Andrew Leigh

New Innovations Switch Things Up

The Chronicle

3 November 2015

When Gutenberg’s printing press emerged in 1440, it transformed the world. Today, three-dimensional printing is threatening to do the same. From hobby parts to medical implants, 3D printers are transforming manufacturing.

But while the technology promises a great deal, a decent 3D printer remains expensive – which is where Canberra firm Made for Me comes in. By allowing printer owners to rent out time to users, Made for Me lets more people have access to 3D printing.

I met the Made for Me staff on a visit to the Canberra Innovation Network in the city. Home to dozens of new firms, the network is brim full of ideas. It also boasts Australia’s youngest entrepreneur (10 year old Will G), and best gender diversity (half of the firms in the accelerator program are run by women).

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

MONDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2015 

SUBJECT/S: Liberals’ plan to increase the GST

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning everyone. When it comes to tax reform, every problem for this Government seems to come back to the GST. It's said that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For this Government, tax reform looks like raising or broadening the GST. The problem is, when you look at the big challenges Australia faces, the GST is exactly the wrong response.

If you look at inequality, which is now at a 75 year high, raising one of our most regressive taxes would hurt the most vulnerable. If you look at consumer confidence, it's very clear that with consumer confidence still fragile, jacking up the cost of spending could well do damage to the Australian economy. You've only got to look at Japan which raised its consumption tax and saw the economy slide into recession. If you look at the big challenge of housing affordability, it's very clear that putting the GST on mortgages as Dan Tehan has advocated today would just drive housing affordability further out of the reach of the typical household.

So whether it's inequality, consumer confidence or housing affordability, raising the GST is not the answer. And frankly, if you think that raising the GST to 15 per cent is the right answer for Australia, you're probably asking the wrong question.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWS RADIO

FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2015

 

SUBJECT/S: GST and tax fairness.

 

MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Leigh, the Government is still only talking in broad terms about its objectives for tax reform but one objective is that it be fair. I imagine Labor shares that. But another one they've indicated is that there be no overall increase in the tax rate – does Labor share that view?

 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Marius, we need to make sure that we have the tax base necessary in order to fund the services Australians demand. For example, we saw that when we put in place the National Disability Insurance Scheme that Australians, by and large, accepted that there would be an increase in the tax share to fund a new part of the social safety net. Because any of us could fall victim to a profound disability. So I don't think there's any magic about the tax rate, but tax reform should always be equitable, efficient and simple. I'm just not sure that the Government's plans for a higher GST meet those tests. 

TURNBULL DISCOVERS ‘FAIRNESS’, TWO YEARS TOO LATE

Malcolm Turnbull’s hypocrisy was writ large today when he talked about making changes to the tax system that are ‘fair’.

Australians know what Mr Turnbull’s definition of ‘fair’ is: he ‘unreservedly and wholeheartedly’ backed every measure in the Liberals’ 2014 Budget. 

Supporting a GP tax on the vulnerable, making students pay $100,000 for their degrees and taking over $6,000 from the pockets of families: was this ‘fair’ Mr Turnbull?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I support unreservedly and wholeheartedly every element in the Budget. Every single one.

ALAN JONES: So you’re totally supportive of the Medicare co-payment?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I support every element, of course, including the Medicare co-payment. Do you want to go through the whole list?

ALAN JONES: You’re totally supportive of the increase in the fuel excise?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I support the re-prioritised funding of official development assistance. I support introducing co-payments for general practitioner pathology and diagnostic imaging services in the Medicare Benefits Schedule. I support the reforms to higher education. I support the changes to family payment reform. Do you want me to read through the whole Budget?

2GB – 5 June 2014

CLOSING THE INCOME GAP

2015 Economic and Social Outlook Conference

University of Melbourne

If you returned from work one day and found your home flooded by a gushing faucet, the first thing you’d do is turn off the tap. But once you’d stopped the water rising, could you then go about your evening as though nothing else was amiss? Only if you’re willing to overlook the rather pressing problem of everything you own being underwater.

That’s the approach some would have us take in response to the news that there has been a pause in the growing gap between the rich and the rest in Australia over the past few years. When the OECD released a report earlier this year showing that some measures of inequality had been stable in Australia between 2006 and 2012 – some newspaper columnists and political commentators welcomed this as a sign people like you and me should stop worrying about how much better Australia’s billionaires are doing than our battlers.

