Monday, July 20, 2020

Powerbrokers: Mr Jim Killaly Researcher of ANU Fame - Mark Leibler, his 'lobby' and their legacy

Milton Friedman, the ideological godfather of market deregulation, once noted that “only a crisis … produces real change.”

The crisis has come – and with a vengeance. So let’s not let it go to waste. It’s well past time to reassert some control over our working lives.


Mr Jim Killaly - Researcher of ANU Fame, who is partial to NSW Parliamentary Red Wine, has penned insightful story for the Australian Policy Online publication ...


The Glencore Case: transfer pricing and the world of possibilities

Australian Policy Online by Jim Killaly

Company tax Profit shifting Business enterprises tax policy Australia The important and contentious Glencore Case breaks new ground in the application of Australia’s transfer pricing rules to an integrated global business, particularly in framing how the rules take into account...

 

Jim Killaly, is now at the Australian National University and his collected thinking, almost 200 pages of it, can be found here. His paper, Fair Game: Is Australia Vulnerable or Getting Its Fair Share?, ‘proposes a systemic approach to policy and administration, including in relation to positioning Australia in the global economy, addressing the current performance of the Australian economy, evaluating the performance of Australia’s company tax regime, and in relation to the application of Australia’s transfer pricing rules to the facts and circumstances of particular cases’.


Don’t miss the book launch of a biography on AIJAC’s National Chairman @LeiblerMark titled “The Power Broker" written by the award-winning journalist & former editor of @theage Michael Gawenda, & launched by @JuliaGillard & Noel Pearson on July 20 at 6pm bit.ly/3fsgYTj

Verdict From humble beginnings, with a predominantly Jewish client base, Arnold, Bloch Leibler has become one of the most influential law firms in the nation with an expanding clientele, writes

Michael Gawenda in his new book, The Power Broker, an unauthorised biography of Mark Leibler.

Arnold Bloch Leibler is spread across three floors of the grand old Commercial Bank building at 333 Collins Street in central Melbourne. The white walls of the firm's reception area on the 21st floor are hung with large paintings - the sort of business art that some artists specialise in, big bold paintings that are essentially decorative and speak of success and power.

To one side of the reception is senior partner Mark Leibler's big corner office and three boardrooms. One is named after the firm's founder, Arnold Bloch, one for Ron Castan, the barrister who led the legal team in the Mabo case, and one for the former governor-general, Sir Zelman Cowen. Sliding walls enable the rooms to be opened into one large area to host lunches for up to 200 people.

Long before you arrive on the 21st floor, walking through the foyer of the building, through the arched entrance with its marble columns on either side, gives you a sense of how ABL has changed in positioning and confidence over the years.

The change reflects how its old clients, most of them Jewish and many of them Holocaust survivors, have gradually become more comfortable and recognised in business in the 60 to 70 years since they arrived in Australia.

A short walk up Collins Street is the Melbourne Club, where much of the business establishment and its lawyers gather and where Jews were not welcome until recently. Even now it is not clear whether Jews can join, as any prospective member can be anonymously blackballed, with no reason given.

Is ABL still a Jewish firm? Is there still a convergence of interests between Leibler's leadership of the Jewish community and the wealthy Jews who were ABL's base? Behind these questions are larger ones.

These clients help make ABL one of Australia's most profitable law firms. It is not large compared to Clayton UTZ, Freehills and Mallesons, for example. Some lawyers refer to it, snidely and never on the record, as a boutique firm.

While the big establishment firms have hundreds of partners and annual revenues of up to $600 million, ABL's fees revenue in 2018 approached $100 million. Although neither Leibler nor managing partner Henry Lanzer would divulge the exact profit, people at ABL who should know say it is over $45 million, which is a handsome dividend and would put average earnings of partners at roughly $1.8 million a year.


Mark Leibler, his 'lobby' and their legacy - The Australian

Australia's most powerful Jewish leader is a man of many parts

In the morning of a warm late summer's day last year, Mark Leibler is getting ready to travel to Israel. We are sitting at a small table in his office, but he is oblivious to the sweeping views of the city that shimmers in the sunlight.

