Andrew Leigh

On Fairfax TV today I joined host Tim Lester to talk about some of the issues of the day - the future of the NBN, new secrecy surrounding asylum seeker arrivals, reports of the heavy hand of the Abbott Government against consumer boycotts and the Labor leadership contest. The video is here. Here's the transcript:

TIM LESTER: Fairfax Newspapers have reported that the whole board of the National Broadband Network has offered its resignation to new Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. What does that mean for the future of NBN and other issues related to the broadband network? Our Monday regular is Andrew Leigh - he's in the studio to discuss this and other stories that are around this morning. Andrew, thank you for your time.

ANDREW LEIGH: Pleasure Tim.

LESTER: How ominous is it that the board of the NBN would say en mass to a new minister; "we'll fall on our swords"?

LEIGH: Well it does speak to their confidence in the Coalition's NBN policy, doesn't it Tim? I mean the Coalition's NBN policy is dramatically inferior to Labor's NBN because it offers fibre to the cabinet down the street, rather than fibre to the home. That means you get about 25 megabits a second. Maybe a bit better than what some people have now, but certainly not the transformative technology you have when you get a hundred, a thousand megabits a second down the fibre cable to your home. That's when a video conference starts to look like the high definition TV picture that we see in the evening. That, for example, would make a big difference to Breaking Politics, which would then begin to not worry about whether people were on-site or off-site. But as your viewers would well know, they can easily tell when someone's using Skype on the current clunky connections, and it's not going to be much better under Malcolm Turnbull's NBN.

LESTER: What do you read, though, into the fact that the board would do this with the new Minister? Is this simply a, perhaps a matter of normal order, that they would say to a new minister "well, if you want us gone, we'll go"?

LEIGH: You know, I think it is an honourable course of action that they're pursuing, but it's a course of action they would not take in the circumstances that the Coalition had adopted Labor's NBN policy. A fibre to the Home policy which is, as best I can tell from my door-knocking, supported by everyone I spoke to in the ACT. Can't say that about any other policy frankly Tim. There's a lot of divergence on policies across the spectrum, but no one I spoke to said “the real problem with the NBN is they're bringing the fibre cable to my home, rather than stopping at the cabinet down the street".

LESTER: So does Malcolm Turnbull have to accept these resignations and put in a board that backs what he is doing, or might he say "no, press on with my plan"?

LEIGH: It's a decision for him, but I hope that he will use their wisdom and experience. I think the firings of departmental heads last week by Mr Abbott were a mistake, not just because of the fear that it spread through the public service, but also because Mr Abbott himself loses the stability of keeping on all the departmental secretaries as Labor did when we came to office in 2007.

LESTER: Would Ziggy Switkowski make a good new point person for what the Coalition plans to do with the NBN?

LEIGH: I think it's up to Mr Turnbull who he chooses. What I would urge him to do, though, is to re-think a policy that is going to build a digital divide through Australia. It's going to see my own electorate sliced up into patches of fibre to the home and, if you want the fibre to the home, you have to pay for it. That'll mean that houses on one side of the street have a value maybe 5000 dollars higher than houses on the other side of the street. People are understandably frustrated at not being able to get what is increasingly being regarded as a standard public service.

LESTER: Another of the Coalition's early changes, it looks like, will be an effort to reduce, if you like, the coverage of the arrival of asylum boats, by saying that they'll do weekly briefings on what's going on and not announce when asylum boats arrive. How practical is that?

LEIGH: Well, it's pretty striking isn't it, Tim? We've gone from "stop the boats" to "buy the boats" to "hide the boats". I think this is ultimately a media management strategy. It was flagged by Scott Morrison during the election. What it's meant is that when what we estimate is the eighth asylum seeker boat, arrived since the election yesterday, its arrival was heralded by locals on Christmas Island. But if he's going to make this work, he has to gag everyone. He has to gag the administrator of Christmas Island, Jon Stanhope and the residents of Christmas Island, who were the ones who got the news out today.

LESTER: Is it practical?