But to extend the analogy a little further: turning off the tap is not the same as draining out water. The fact that inequality has stopped rising for the moment does not mean that we’ve suddenly achieved an egalitarian idyll. Across the advanced world, Australia sits in the top third for our level of inequality.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

DOORSTOP

CANBERRA

TUESDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2015 

SUBJECT/S: Liberals Plan to Increase the GST; GST hit to Melbourne Cup; Labor Party

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks everyone for coming along today, my name’s Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer.  Australians we know are in many places doing it tough. The economy’s going through a rebalancing and many Australian families are working hard to make ends meet. So the last thing they need is a government that's looking to raise the GST or broaden its base.

Today with Melbourne Cup we know that the Government's plans for a high GST could well affect punters directly.  A higher GST might mean the GST increases the cost of bets or indeed it might mean that the GST applies on the entire bet rather than just on the bookie’s margin.

Frankly, we know that there's only one thing that Malcolm Turnbull's backing today and that's a rise in the GST.

Happy to take questions.

INDIGENOUS MARATHON PROJECT AND THE NEW YORK MARATHON

This coming Sunday, I will be running the New York Marathon along with this year’s Indigenous Marathon Project participants.

For Indigenous Marathon Project runners, this event marks the capstone of their training, which has covered leadership, health, and hundreds of kilometres of running.

The participants are an extraordinary group. Their life stories are inspiring, and I know that they will go on to make a positive difference in communities across Australia. I feel honoured to be running the race with them.

Malcolm's medium is Australia's XXXL, Business Spectator, 28 October

Calling a firm earning $100 million a year a “medium-sized company” is like describing Andre the Giant a featherweight. It’s so wrong as to be laughable.

 

Yet that is exactly how Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has described the companies his government chose to shield from Australia’s tax transparency laws.

 

In the last sitting fortnight the Turnbull Government rammed a bill through the Senate that gutted transparency rules put in place by Labor in 2013. Our laws required the Australian Tax Office to publish information about the income, taxable income and tax paid by companies earning more than $100 million. The first report was supposed to be published by the end of the year.

HUMANS NEED NOT APPLY: WILL THE ROBOT ECONOMY PIT ENTREPRENEURSHIP AGAINST EQUALITY?

Fall 2015 Distinguished Public Policy Lecture
Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University

In 2006, chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik was beaten by chess computer program Deep Fritz. In 2011, quiz show champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings were beaten on Jeopardy! by IBM’s Watson computer. Modernist composers are experimenting with singing software that can mimic a human voice box, but without its physical limitations.[1] Earlier this year, Google announced that their driverless cars had completed over 1 million road miles in Nevada, Florida, California and Michigan. Among the newlyweds who stand at the altar this year, more than one in three couples were brought together by a computer algorithm.[2]

Breakthroughs in processing power, data availability and machine learning have affected all our lives. Within the past decade, fields such as image search, voice recognition, language translation and robotics have seen huge breakthroughs. While a digital assistant might have seemed fanciful a decade ago, the advances in Apple’s Siri technology suggest that it may not be far off. Surgeons who now use computer-guidance to tell them where to cut may soon be stepping back so that a robot can do the job. Within a decade or two, Douglas Adams fans who admired the Babel Fish may be able to pop a simultaneous translation device in their ear.

For well-educated professionals earning six-figure salaries, the world of artificial intelligence seems exciting, optimistic and – well – cool. And yet I want to argue today that no serious economist should be thinking about the aggregate benefits of technology without considering its distributional implications. Since the path breaking work of Wolfgang Stolper and Paul Samuelson in 1941, trade theorists have known that cutting tariffs raises aggregate living standards, but can make some workers worse off. So too we need to intertwine our understanding of technology with recognising its impact on inequality.

But putting yourself in the shoes of others isn’t easy. So I want to scare you a little, by drawing on an idea that’s increasingly coming out of science fiction and into the newspapers. Perhaps then, when you realise that the monster might in fact be living under your bed, we can talk about what to do about it.

Five things that matter, The Australian, 28 October

A few months before the 2013 federal election, the Australian economist Stephen Koukoulas issued the incoming Liberal Government what he called ‘a very simple and professional challenge’. Fed up with all their rhetoric about fixing the budget and turbo-charging the economy, Koukoulas challenged the Liberals to improve Australia’s economic performance on five key indicators.

The indicators he picked were the ones any good economist looks to when taking the temperature of an economy: GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, wages and interest rates.

As Treasurer 2.0 Scott Morrison starts work on the upcoming Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, it would be worth him returning to those key indicators. If he does, he’ll find problems on all five fronts. The mid-year budget update is Scott Morrison’s chance to show his government has any kind of plan to get the dials on Australia’s economic dashboard moving the right way again.