Andrew Leigh

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.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

RN BREAKFAST

THURSDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2015 

SUBJECT/S: Labor’s positive plans for the sharing economy; Joe Hockey’s valedictory.

FRAN KELLY: Later today Labor leader Bill Shorten and his Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh will announce Labor's new sharing economy policy. Labor asked for, and received, more than 500 policy submissions from interested parties including Uber, GoCatch and Airbnb. Andrew Leigh joins us now. Andrew, welcome back to RN Breakfast.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks Fran.

KELLY: Labor's policy lays out six economic principles for the sharing economy. But it doesn't really offer solutions yet, which is the hard part of this – how to regulate the sharing economy, isn't it?

LEIGH:  Well Fran this is about a national conversation on the sharing economy. We know we've now got one in 200 Australian homes listed on Airbnb, and within a year of setting up in Sydney one-tenth of Sydneysiders had used Uber. So it is important that smart governments move ahead of this and create the environment for innovation to flourish, but also an environment in which we make sure that sharing economy firms are paying their fair share of tax, they're supporting good wages and working conditions, they're providing access for people with disabilities, they're looking after public safety and they’re playing by the rules.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW

ABC NEWS BREAKFAST

THURSDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2015

SUBJECT/S: Labor’s positive plan for the sharing economy; Marriage equality.

VIRGINIA TRIOLI: Labor is today unveiling its policy on the sharing economy and Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh joins us now from Parliament House. Andrew Leigh, good morning. Thanks for making time for us.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure, Virginia.

TRIOLI: Let's stay with that example of Uber, the ride-sharing service, Airbnb and the like. What sort of regulation should be in place?

LEIGH: Well Labor's view is that we need regulations that maintain good standards but also encourage new firms to emerge. We'd like the next Uber or Airbnb to be an Australian firm. So we want to create an environment where sharing economy companies like Pawshake – the petsitter – and Parkhound – that solves parking problems – can emerge. To do that, we need to make sure that the sharing economy abides by a basic set of principles. Bill Shorten and I will be running through those principles later today but they include making sure that firms pay appropriate wages and conditions; that Australian safety standards are upheld; that sharing economy firms pay their fair share of tax; and that people with disabilities have more opportunities rather than fewer as a result of the sharing economy. 

LABOR’S NATIONAL SHARING ECONOMY PRINCIPLES

Joint Media Release with Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten

Labor has today announced our plan to embrace the sharing economy and see all Australians share its benefits. 

New services like Airbnb, AirTasker, Camplify and GoGet are changing the way Australians buy and sell things. They are also changing how we think about work and the line between private property and public goods.

There is huge economic and community potential in this emerging peer-to-peer market. 

Australia must embrace it, while ensuring we have the right rules in place to protect workers, consumers and the public good.

Labor’s plan is based on six principles. 

Principles for a Sharing Economy

House of Representatives

22 October 2015

Ahead of an AFL game at the MCG, Michael Nuciforo and Robert Crocitti were driving around East Melbourne looking for a place to park. As they put it:

As we drove past parked car, after parked car, after empty space that required a parking permit … It then hit us. Wouldn't it be great if we could just knock on someone's door and ask to park at their place for a small fee? … The more we thought about it, the more it made sense … We don't need more parking spaces, we just need to utilise the parking spaces we already have.

Parkhound is one of the many sharing economy services that have emerged in Australia over recent years. Uber, Lyft and Sidecar are transforming transport for many Australians and offer the potential of dealing with traffic congestion. Victorian freeway speeds have dropped from 68 kilometres an hour to 45 kilometres an hour over the last decade as our roads have become increasingly choked. 

Customs Amendment (China-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2015, Customs Tariff Amendment (China-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2015

House of Representatives

22 October 2015

I sometimes wonder how Australia's founding fathers would regard debates in this place were they to know that we would be sitting here with both sides of the parliament supporting trade liberalisation and supporting better engagement with China. Indeed, at the very moment this debate is taking place, the Queen of England is hosting Xi Jinping for a state dinner in London.

Federation was founded around a protectionist settlement. That protectionist settlement was one with which the Country Party and the Labor Party were agreed. As late as 1948 Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley told parliament: 'If the matter had been left to us, we should not have initiated a conference to discuss the lowering of world tariff barriers.'

Belconnen Magpies

House of Representatives

22 October 2015 

For five years now, I have been a patron of the Belconnen Magpies Aussie Rules football club. It is a club with a proud history—originally known as Turner Football Club, then the Bees and then the Blues. Then, after its merger with the West Canberra Football Club, it became the Belconnen Magpies in 1987 and moved to its headquarters in Kippax in 1991.

Although I have not gotten to as many games as I would like to this year, I did get out to 'The Nest' at Kippax to see the Magpies' convincing 118-35 victory against the Ainslie Tricolours on 29 August. The ACT AFL competition grand final was held on 19 September. Playing in both the first and second grade matches were, of course, the Magpies. Alas—despite a thrilling semifinal victory against Tuggeranong on 5 September—the first grade side was narrowly upset by Queanbeyan, 95-71. The Magpies second grade team also fought to the end, but ultimately went down to Tuggeranong 87-39.

Constituency Statement 

Federation Chamber 

19 October 2015

It was my great pleasure last Thursday night to attend not one but two innovation events in the ACT. In Braddon, just across the road from my electorate office, The Studio Braddon is opening—a bright, beautiful and bold space hosted by Maylee Thavat which provides working opportunities for NGOs, for innovative businesses and for women returning to work. The Studio benefits from getting the National Broadband Network, but, alas, my electorate office, a stone's throw away, does not. It is again a testament to the great benefits that the National Broadband Network is bringing to Australia. The Studio Braddon complements a similar space that exists in O'Connor.

I also had the pleasure of speaking at the 10th anniversary of Capital Angels, an ACT based network of 'angel' investors, who talked about many of the important start-ups here in the ideas city. I would like to acknowledge Michele Troni, Nick McNaughton, Stephen Hardy, Ian Cox, Doug Stuart, Keith Ayotte, Bob Quodling, Uwe Boettcher and the indefatigable Anna Pino for their support of innovative businesses here in Canberra.

Canberra is not just the national capital but also the social capital and the creative capital of Australia, and it was terrific to be inspired by those two groups of innovators last Thursday.