The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 24 FEBRUARY 2026
SUBJECTS: ISIS foreign fighters’ wives; NBN upgrades begin for up to 97,000 ACT homes and businesses; Albanese Government helping Australians get a fairer deal at the checkout
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Time to talk federal politics. The Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner is with us. Andrew Leigh, good morning.
ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning, Stephen. Great to be with you.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: And you too. I suppose we have to talk about these so-called ISIS brides. The government has made a rod for its own back here because there's clearly a lack of transparency as to what is actually happening. The government is trying to assure us that there's been no assistance given to these people whatsoever. But the New South Wales Premier, Chris Minns says he's been talking to the federal government about repatriating them for months.
ANDREW LEIGH: Well Stephen, we know that 40 fighters and brides came back under the former government, and we've been very clear that we've provided no assistance to these people to return. They made a horrendous…
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Can I ask you, what is the significance of those people coming back under the previous government? Because the reality is the Prime Minister's actually gotten that wrong too. But the government changed the laws because of that?
ANDREW LEIGH: I'm just being clear that previously not only ISIS brides, but ISIS fighters have returned to Australia. We have been very clear that we have not provided assistance to this cohort. This is a cohort who made a decision to go over and fight with ISIS, one of the most horrendous death cults ever, which left behind mass graves, murdered children and enslaved women. So, let's be in no doubt about the horrendous decision that some of these people made.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Absolutely. But does that mean Chris Minns is not telling us the truth then?
ANDREW LEIGH: So, what we've been very clear about is that Australian citizens are entitled to a passport – you, me and anybody else who has citizenship. And so where people are…
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: The Passport Act does allow for you to block the access to passports?
ANDREW LEIGH: Only if a particular ASIO security condition is met, and the advice of our security agencies is that that has not been met. So without meeting that threshold, it is the case that we need to issue passports to Australian citizens. What we can do is put in place a temporary exclusion order. The Minister for Home Affairs has put in place one of those orders. That is an important step in the case of that individual. You certainly feel for the kids of course, but we don't, under our immigration law, separate kids and parents. Kids have the same immigration status, and I think it's appropriate that the kids stay with their parents.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: So, what is going – where are these people going to be settled then? Because clearly there has been – well, Chris and, you know, I trust Chris Minns when he says, ‘We've been negotiating with the federal government about repatriating those people for months.’
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, these are Australian citizens. They won't receive any assistance from the federal government. It's up to them as to where they choose to settle in the event they make their way back to Australia. We haven't provided them any assistance. We have done the absolute bare minimum that is necessary under the law.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Alright, let's talk about other issues. The 97,000 Canberra homes are getting full fibre to the home as part of the latest rollout of the NBN which in and of itself, I don't have a problem with. But at what point do we accept that this is now obsolete technology and there are better ways to do this, and probably cheaper ways?
ANDREW LEIGH: Yeah look, I think you're exactly right to question the technology. I certainly had a conversation with the head of NBN Co about this last week when we were doing the rollout. What she made clear is that satellites and fixed wireless suffer from congestion problems and simply aren't able to deliver the same sort of speeds. Fibre all the way to your home – that glass pipe coming straight to your home, is continuously upgradable. As the compression algorithms get better, it gets faster. That's how you're able to get these multi-gigabit speeds. The typical home in Canberra now has 25 devices, and that's predicted to go up to 44 devices. So we're connecting a lot to the internet, and these 97,000 homes with the 2,500 kilometres of fibre that we rolled out will benefit from a technology that is not only the best in the world, but also continuously upgradable.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: The difficulty with this, and this is not a federal government issue, is that because the ACT Government has this view that everybody should live in an apartment, this is largely going to be problematic to roll out into multi-dwelling developments. It's all well and good for a detached home; you can roll fibre in wherever you like. But sort of running it up, you know, to 100 or 50 apartments is not that easy?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, I'm in a detached home but I know a lot of friends in apartments have fibre going right to the apartment, and I know a lot of those new apartments are focusing on getting the fibre rollout coming right through. It's the way in which you're able to get access to download big files, whether you're working from home or whether you're doing online education, whether you're a home-based business, all of those benefits come to the community. We know there's a bunch of studies out there saying that productivity goes up when we have super-fast broadband. So, this is not only good for the way people live and work, but also good for the health of the economy.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: I clearly don't use the internet enough to need the high speeds. I seem to be coping with what I've got but, you know, I'm sure if I had the fastest speeds I'd enjoy it. Now, what is the latest in your war against the supermarkets?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, Coles are in court with the ACCC at the moment, and those actions will play themselves out. But meanwhile, we're looking at a whole range of ways of holding supermarkets to account. We've given $30 million to the competition watchdog in order to crack down on price gouging. We're going to be banning price gouging, toughening up those laws and we're looking at strengthening the Unit Pricing Code in order to tackle shrinkflation: that problem that the price stays the same but the quantity goes down. We know that Australians spend a lot of their budgets on supermarkets. Supermarkets have a big market share. We're scrutinising very carefully any supermarket mergers, so, any new supermarket merger needs to come before the Treasurer.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: At what point does caveat emptor come into this? Because I'm looking at this current ACCC action against Coles and I think, well if I go into the supermarket and I'm not paying attention to the price, isn't that my fault?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, the question is whether they misled customers through suggesting that there were specials that in fact weren't. The allegation is that they temporarily spiked the price in order to then be able to put something on special at a higher price than it had been for the months beforehand. They're the allegations that will be tested and they're doing so under two bits of reform that Labor put in place; additional resources for the competition watchdog to run cases such as these, and higher penalties which we legislated just after coming to office.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: I just – again it comes, you know, and I understand the argument here that they put the price up temporarily and then drop it down to a certain level to make it look like they've given you a discount. But surely as a consumer, you go in, and if that lower price is not a good deal, you're still not going to buy it are you?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, it's a question as to whether you should be able to advertise something that's on discount when it's really not. You can't just, as a store, advertise everything as being discounted. There's certain rules around how long something needs to be at a particular price before you can advertise it as a discount. And that's about protecting consumers and recognising that people aren't monitoring all of the prices daily. And when something is advertised as a special, it should really be special.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: I very rarely go to the supermarket and, you know, and occasionally if I do I'm, well – I'm only sort of buying canned goods and cleaning products. And if it looks cheap, I'll buy it. If it doesn't, then I won't. But I guess, yeah, I try to shop at local retailers where I can. Andrew, good to talk to you. We'll catch up again in a couple of weeks.
ANDREW LEIGH: Likewise Stephen, thank you.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner.
ENDS