Andrew Leigh

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC RADIO PERTH MORNINGS WITH NADIA MITSOPOULOS

FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s historic $13 billion in JobKeeper waste

NADIA MITSOPOULOS, HOST: Well, there is data out from the Parliamentary Budget Office which shows 157,000 businesses received JobKeeper payments at the height of the pandemic last year even though they increased their turnover. All up, they got $4 billion, and some elite private schools did the same, including Hale here in Perth. Now, that school pocketed $7 million in JobKeeper while posting an operating surplus of more than $8 million. It then offered its parents a discount, and these are some parents who are paying up to $27,000 a year in fees. So does this sound OK to you? Should Hale and all those other companies pay the money back? Keen to know what you think this morning: 1300 222 720. They've not done anything legally wrong, but is it morally wrong? That is the question being asked this morning. Andrew Leigh thinks these companies and those schools should pay the money back. He's the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and I spoke to him a little earlier this morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Nadia. Great to be with you.

MITSOPOULOS: Does that seem right to you, that a private school can post a profit and offer parents a discount while claiming JobKeeper?

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC RADIO CANBERRA MORNINGS WITH ADAM SHIRLEY

FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s historic $13 billion in JobKeeper waste; return of parliament.

ADAM SHIRLEY, HOST: Dr Andrew Leigh is the Federal Labor member for Fenner and is with us on ABC Radio Canberra. Good morning to you, Dr Leigh.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Morning Adam, great to be with you.

SHIRLEY: I used that analogy of the Community Chest or Chance card in Monopoly, a bank error in your favour. If people get a JobKeeper error in their favour, is it their fault?

LEIGH: Adam, I love the fact you started with Monopoly, because it's one of the games I really dislike. It always seems to cause fights in our household and I don't think monopolies are good for the Australian community. Some of those big firms that got cheques they didn't need have handed them back. Dominoes, Iluka and Toyota are among them, and together they have collectively handed back around $225 million dollars across 25 firms. But that is a small drop in the bucket of what I'd estimate to be $13 billion of taxpayer money that went to firms whose earnings went up during the pandemic, rather than down. Premier Investments, Harvey Norman, Best & Less, Accent Group, the men's-only Australian Club in Sydney, The Kings School - a whole lot of organizations that didn't need taxpayer handouts got them. The total level of waste is more than what the Commonwealth gives to public schools every year.

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RADIO INTERVIEW
2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING
TUESDAY, 20 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Euthanasia; JobKeeper; Scott Morrison’s vaccination bungles; Scott Morrison’s government by rorting.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: I’m going to put my mate on the spot here. Andrew Leigh, good morning. how are you mate?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Marcus. Always pleased to be put on the spot.

PAUL: Alright, for or against euthanasia - if you were asked to vote with your conscience, how would you go?

LEIGH: I'd support it, Marcus. I've certainly been in a situation with family members who suffered unduly at the end of their lives. I know for myself I'd want to be able to choose the time to go if I had an incurable disease, and have my kids remember me as somebody who was strong and with all their faculties. I respect there's a lot of differences on this, but certainly when I look at the attitudes of Australians, most Australians are supportive. You've got a majority of Anglicans, a majority of Catholics, a majority of Liberal Party voters, Greens Party voters, One Nation voters. Right across the spectrum there's very strong support for euthanasia.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s vaccine failures

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Andrew Leigh MP joins me on the program each Tuesday. Morning, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Marcus. How are you?

PAUL: Good. Bill Shorten, obviously, summed it up succinctly yesterday. I know that you're a man who doesn't refer to language like that, but you probably agree with his sentiments.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 6 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Government’s vaccine bungles; Julia Banks

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Someone who, I don't know whether he's fully vaccinated, but I know he's had at least one jab, Andrew Leigh. Good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day Marcus. I'm halfway there. Next is due at the middle of the month.

PAUL: I get my first today. I'm off to Royal North Shore this afternoon, and then I get my follow up on 30/7, so in less than a month. My first one, a Pfizer-vaxxed day, and then the second one, dose two is on the 30^th. That's not too bad. By the end of this month, I'll be fully vaccinated.