LEIGH: I don't think it's practical at all Tim and I think it speaks, really, to the Coalition's desire to bring secrecy back to government. Remember after we won office, in the wake of the Cornelia Rau affair, we had to bring in Andrew Metcalfe to do a review of the culture of secrecy the Coalition had built within the Department of Immigration. They are also looking at getting rid of the independent review of ASIO assessments for asylum seekers, again taking us back to the bad old days of excessive secrecy. In other spaces, they are looking at bringing back gag clauses for charities. It's a worrying trend right across government.

LESTER: But they are also looking, according to one article in The Australian newspaper this morning at allowing some action against some groups that try and carry out boycotts on products on environmental grounds like GetUp! or others who might try and lead those boycotts. What do you think of that action?

LEIGH: It's extraordinary, isn't it Tim, the notion that you would prevent consumers from getting together to say that they believe for ethical reasons certain products should not be purchased. This is what we saw during the Apartheid era where consumers got together and urged a boycott of South African products. We've seen in recently when there were concerns raised over Sherrin, the football manufacturer; consumers getting together to encourage better standards. Sherrin responded. The idea that we can't together with our fellow people and talk about environmental or other ethical issues as they affect product purchases is frankly is extraordinarily heavy handed.

LESTER: Okay. The last question before we close, the Labor leadership debates that Anthony Albanese, one of the candidates is talking as about possibly having in the last few weeks of the process. How do have you have genuine, full-on political debates, without at least some animosity and some invective, if you like, coming in to play, that there's so far, the two leadership contenders have been tip toeing around. It's almost a contradiction in terms.

LEIGH: Oh, I don't know. At our best I think we have managed to do Breaking Politics in that spirit! I certainly remember discussions with Fiona Nash, recently elevated, which were very congenial.

LESTER: Without arm wrestling from the party leadership though?

LEIGH: But I think, is that the thing you have with these two contenders is, Bill and Anthony are genuinely two people who like one another, who have worked constructively in the past and have a great deal to offer the Labor Party. We just can't go wrong in this leadership contest because they are people of such high calibre with a suite of great ideas to bring to the parliament. Anthony, with his experience in managing the parliament and his extraordinary personal story of growing up in very disadvantaged circumstances. Bill, with what his done with DisabilityCare, with bringing Better Schools together and with his ideas about building a ‘good society’. This is a great contest and one which is invigorating the Labor Party branch membership.

LESTER: Andrew Leigh, we're very grateful for you coming in and I should say you've got a new sparring partner each Monday, Andrew Laming, Liberal MP from Queensland who I believe you know.

LEIGH: Indeed. Andrew went through the Harvard Kennedy School the year before me. Because we have somewhat similar names, we're both Andrew L's, I was frequently mistaken for him when I was there in the early 2000s. We disagree on almost every policy issue but we've remained good friends even after entering parliament. So, I'm looking forward to jousting with him when parliament is in session.

LESTER: We appreciate your time today. Thanks Andrew.

LEIGH: Thanks Tim.

On Sky AM Agenda, I spoke with host Kieran Gilbert and Liberal Minister Mitch Fifield about the Coalition's secrecy on asylum-seeker boat arrivals, the risk of a digital divide if fibre to the home is stopped, and the Labor leadership contest.

On Thursday night, I joined host David Speers, Centre for Policy Development's Miriam Lyons, Liberal MP Alan Tudge and former Liberal MP Ross Cameron on Sky's The Nation program. We discussed gender and politics, asylum seekers and the Labor leadership.

MEDIA RELEASE

Federal Member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh, has today called on the Abbott Government to explain why it is ripping money away from early childhood workers across the ACT.

Early this year, Labor introduced a $300 million Early Years Quality Fund to be used to increase wages in the sector, recognising that awfully low pay rates have been an impediment to early childhood quality and workforce retention.

The Abbott Government has said it may not honour provisional contracts signed by directors of long-day care centres to access the fund over two years. They include early childhood centres in north Canberra.

"If the Coalition Government is going to raid the pay rises of early childhood workers to cover a mining tax cut that will benefit Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, their ministers needs to visit one of Canberra's centres and explain why billionaire miners need that money more than early childhood workers," said Dr Leigh.

"To justify a review of the Early Years Quality Fund, the Coalition claims the Fund was set up to boost union membership. It's nonsense. Early childhood centres need an enterprise agreement to tap into the Fund. There is no requirement that unions be involved."

“Stopping the fund could result in in many early childhood workers leaving because they will earn more elsewhere, even stacking shelves at the supermarket.”

