Andrew Leigh

POLICY BANNING UNFAIR CONTRACTS WILL SHIELD SMES FROM EXPLOITATION

Joint opinion piece with
Julie Collins MP
Minister for Housing
Minister for Homelessness
Minister for Small Business

The Australian, 9 August 2022

The cleaning companies were multi‑billion‑dollar firms, but most of their customers were small businesses. So the big firms wrote contracts that allowed them to increase their prices. To make things worse, the contract said that if the small businesses didn’t like the price rises, they had to pay huge penalties to cancel the contract.

Small companies often lack the resources and bargaining power to negotiate terms in standard form contracts. Existing laws haven’t stopped the use of unfair terms, which are hurting small businesses across Australia.

Right now, contract terms found by a court to be unfair are unenforceable, but they’re not illegal. That’s why we’ve announced that the Albanese Government will outlaw unfair contract terms. If companies put unfair terms in their contracts and a court finds they are unfair, then they can cop a penalty from the court.

LABOR WANTS TO WORK WITH BUSINESS IN A RACE TO THE TOP

Australian Financial Review, 9 August 2022

With an area of around 700 square kilometres, Singapore is about 1/10,000th the size of Australia. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t have much of a mining industry. But starting around 2006, Singapore suddenly began to play a key role in Australian commodities exports. From 2006 to 2014, BHP sold $US210 billion worth of resources to its Singapore subsidiary. They then marked it up by 10 per cent and sold it on. The iron ore never went near Singapore – it was shipped out of Western Australia to the final buyers in Korea, China, India and Japan. Yet somehow a chunk of the profits landed in Singapore.

The creation of Singapore marketing hubs isn’t the fault of the Singaporean government, which has a long and distinguished tradition of welcoming traders and financiers from around the world. It arose because some clever accountants at BHP and Rio decided to play a thimble-and-pea trick with their profits. Some called it ‘the Singapore Sling’, but while the cocktail is a deliciously sweet gin drink, these tax tactics left a sour taste in the mouth of Australian taxpayers.

Work underway on crypto asset reforms

Increase to penalties for breaches of competition and consumer law

Historic charities consultation begins

Public consultation begins on Multinational Tax Integrity and Transparency

JOINT MEDIA RELEASE WITH

The Albanese Government has released a discussion paper for public consultation on our election commitment to ensure that multinationals pay their fair share.

Multinational corporations making a profit in Australia should pay their fair share of tax in Australia.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS TO THE AUSTRALIAN REPAIR SUMMIT

CANBERRA

FRIDAY, 5 AUGUST 2022

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land we are meeting on, the Ngunnawal people. I acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the region, and I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.

Building on the success of last year’s event, I would like to thank Griffith University and the Australian Repair Network for hosting the second Australian Repair Summit.

In particular, I would like to acknowledge Professor Leanne Wiseman for her efforts in organising the Summit and bringing everyone together today. I would also like to acknowledge Professor Wiseman’s expertise in researching the links between intellectual property and the right to repair.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
PARLIAMENT HOUSE
WEDNESDAY, 3 AUGUST 2022

SUBJECTS: Labor’s plans for a better future; Productivity Commission report; Territory rights; Fuel excise.

ANDREW LEIGH, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY: Good morning. My name is Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. It's my 50th birthday today, and 50 years ago it was just on the cusp of the election of the Whitlam Government, a great reforming Australian government that changed the lives of so many Australians for the better. And it's a real pleasure today to be celebrating my 50th birthday as part of the Albanese Labor Government, a government strongly committed to making life better for Australians by taking action on climate change, taking on cost of living pressures, and making sure that we tackle the key challenges of inequality, slow productivity, and declining social capital.

In Australia today, we've had an economy which has been too stagnant, in which productivity growth has languished after nine years of neglect from the Coalition. The Productivity Commission's interim report today lays bare some of the real challenges that the Australian economy faces, and makes clear that the Productivity Commission's five year review is going to take a hard look at some of the challenges around building innovation, around ensuring that we've got a more skilled Australian economy, around making sure we've got cheaper energy prices, and ensuring that we have infrastructure which is focused on the needs of Australians, not the political imperatives of the Coalition.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 2 AUGUST 2022

In 1952 Marvin Minsky invented the 'useless machine'. It was a little machine with a box with one switch on it, in the off position. If you turned it on then a little hand came out of the machine to turn it back off again. That was its only purpose. As Arthur C Clarke put it:

There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing—absolutely nothing—except switch itself off.

And that's what Australians are saying about the last nine years. As the Economist has noted of the British conservative government, the Liberals were, when they were in government, the political equivalent of a useless machine: they know what they're against, they know what they want to turn off, but they have no idea what they are for.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1 AUGUST 2022

In 2016, Canberra man Nebojsa Pavkovic died on his 61st birthday.

He was at the end of a five-week hunger strike inside a body which he knew was no longer working. Mr Pavkovic had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for a decade and had come to the decision, speaking with his family, that he wanted to end his life. He was, however, unable to do so through voluntary assisted dying and had to do so through the much more traumatic and painful approach of a five-week hunger strike. As daughter Katarina Knowles said, 'He was really, truly bedridden, and it was just the worst.'

I spoke to Katarina a year ago, when I was moving a private member's motion in this place to repeal the Andrews ban - to finally allow the ACT and the Northern Territory to have the same rights as the states to legislate over voluntary assisted dying.