LEIGH: That's the thing about Pfizer, that three-week rather than three-month gap means that you can actually get people vaccinated more quickly than if you go with AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca still has the efficacy, but a little bit slower to get people done.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

2CC BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO

FRIDAY, 2 JULY 2021 

SUBJECTS: Bank branch and ATM closures

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST: Bank branches have been gradually disappearing all over Canberra, including various branches in Weston Creek, Mawson, Tuggeranong, Dickson, Civic. Westpac have announced they're closing nearly 50 branches right across the country, and it's an issue that Andrew Leigh, the member for Fenner has been across, and I imagine has been inundated with phone calls. Andrew, thanks for joining us this morning. I guess the difficulty here is compelling private businesses to open a shop front, so to speak.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Yeah, that's right, Stephen, and I'm really glad that Ron's raised this important issue. It's something that I was asking the big bank CEOs about when we had hearings with them earlier this year. When each of them gave their evidence I went through and asked them how many branches they had closed, how many ATMs they'd closed, and what their plans were for the coming year. The picture is pretty much the same across the big four: they're just steadily shrinking that network of ATMs and branches because they say that they lose money. Now, it's true that their in-person custom is dropping, but there are vulnerable people who rely on these ATMs and branches, and just shutting them out risks a whole slice of the population becomes unbanked. I think the big four need to do more to think about the most vulnerable as they're assessing the state of their ATM and branch networks.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

4BC BREAKFAST WITH SPENCER HOWSON

TUESDAY, 29 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Brisbane Grammar claiming $3 million in JobKeeper despite posting a $3.7 million surplus

SPENCER HOWSON, HOST: You've heard about businesses not paying back JobKeeper when their profits did not fall as much as predicted. Well, how would you feel about a Brisbane private school doing the same? Labor's Dr Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities. He's on the warpath this morning. Dr Leigh, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Spencer, I think ‘warpath’ might be a bit much! But yes, I'm a little irked.

HOWSON: Well, with which school are you irked, and how much are you suggesting they've profited from JobKeeper?

LEIGH: Well, one of your most elite schools, Brisbane Grammar, received $3.1 million of JobKeeper last year, and that's despite the fact that its fee revenue went up rather than down. I've got no trouble with JobKeeper going to businesses that would otherwise have hit the wall or had to lay off staff, but in the case of Brisbane Grammar, it's an elite school which has a dozen tennis courts and charges nearly $30,000 a year, has its nice rowing sheds, and last year gave its headmaster a $14,000 pay rise. It doesn't seem like the kind of organization that desperately needed JobKeeper in order to stay afloat.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 29 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s quarantine and vaccination failures; Intergenerational Report.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: All right, each and every Tuesday we catch up with Andrew Leigh from Canberra. Andrew, good morning, mate. How are you?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Terrific, Marcus. Great to chat with you.

PAUL: Yeah, you too. Look, what's happening in your neck of the woods there in the ACT? Just fill me in with what Andrew Barr and his local government are doing. Are you on lockdown as well?

LEIGH: We're on mandatory masks, Marcus, and we're what's called an orange zone. People are being encouraged to limit travel, work from home if they can. There are no cases here at the moment, but we're pretty close to Sydney so the chances of something coming through is very real.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 23 JUNE 2021

I never saw her passing by, nor the Duke of Edinburgh, but as a participant in his awards scheme I do have a great admiration for the Duke. It's an extraordinary thing, set up for young people aged 14 to 24, now operating in 130 countries and operational in Australia since 1959. Over 775,000 young Australians have participated in the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme. Every year over 25,000 young Australians start, and over 11,000 finish, a Duke of Edinburgh's award.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 23 JUNE 2021

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges that July 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of South Africa's dismantling of its nuclear arsenal in early July 1991;

(2) notes that:

(a) this represents the only instance in history when a nuclear power has voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons; and

(b) the decision to create nuclear weapons was made in the early 1980s, and the decision to terminate the program (which then included six weapons) was made by President FW de Klerk in 1989, and implemented over the following years;

(3) commends South Africa on this momentous decision, which stands as a proud example to other nuclear weapon states; and

(4) calls on:

(a) all states that possess nuclear weapons to take measures that will lower the chance of nuclear war, including reducing the size of their stockpiles, taking weapons off hair-trigger alert, installing kill switches in all missiles, and committing to a no-first-use policy; and

(b) the Government to work in international forums to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

Watching the awesome power of the first nuclear tests, scientist Robert Oppenheimer was reminded of a line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita: 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.'