"There is a great deal of uncertainty and frustration in the sector. Centres and parents want to urgently see that early childhood, under an Abbott Government, is a valued service that prepares children for school and lifelong learning.”

"I call on the new assistant minister for education and childcare, Sussan Ley, to join me in visiting an early childhood centre on Canberra’s northside. There, the talented early childhood workers can explain to her how the Early Years Quality Fund will directly improve the lives of Australian children," Dr Leigh said.

MEDIA RELEASE

The Abbott Government’s decision to integrate AusAID into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is extremely short-sighted.

“AusAID is not an ATM for diplomats,” said Andrew Leigh, the Federal Member for Fraser in the Australian Capital Territory.

“The purpose of development assistance is fighting poverty. Absorbing AusAID into DFAT signals that fight - to save and improve the lives of the world’s absolute poor - is not valued.”

“This takes us back to 1973. Like Tony Abbott’s decision to scrap the science ministry and his choice to have only one women in a cabinet of twenty people, this shows that this is a back-to-the-future government,” said Dr Leigh.

“As a developed and wealthy nation, Australia has galvanised international efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals. AusAID’s reduced status and capacity will undermine that work and muddy the prime objective of poverty alleviation, mixing that objective with trade and diplomatic goals.”

Shadow International Development Minister Melissa Parke has been one of the most articulate advocates of using aid to combat poverty. In a speech delivered this month, Ms Parke told her audience:

“Labor believes that helping people and nations escape from suffering and deprivation is core to our national ethos, and that creating safety, peace, wellbeing and self-sufficiency, especially in our region, is central to the Australian project.”

"Under Labor, Australian aid rose to 0.37 per cent of Gross National Income. We became one of the world's top ten donor nations. The Coalition's decision to cut $4.5 billion from the aid budget will hurt the world's poorest, so they can pay for abolishing the mining tax, to help some of the world's richest people," Dr Leigh said.

This morning I spoke to Tim Lester of Fairfax Media about the healthy contest underway for the Labor leadership and the incoming Abbott Government's cabinet which, unfortunately, looks set to promote only one woman.  Here's the transcript:

BREAKING POLITICS

FAIRFAX MEDIA VIDEO

____________________________________________________________



Subjects: Labor leadership, Coalition cabinet and ministry, gender

___________________________________________________________



TIM LESTER: A regular on Breaking Politics on Monday is the Labor MP for Fraser in the ACT, Andrew Leigh. He's actually in Sydney and he joins us via Skype. What takes you to Sydney today? What's on the agenda?

ANDREW LEIGH: Spending some time with family. One of the things about the election is, you end up drawing a lot on your family to help out and it's nice to be able to be able to give a little bit back and spend a couple of days with my parents this week.

LESTER: What do you think of the process Labor is now in to select the leader, for the first time is going to go the rank and ask for a vote on the issue.

LEIGH: I think it's enormously healthy that we go to our party membership on this. Looking from afar, I really enjoyed watching the contest of the British Labor leadership in 2010. I thought it was one that saw leaders talk very much of the direction they wanted British Labor to go. Theirs was a party that had been riven between the Gordon Brown and Tony Blair camps for quite a long time and all of the candidates spoke about wanting to move beyond those divisions and about the kind of party they wanted to craft. I expect we'll have a similar conversation over the next month, conducted respectfully between two outstanding candidates, who will talk about their visions for modern Labor.

LESTER: Are you being lobbied by those two outstanding candidates yet, because presumably they're out their looking for votes?

LEIGH: Yes, I've spoken to them in the past week as I have over recent years being in Parliament.  What's great about both Anthony and Bill is they're really serious about engaging with colleagues and listening to what they have to say. You see that out in the community too. I've been at road openings with Anthony where he's been keen to hear the views from the bulldozer driver. I've been at disability events with Bill where he's immediately gravitated towards somebody sitting on their own in a corner and just wanted to have a yarn with them about how their disability affects their life.

LESTER: What happens if caucus goes for one, and the rank and file go for the other? How do you resolve it?

