A conversation with Dr Andrew Leigh, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities

Intro:
Welcome to CPA Australia's With Interest podcast, bringing you this week's need-to-know information for businesses and accounting professionals.

Dr Jane Rennie:
Hello, and welcome to CPA Australia's With Interest podcast. I'm Dr. Jane Rennie, General Manager External Affairs at CPA Australia.
Today we're joined by a special guest, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities, Dr. Andrew Leigh. Welcome to With Interest, Dr. Leigh, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Dr Andrew Leigh:
Hey, thanks Jane. Thanks so much for the invitation and thanks to the work that CPA Australia and your members do for improving the policy and economic conversation.

Dr Jane Rennie:
Well, speaking of the economic conversation Minister, among With Interest listeners we have many business owners as well as people who support businesses. I know they'd be interested to know, if elected, what can businesses expect from the ALP to address current economic challenges?

Dr Andrew Leigh:
Well, the first point Jane, is that it's been a very tough time for business under the coalition. We've had slower economic growth under this government than its predecessor, slower productivity growth, slower wage growth, lower business investments, and on average a higher unemployment rate. This is a government which has taxed more, borrowed more and spent more than last Labour governments, but delivered less. I've had a lot of conversations with business as you'd imagine, whether it's through boardroom conversations, one-on-one meetings, engagement, as I move around the country, and one of the strong senses I get is that business wants certainty on the climate wars, so we'd be delivering a Powering Australia plan that won't just reduce emissions and create jobs, but it'll also put downward pressure on power prices. Through the Child Care plan we'll ensure that we unlock the productivity of parents who are at the moment often priced out from participating in the labour market, and through a strong and experienced economic team, Jim Chalmers, Katy Gallagher, Matt Thistlethwaite, Stephen Jones and myself, we would engage with business in government as we've done in opposition, respectfully, sharing one another's views, and with an eye in to the big picture and an ambition for the country.

Dr Jane Rennie:
You just mentioned that you would engage with businesses. Can you give us a bit more of a sense, especially when it comes to small businesses, how you would work, you and the team would work, to implement your economic agenda with businesses?

Dr Andrew Leigh:
Well, it's engagement that you do in a whole lot of different ways, whether it's turning up to a local Chamber of Commerce meeting, whether it's getting on the Zoom to have a conversation with a business owner. I know many business owners will come up to me in my street store meetings in my own electorate, and frequently when I travel around I'll do business roundtables with local members or with candidates. It's just a matter of being immersed in business and having that strong sense as to what's happening, getting the feedback, and having an honest conversation.
One of the silver linings of opposition has been having an enormous amount of time to do that, so we've sought to reach out and engage. We've also been troubled by the way in which the coalition has run a lot of the so-called consultation programmes in Treasury. We've had too many conversations with business people where they've said that they're just not being listened to or that the process is being rushed. We'd aim for calm, considered consultation processes if we took the Treasury ventures and ensure that small business was at the heart of that.

Dr Jane Rennie:
Earlier you mentioned a couple of really key economic issues, and taxation was one of them. I'm sure you can imagine our listeners are always very interested in [POP 00:04:02] and superannuation issues. What can we expect from Labour in the tax and super space? Are there any key announcements we could look out for in the campaign?

Dr Andrew Leigh:
We've been clear that the only tax changes Labour government would make is to do with multinationals, and that apart from that we wouldn't be looking to change individual or personal income tax scales, and we'd be doing that if we won office coming after a government which is currently the second highest taxing government of the past 30 years, the highest of course, being the Howard government. If you look at tax as a proportion of the economy, under the last Labour government it averaged 20.9%. Under this government it's averaged 22.3%. The coalition is collecting an additional $5,000 in tax for every Australian and an additional $11,800 for every household, and so the tax burden has gone up, but I think many business people feel that the investment has been too often on pork barreling and programmes that aren't delivered, such as the $5 billion for submarines that never arrived, rather than investing in the National Broadband Network, in much-needed transport infrastructure in urban areas, and in ensuring that we take the speed limits off the Australian economy.
When you've got productivity growth going backwards, you know something is seriously amiss, and yet I feel that too often the concern of the Liberals has been about what a decision will mean for their political prospects rather than what it means for small business around the nation.

Dr Jane Rennie:
I wanted to take a moment to talk about charities and not-for-profit. CPA Australia is a long-standing advocate for fundraising regulatory reform. One of the biggest challenges that we've identified to reforming fundraising laws has been getting states and territories on board. Labour has announced that it will fix fundraising if it wins the upcoming election. What can you tell us about how you plan to do this?

