has sold more than 100,000 copies—more than 10,000 copies in China alone.

Professor John Legge

22 February 2016

John Legge passed away on 4 February 2016, aged 94. In the words of the former president of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Elaine McKay, 'John Legge, more than any other, was the founder of modern Asian studies in Australia.' He spent time in the 1960s at Cornell University, then the pre-eminent centre of South-east Asian studies in the United States. He was inspired by the work of George Kahin and, in John's words:

At the end of my Cornell semester came the next part of the plan—fieldwork in Indonesia focusing on local government. Across the United States by car, over the Pacific by Dutch cargo ship, to Singapore via the Philippines and then by KPM ship to Java. That six months was to be the first of what became more or less annual visits to Indonesia.

Closing the Gap

22 February 2016

I note at the outset that only two of the seven targets in Indigenous health, education and employment are on track to be met on time. Halving child mortality by 2018 is on track. As to ensuring 95 per cent of Indigenous four-year-olds are in preschool by 2025, that is not clear. Halving the gap in reading and numeracy by 2018 is classified as 'mixed'. Halving the gap in school attendance by 2018 is not on track. Halving the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020 is on track. Halving the employment gap by 2018 is not on track. And closing the gap in life expectancy by 2031 is not on track.

I turn to each of those targets in detail. On the issue of life expectancy, the report notes that meeting the goal of closing the life expectancy gap by 2030 remains 'a significant challenge'. The data is only available every five years, but the report found that between 2005-07 and 2010-12 the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians only shrank by 0.8 of a year for men and 0.1 of a year for women. Indigenous Australians still continue to die about 10 years earlier, on average. And, while Indigenous mortality rates have declined 16 per cent since 1998, this will not be enough to meet the target. Indigenous deaths resulting from cardiac disease have fallen, but deaths from cancer are, as the report notes, increasing.