LEIGH: Well it simply depends on the majorities in the two cases. One candidate will end up with a majority overall, and the great thing about this is that these are two candidates who are respected across the party and across the caucus. We simply can't go wrong in choosing between Bill and Anthony. We're fortunate to have Bill's passion for ideas, his deep understanding of issues of disability and economic development versus Anthony's knowledge in the transport and infrastructure portfolios and in broadband. His huge experience in a very difficult parliament, which managed to get a couple of former National Party members to back around 600 bills through the House of Reps. These are formidable parliamentarians and we're fortunate they're both putting their hands up.

LESTER: Have you decided which one you'll back yet Andrew, or not?

LEIGH: I have Tim, but my view is that I would rather not project that view out publicly. Partly, that's out of respect for my own branch members who I want to have the freedom to make the choice that they think is best. So I'm very much following in what Bill Shorten said the other day in only having positive words for my colleagues.

LESTER: We expect the new ministry to be announced today. The prime minister to give us the [inaudible] and it's almost certain that it will only be one woman in cabinet. The [inaudible] Julie Bishop and that [inaudible]. How does that strike you?

LEIGH: Well it does strike you Tim, that Tony Abbott is really putting the man back into mandate. He seems to be putting together a cabinet whose gender mix reminds you more of the 1950s than the 2010s. This is not a Cabinet that I think would pass the respect of many boardrooms, many corporate firms, and many government departments who have recognized that having a gender balance that looks like Australia is important to being able to do an effective job. I certainly think it's a pity if Mr Abbott is to go for only one out of 20 women in his cabinet.

LESTER: And also the question of finance minister. We understand from the Financial Review that Mathias Cormann is now favoured over Senator Arthur Sinodinos. You have a particular interest in that area. What do you make of that?

LEIGH: Well I think Arthur Sinodinos is one of the sharpest economic minds on the Coalition front bench. Probably the only other person who'd hold a candle to him on the area of economics would be Malcolm Turnbull.  He's somebody who I very much admire. We have a regular media slot on one of the radio stations together. We held an economic debate in the ACT during the election. Arthur's somebody who's extraordinary thoughtful about how he does policy and I think has garnered a respect right across the parliament. I think it would be a pity if he weren't to be given that key finance portfolio. It might send a message out that Mr Abbott values more highly the skills of attack than the skills of constructively managing to build.

LESTER: You've said, but I assume Malcolm Turnbull won't run [indistinct] think that two best economic minds of the opposition are going to be sidelined in terms of economics.

LEIGH: I think that's certainly a risk, and I think it would be a mistake particularly in the case of Mr Abbott, who's said in the past that he was bored by economics, who when challenged about the fact he couldn't find an economist to back his direct action plan, said well, that’s maybe that a reflection on the quality of economists rather than on the quality of the plan, and who doesn't himself, I think, have a natural affinity for markets. I think in that instance, it's all the more incumbent upon him to promote high quality economists like Arthur Sinodinos and it would be a pity if he didn't do that.

LESTER: Andrew, we're grateful for your time today. Enjoy a couple of days off.

LEIGH: Thanks Tim, good to be with you.



ENDS

My op-ed in today's SMH sets out some of the questions the incoming Prime Minister has to answer.

Ten Challenges for Tony Abbott, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times, 13 September 2013

As a poll sceptic, I’m fairly rare in Parliament House. Most of the building watches opinion polls with the eagerness of sailors looking for land. For those on the Coalition side, the fact that almost every opinion poll in the past three years has gone in their favour has given them a strong sense of confidence that they would form government at this election.

The Coalition won the election with a convincing margin, and I congratulate Mr Abbott on becoming our 28^th Prime Minister. But given the length of time the Abbott Government has had to prepare for office, the real surprise is the number of major policy questions that lie unanswered. Here are ten for starters.

First, given that we know from independent experts such as the Grattan Institute that Direct Action will not meet the bipartisan target of cutting emissions by 5 percent by 2020, how does the government intend to reduce our carbon emissions? Given that Australia has just had the hottest summer on record, is it really acceptable for the developed nation with the highest emissions per person to back away from action on carbon emissions?

Second, we know that one of the leading causes of Indigenous disadvantage stems from incarceration, which is why both parties are committed to adding it into the Closing the Gap targets. But given that he has committed to cutting funding to Aboriginal Legal Aid, how will Mr Abbott ensure that this doesn’t lead to more Indigenous people ending up in jail?