This trip is the first of three visits to Israel Leibler will make in 2019 - this first one in summer, another in midwinter and the last one in spring. He has made these visits for 25 years, ever since he was elected to the two major international Jewish organisations that help determine how the substantial sums of money raised in diaspora communities will be spent on projects in Israel and, increasingly, in diaspora Jewish communities, especially the sixmillion-strong US community.

Even when he is in Israel, when his days are packed with meetings, he will be in constant touch with his office at Arnold Bloch Leibler, where he has been a partner for almost 50 years. He will take and make calls at any time of the day and night, talking to Jewish community leaders and Indigenous leaders who regularly seek him out for advice. Leibler is a man of many parts and he has learnt to move across these parts - from lawyer to Jewish leader to activist on behalf of Indigenous causes - so that each part enriches the others.

He is not well known to most Australians. His name does not appear in the newspapers often, though he has become, over the years, the go-to tax lawyer for financial journalists.

Yet his influence far exceeds his public profile. Of the 200 people and families on the 2019 Rich List, almost one in five are clients of Arnold Bloch Leibler. Partly as a result of this client base, Leibler is widely recognised as one of Australia's most influential tax lawyers. He has given advice and put the case for changes to tax laws to every Australian treasurer since John Howard had the job in the 1970s.

Since the late 90s, when his older brother, Isi, pre-eminent leader of Jews in Australia and a major figure in world Jewry, settled in Israel, Mark Leibler has been recognised as Australia's most influential and powerful Jewish leader, and has become increasingly influential in international Jewry. The Jerusalem Post has described him as one of the world's 50 most influential Jews. He has had, and still has, relationships with Israeli politicians, including prime ministers.

Anyone who has lived such a public life, and has been involved in so many different and seemingly unconnected areas, is bound to have critics and even enemies. Leibler has both. Former senior Australian Taxation Office officials who have had dealings with him have said he has a reputation as a bully who intimidates junior staff members conducting audits of his clients. Within the Jewish community, he has a reputation for being arrogant and a formidable and difficult opponent. Academic and writer Mark Baker, a lifelong Zionist, believes Leibler has tried and has largely succeeded in shutting down any criticism of Israel in the Jewish community.

Mark Leibler and Julia Gillard. Photo: Peter Haskin
Mark Leibler and Julia Gillard. Photo: Peter Haskin

Moravian born SIGMUND Freud was an active member of B’nai B’rith’s Vienna Lodge, founded in 1895. Which may partly explain how he developed his intriguing idea about the “narcissism of the small difference”. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful that along with the many other rich rewards which Michael Gawenda offers us in The Powerbroker, his new and compellingly readable book about Mark Leibler, he’s included Freud’s revealing gem.


Reflecting on the “hard and often ruthless …” style of our communal politics, Gawenda notes that the conflicts are “rarely about ideology”. More often it’s mostly personal. As Freud puts it, “It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of hostility between them.”


... And if “behind the scenes” scenes are your thing, it delivers. Chapter and verse. Many times over. Whether it’s about the Jewish community’s endless shtetl issues, its controversial dealings with governments that made headlines, or on who’s who on the Rich List. All there.



Tax savings separately from income: experts back reforms

Superannuation, dividends and savings would be taxed separately from wages and salaries under a plan to overhaul the income tax system with research revealing the nation's poorest and youngest are being hit with the biggest effective tax rates.

The Tax and Transfer Policy Institute based at the Australian National University has found young people are effectively bankrolling the advantages enjoyed by older people who in some cases are getting tax benefits worth more than their savings.


Around the world people are losing trust and faith in political systems. Many sense they observe, rather than participate, in their democratic parliamentary systems. Many feel alienated and disillusioned by party systems. The recent Brexit experience, presidential nomination of Donald Trump and Australian federal election result all somewhat reflect this sentiment

Out of The Beat Pit: Jonathan O’Dea


Nicole Campbell, Associate at the University Technology of Sydney’s (UTS) Centre for Local Government, has spent years researching governance– including examining the scale of fraud and corruption in councils – and said processes need to be tightened up, dodgy councillors brought to book and councillors made more aware of unacceptable behaviour.

Nicole Campbell: Corruption allegations at Sydney councils tip of the iceberg,