Dr Andrew Leigh:
It's a matter of working hard with states and territories in order to modernise our fundraising laws. The fundraising laws were put together at a time when going online meant putting the washing out in Hills Hoist, and now we have an environment in which a charity that wants to fundraise online has to register in seven different jurisdictions. That takes a typical staff member a week of paperwork and is costing the sector over a million dollars a month, so we would get that done.
But we'd also work with organisations like Philanthropy Australia to set a target to double Australia's philanthropic giving by 2030. Doubling philanthropy sounds like a big goal and it certainly is, but we believe it's achievable. Certainly we need a government which works with charities rather than against them.
The open letters that we've seen from charities to successive Liberal prime ministers complaining about attacks on charities and pointing out that attacks on advocacy are ultimately undermining our democracy, have eroded the philanthropic sector's power and the ability of charities to participate in a healthy democracy, so we'd really look to reset the relationship with Australian charities, setting a positive goal to grow philanthropy and build the sector together through things like an expert working group and better consultation with the sector. We'd seek to work with charities, whereas I think any reasonable observer of the last eight and a half years would say that this has been a government which has really mostly worked against charities.

Dr Jane Rennie:
I'm just going to pick up on a word that you mentioned then, participating in democracy, and I think of course there is a balance on the one hand between the need to streamline regulation for charities in the not-for-profit sector, and on the other hand to ensure there is appropriate accountability and transparency to protect the public. How would the ALP in government aim to achieve this balance?

Dr Andrew Leigh:
Yeah, and we did that through setting up the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission when we were last in office. The establishment of the ACNC was opposed by the Liberals at the time. They went to the 2013 election trying to scrap the Charities Commission, and if it hadn't been for Labor's objection, then the incoming Liberal government would've gotten rid of the Charities Commission. When they couldn't get rid of it, they replaced its well respected head with somebody who'd made his name as a charities critic and who centralised power within the organisation.
I think that's really left the Charities Commission less able to do the important work that it does of building up charities, spreading the word that they do, making sure that they're held accountable, and deregistering charities if needed, but ensuring that they work collaboratively with charities. The ACNC was envisaged to be like ASIC for charities, but it's been hamstrung under the coalition and we'd like to see it achieve its full potential.

Dr Jane Rennie:
Of course, we think the accounting profession has an important role to play in supporting Australians in times of disaster and crisis, including supporting charities and the broader not-for-profit sector. How do you view the accounting profession's role in providing this support?

Dr Andrew Leigh:
Well, I think it's absolutely critical. The first thing I note is that there's an awful lot of pro bono work being done by the accounting profession. I really love speaking to charities who'll tell me about the assistance that they've received in their accounts or in putting in fundraising applications from local accounting firms that are just looking to give back to the community. It's a great tradition within the accounting profession. I'd love to see more of it.
I also think that the accounting profession has great expertise in how to ensure that reporting is diligent, but not unduly demanding, and ensuring that we get that balance right between transparency and not unduly burdening organisations, so I'd like to draw on that wisdom if we're fortunate enough to form government and I became the Assistant Minister for Charities, I'd certainly be looking to the expertise of the accounting sector in terms of how we better craft those regulations.

Dr Jane Rennie:
Building on this, Dr. Leigh, over the last couple of years accountants have played a critical role in advising and supporting the Australian community, small business, not-for-profits and the charity sector, of which those are sectors themselves which have found it quite hard during, or very hard during COVID. Is there a message you'd like to share with CPA Australia members and accounting professionals about their contribution?

Dr Andrew Leigh:
We value the contribution that you've made to the community and particularly to disaster-hit communities. It's been a tough few years for all of us. The combination of floods and COVID and bushfires has really put the squeeze on many organisations and communities. Ensuring that CPA plays a critical part in the recovery has been very important for me and for everybody in Labour, from Anthony Albanese down.
We recognise the power of accountants as small businesses in their own right, but also as enablers of the business sector more broadly, and the passion that so many accountants have for not just ensuring that their clients are complying with the law, but also for encouraging them to find new business opportunities and new ways to grow and thrive.
People sometimes think that productivity is just something that governments slice up and hand out to organisations, but those who've worked in business understand that productivity improvements are ground out one institutional change at a time, and enabling those changes to take place, encouraging the uptake of technology, is really where we get that productivity growth, which ultimately underpins growth in living standards.

Dr Jane Rennie:
That's all we've got time for today. I'd like to thank our special guest, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities, Dr. Andrew Leigh, for appearing on the show.
If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd love to have you as a regular listener. With Interest is a weekly podcast bringing you current developments affecting business and the accounting profession. You can download episodes of With Interest on all major podcast apps. If you've got a question about CPA Australia's policy and advocacy work, or there are topics you'd like us to discuss on the show, please email [email protected]. From all of us here at CPA Australia, thanks for listening.

Outro:
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