Third, how will Mr Abbott manage to reduce public service numbers by 12,000 without firing anyone? Won’t public servants simply stay in their jobs once the hiring freeze takes effect? And what if a key infectious disease specialist leaves the Department of Health – will she really not be replaced?

Fourth, does the cancellation of Steve Bracks’ diplomatic appointment signal that the era of bipartisanship public appointments is at an end? Labor in government appointed Brendan Nelson and Tim Fischer to key diplomatic posts, put Peter Costello onto the Future Fund board, and appointed Brendan Nelson as head of the Australian War Memorial. Will an Abbott Government put loyalty before ability in making similar appointments?

Fifth, is the government now abandoning negotiations for a free trade agreement with China, given that its plan to reduce the foreign investment threshold for agribusiness is a direct slap in the face to Chinese interests? What Australian exporters miss out on when this deal falls over?

Sixth, has the government decided which countries will miss out as a result of its $4.5 billion cut to foreign aid? How have those governments reacted to the reduction in assistance? How many fewer children will be vaccinated as a result of these cuts?

Seventh, will the government’s ‘turn back the boats’ policy be raised in the first bilateral meetings with Indonesia? And how will the Australian Government go about buying back Indonesia’s 750,000 fishing boats? Will it use eBay, or will Scott Morrison just stand on the wharves with a fistful of Rupiah?

Eighth, how does the government respond to the prospect of a ‘digital divide’ in suburbs where some families will now get fibre to the home, while others will have to make do with an inferior service? Will those on the wrong side of the road have to pay $5000 to obtain the service their neighbours received free?

Ninth, what is Mr Abbott doing about the ‘budget emergency’ he alleged was plaguing the nation a few months ago? If the nation’s finances are in such parlous shape, why is he introducing a wage-replacement parental leave scheme rather than sticking with the current flat-rate scheme?

Tenth, is the government’s abolition of the low-income superannuation contribution going to be retrospective? This affects 3.6 million workers (2.1 million of them women), working as sales assistants, kitchen hands and bricklayers. Does Mr Abbott honestly plan to make a retrospective raid on their superannuation accounts, in order to help fund a tax cut to mining companies?

Like George W. Bush before him, Mr Abbott appears to like using corporate analogies for government, stating on election night that ‘Australia is under new management’. But like President Bush, he may find that heading a government requires a little more nuance and sophistication than running a campaign. He could start by answering these simple questions.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.

Launch of Gordon Peake’s Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles and Secrets from Timor-Leste
Australian National University
11 September 2013

I acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I recognise Ambassador Abel Guterres, Paul Hutchcroft and of course Gordon Peake this evening.

Australia’s relationship with East Timor is akin to the way a parent thinks about a child that they adopted out at birth.  It’s a strong bond but it’s a relationship you don’t think about all the time.  And if you do think about it probably the predominant emotion that governs the relationship is one of guilt.

And Australia should feel a sense of guilt towards East Timor.

In 1942, the East Timorese fought alongside Australian troops.  Australians left, and many of the East Timorese who fought alongside were then left to face the Japanese alone.

In 1975, we failed to speak up about the invasion of East Timor.

In 1978, we extended de jure recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.

And in 1999, we could have done better in the process that led to the referendum and the many thousands who lost their lives.

But when East Timor comes into the Australian consciousness, it’s just little shards that penetrate into our news cycle.  The news cycle was penetrated in 1999, when Laurie Brereton gave an extraordinary speech to parliament – speaking straight after Alexander Downer.  And he talked in parliament about how just two weeks earlier Father Francisco Barreto had sat in his office and spoken to him about what would happen after the referendum.  And then this hard man of the NSW Right had his voice crack in parliament as he spoke about how Father Barreto had been one of the first of the Catholic priests to be assassinated following the announcement of the ballot results.

And then the story of East Timor came into the Australian media if anything through a sense of pride about how our forces had acquitted themselves in East Timor. Peter Cosgrove tells the story of an Australian corporal who requested a doctor for the local village.  The previous day the corporal had helped a local woman deliver her baby – a first for the woman and a first for the corporal.  And Cosgrove had said “Oh well, all’s well that ends well”.  And the corporal had replied “well yeah, but yesterday a lady presented with a breech birth and I’m not real good at those”. Cosgrove told the story as a way of speaking about how Australian soldiers had that sense of social justice.  How for the Australian soldiers it wasn’t for them to sit back behind the sandbags, but for them being good soldiers meant getting out and helping to deal with local people.

A few years later another little shard of our relationship with East Timor penetrated into the local media when Glebe Coroner’s Court, was the site of an inquiry as to whether Indonesian forces had deliberately killed the Balibo five.  It is such an unusual place for this discussion to have taken place about the events that took place in 1975.

East Timor today is a poor nation.  Gordon gives us a few of the statistics of this in his book.  It’s ranked 120^th out of 169 on the Human Development Index.  Forty nine per cent of East Timor lives on less than 88 US cents a day.  East Timor has relatively low education rates, a high birth rate and high levels of inequality.  Gordon describes the stories of those who have a second home in Bali, who wear $750 sunglasses, who drive Hummers.

There’s a police force, which as he reports it, has a disciplinary case for every 2½ officers.  And yet there’s a budget that’s grown thirty two fold over the past decade which has the potential to turn a resource curse into a resource blessing.

But that’s about it for the statistics in Gordon’s book.  His is not an economic treatise which makes your eyes droop as you move past page on page of numbers.  His is a book full of stories not statistics.

It’s something that Scribe does extraordinarily well – this is just one in a series of terrific Scribe books that I’ve read which bring out fabulous stories to help us better understand issues, problems and places.

You read in Gordon’s book about Jose Antonio Belo who after Independence went to interview his torturer.  You read about Gordon’s conversation over was it half a case - or an entire case? - of mid-strength Australian beer getting to know Australian Jimmy, the ‘White Bat’, who fought alongside FALINTIL troops in the hills and who has stories which Gordon struggles to identify fact from fiction. You’ll hear about Xanana Gusmao who had the extraordinary strength of character to be able to hug the Indonesian generals who a few years earlier were out there trying to kill him.

As a university student in 1993, I interviewed Jose Ramos Horta.  So I knew a bit about Jose, but I never knew that the reason that he was kicked out of East Timor was for writing a positive review of the movie Ned Kelly (which starred Mick Jagger). It’s a fantastic rendition – one which is worth watching for many reasons not least, and this is kind of departing slightly from the script, the moment in which a member of the gang rides by Mick Jagger wearing a dress on the horse and no-one says a thing. But apparently writing a review of Ned Kelly was seen as sufficiently revolutionary that Horta was exiled – ultimately to his good and that of the nation of East Timor.

You’ll read about Rogerio Lobato, the East Timorese Minister, later gun runner, and the story of how he lost his wife, his parents and twelve siblings in the 1975 attacks.

You’ll hear Gordon talk about pre-Independence East Timor in which someone says fifty per cent were informing on the other fifty per cent.

And the sheer stories of the incompetence of the Portuguese in 1879.  A lovely despairing letter which the Governor wrote to his superiors in Macau – ‘I have a total of forty-eight Civil and Military officers, of which ten are competent, ten are mediocre and seventeen are useless... the Judge Delegate tells me he knows nothing of his duties.’

Gordon tells the story of Boaventura who raised a mutiny only to find thousands of his followers executed over two days and nights.

The story of finally when the Portuguese pulled out, leaving a country with a thousand primary school students, no electricity, no paved roads, and conditions that were so close to the way they’d left them, Gordon writes, that it drew anthropologists to the country because they wanted to see how traditional groups lived in a country which had been undisturbed by colonisation.

You’ll read stories about bureaucratic incompetence – the moment on which Gordon turns up to an office only to be told that he lacks the requisite red folder that should contain his documents.  That obtaining such a red folder cannot be done on the spot and will require returning five days later.

You’ll hear stories of the language.  I love the Portuguese phrase that Gordon teaches you in the book: Somos todos primos (‘We are all cousins’).  And he talks about a land of magical goats in which things are about alliances and friendships.  About his own attempts to map those alliances and friendships to understand Timorese politics.

You learn about the challenges of Tetun.  About the embarrassment of UN workers who don’t understand Tetun themselves.  And about the challenges of understanding Tetun, as Gordon puts it, “there are three different ways of addressing an individual, each one indicating the speaker’s position in relation to the person being addressed.  There are no verb tenses, but a much more complicated way of coding family relationships” which includes not only the blood relationship but also the age relationship.

At the end of it all you’re left with a sense of the challenges of development.  Gordon talks about the people that he meets, so many of them in some way flawed.  There’s the occasional worker, the occasional parliamentarian, the occasional public servant who is doing extraordinary work.  But ultimately you’re left with the sense that development is about individuals, flawed, most of them, trying to do their best.

I was reminded of an essay that George Orwell wrote about Charles Dickens.  And he says that early in his life he was deeply frustrated when he read Dickens. Because Dickens is all about individuals.  But Orwell said what frustrated him as a young man was that Dickens had no structure to understanding the challenges of the poor – no strategy for dealing with development.  For him, it’s all about character and the individuals. And Orwell says it took him until late in life to finally realise that that’s what life is.  It’s not about policies and structure, it is actually fundamentally about individuals and their flaws and their qualities.

If you take one lesson out of Gordon’s book it should be this – that ultimately development is more about character than it is about capital.  If you want to change a society you’ve got to change individuals.

And it’s such a hard lesson for those of us on the progressive side of politics to learn.

Because we want to be able to implement these grand plans - we want this notion that we turn on the tap and the cash flows and things get better.  But ultimately, Gordon’s right.  It’s about character, it’s about individuals, it’s about stories and sometimes you can put a lot of money in and end up with a society in which forty nine per cent of the people live on 88 cents a day or less.

But the thing is that if we understand that, if we understand the flaws, if we understand the lessons of Dickens that Orwell only understood late in life, then we’re actually placed to do a whole lot more good.

So I want to thank Gordon for writing an extraordinary book that will teach you a great deal about East Timor.  But that fundamentally should teach us all an important lesson about doing good in developments overseas and perhaps even here at home.

Go and read it – it’s an extraordinary book.  Thank you.

The Cranleigh School Artshow is being held in late-October. They have asked me to publicise it on my blog, and I am happy to do this. Details below.

Art Show October 2013

The Cranleigh Capital Chemist Artshow is an annual event held at Cranleigh School, Starke Street in Holt on the third week of October. The show raises money for the school and promotes well known Canberra and regional artists. It also showcases the abilities of our students.

This year we are hoping to raise more than $25,000 for a specialised music program at Cranleigh.

Friday 18th - Opening Night

6.00pm for sponsors.

7.00pm - 9.00pm for the public

Opening night includes

• Robyn Archer AO, Centenary of Canberra Creative Director, will be opening the show.


• Featured Guest Artist Kylie Heslop.


• Wine and delicious food served by students from The Woden School.


• Live jazz music by the Radford jazz band.


• Silent auction.

19-20 October gallery open for viewing 9.00-5.00pm

The AFR today runs a short op-ed on the question of whether the ALP should now vote for soil magic.

Point of order on carbon tax, Australian Financial Review, 10 September 2013

A ferociously fought issue in the 2010 election was whether to move to a profits-based mining tax. Labor won the election, yet Coalition MPs and Senators voted in parliament against the mining tax.

Today, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is telling Labor members that we should vote to repeal carbon pricing. Having been a weathervane on both climate science and emissions trading, he seems to think we should do likewise.

Mandates authorise – and enjoin – individual parliamentarians to act on the issues that they campaigned upon. For example, having gone to the 2007 election promising an ETS, Coalition representatives should have voted for an ETS when it came to the parliament in 2009. Alas, only a handful did so.

Mandate theory has never meant that oppositions should roll over like poodles after an election, particularly on an issue as fundamental as tackling climate change, following the hottest summer on record.

Since the carbon price began, electricity emissions are down 7 percent, and Westpac estimates the impact on the CPI was 0.5 percent, which is less than the forecast 0.7 percent. Pricing carbon uses the ingenuity of the market to improve the environment. In the 1990s, the US used an ETS to deal with acid rain, which met its targets at one-third of the projected costs.

By contrast, Direct Action has been rubbished by everyone from the Grattan Institute to Malcolm Turnbull. It will cost households more – yet do less for the environment.

If the Coalition wish to repeal the carbon tax, it should take the sensible path of moving straight to an ETS from 1 July 2014. Both parties have a mandate for that.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.