Andrew Leigh

THE AGE OF AMBITION*

SPEECH TO THE THIRROUL ALP BRANCH 50^TH ANNUAL DINNER

THIRROUL RAILWAY INSTITUTE HALL

THIRROUL

SATURDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2016

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

Members of the great Thirroul Branch of the Australian Labor Party, it is my honour to be invited to join you here in the evocative ‘Valley of the Cabbage Tree Palms’ on the occasion of your 50th consecutive annual dinner, in the 104th year of your branch’s existence.

For any regional branch of any organisation to remain a going concern for over a century is a tremendous achievement. To have broken bread together for half a century beneath the Thirroul branch banner is equally glorious. Few other Labor branches have published a book on their history. My thanks to Chris Lacey for sending me a copy of his terrific Illawarra Agitators. Naturally, I have read all 376 pages, and stand ready to be quizzed on it later this evening.

On behalf of the federal Labor caucus, I thank the members of the Thirroul Branch for the example that you set for us, and the reminder of how much we have to learn from our shared past.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA WITH KIERAN GILBERT

WEDNESDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2016

KIERAN GILBERT: I'm with the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. Do you think that Labor should now rein in the call for a Royal Commission given the sort of scrutiny that we're seeing here this week?

ANDREW LEIGH SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Good morning, Kieran it's great to be with you and your viewers. Labor's view, as is the view of many Australians, is that a hearing like this is no substitute for a Royal Commission.  What a Royal Commission can do is go through forensically what happened with CommInsure and the Bank Bill Swap Rates scandal, with many of the other financial rip-offs that we've seen that have laid bare some of the systematic problems. What we got yesterday was just an opportunity for a short amount of questions. I know my Labor colleagues had hundreds of questions that went unanswered in their quizzing of the Commonwealth bank CEO. And that means that Australians don't get the answers that they deserve. I think a Royal Commission isn't just in the interests of all Australians, it's ultimately in the interests of the banks as well who want their industry to be seen as squeaky clean whereas over recent years we've really seen a significant fall in the standing of big banks.

ANDREW LEIGH SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thank you for coming along. My name is Andrew Leigh, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Federal Member for Fenner. We've discovered today that the ACT Liberals have a $7 million hole in their election costings. This is a result of the ACT Liberals not following the instructions on the first substantive page of the ACT Government's Standard Costing Parameters. Those Standard Costing Parameters say very clearly that the estimate of the cost of a nurse should be $173,000. That's a figure which includes on-costs, worker compensation, superannuation leave and so on. 

But we see that the ACT Liberals put in a costings request on 29 September 2016 in which they cost 16 nurses at $1.7 million. That works out to just $107,000 per nurse. In other words, the ACT Liberals are using estimates of a cost of a nurse which are simply wrong.

Why having the best social welfare system in the world matters to Australia - Business Insider

Quiz time. Of the roughly 200 nations in the world, which country’s welfare state is best targeted to those in need?

If you answered ‘Australia’, then you’re absolutely correct. It’s also a healthy sign that you haven’t been paying too much attention to Liberal Ministers like Scott Morrison and Christian Porter.

Because despite the demonisation of Australia’s social security system, Australia really does have a world-class social safety net. Not ‘world class’ in the aspirational sense – but world class in the Kyle Chalmers, Carol Cooke, Chloe Esposito kind of sense.

Put simply, a dollar spent in the Australian social security system does more to reduce inequality than a dollar spent in any other welfare system in the world.

The Good Life, The Chronicle, 4 October

"One of the phoniest phrases in modern, contemporary language is quality time", Lindsay Tanner tells me, "There is only one form of quality time - that's quantity time."

I'm chatting with the former Finance Minister not about dollars, but about making sense of modern life. Being a good parent, he argues, isn't something you can do on a few hours a week.

The conversation was part of a new podcast I've started, which focuses not on politics and policy, but on living a happy, healthy and ethical life. Over recent years, I've become less interested in intelligence, and more in wisdom.

It seems to me that Australia probably doesn't need more parliamentarians with snappy slogans and incisive insults. But there may be a case for politicians taking a bit of time to explore the deeper questions, of how we make the most of our brief time on the planet.

The podcast is called "The Good Life", a phrase coined by Aristotle about 2300 years ago to sum up what it is to live life to the full. In the podcast, I’ve spoken with Michael Traill, who jumped ship from banking to become the founding head of Social Ventures Australia. I’ve explored food and fun with Australia's happiest epicurean Annabel Crabb.

I’ve delved into trauma, healing and meditation with SANE Australia head Jack Heath. With palliative care nurse Nikki Johnston, I discussed what makes a good death, and what the prospect of mortality can teach us about living well. And with Graeme Simsion, author of "The Rosie Project", we talked about autism, writing and the fine line between success and failure.

I'd love to get your thoughts on The Good Life, and who you look to for guidance on being healthier, happier and more ethical in your own life.

To download the podcast, search "Andrew Leigh Good Life" on iTunes, or go to www.goodlifepodcast.podbean.com.

Today the Treasurer has confirmed the deficit for 2015-16 soared to $40 billion, which is 8 times bigger than estimated the day the Coalition took office.

The 2015-16 Final Budget Outcome shows that net debt reached $296 billion at the end of last financial year, which is $77 billion more than projected when Labor left office.

Andrew Leigh, Shadow Assistant Treasurer, and Senator Claire Moore, Shadow Minister for
International Development and the Pacific.

In 1970, countries from across the globe agreed to a common aid goal: that for every hundred dollars of national income, they would give 70 cents of aid to developing countries.

In almost half a century since then, Australia has repeatedly reaffirmed our commitment to the international aid target. Other nations have gotten there. Unlike Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom, Australia has never met the 70 cent goal.

But like any target, we can still judge Australian governments on how close or far they have come to meeting this commitment to the world's poorest.

When Labor was in government, overseas foreign aid increased from 28 cents in every hundred dollars) in 2007-08 to 37 cents in 2013-14. Had Labor been returned, aid was budgeted to rise to 50 cents in every hundred dollars in 2017-18.

Then the Coalition won office with an aid commitment that matched Labor’s, but then put us on a very different path. Today, Australia spends just 23 cents per hundred dollars on overseas aid. Under Labor, our aid contribution exceeded the average for the rich country OECD grouping (30 cents per hundred dollars). Now, we are not only below the OECD average, our aid share is the lowest since comparable records began in the 1970s. When aid was headed to 50 cents in every hundred dollars, we were on the path to meet our promised aid goal. With aid at 23 cents, we have literally shrunk from the task to which our nation once committed.

THE WORST CENSUS EVER

Today marks the end of the reporting period for the 2016 Australian Census.

As of yesterday, the Census was still missing five per cent of households. This is significantly worse than the 2011 Census, which had an undercount rate of 1.7 per cent.

Indeed, in response to questions from Matt Thistlethwaite in the House Standing Committee on Economics, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe acknowledged yesterday that an undercount rate of five per cent was concerning.

Dinner Speech to the Japan Update

Australia-Japan Research Centre

Australian National University

Canberra

21 September 2016

Let me start by thanking the Australia-Japan Research Centre for inviting me to speak here tonight. In 2014, the Japanese and Australian Prime Ministers Abe and Abbott expressed their strong support for the Australia-Japan Research Centre in promoting research collaboration and intellectual exchanges between Australia and Japan on political and economic relations. Both sides of politics strongly support the Australia-Japan relationship as well as the great work of the Australia-Japan Research Centre.

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But I want to start tonight with the story of Sacarnawa Deconeski. Sacarnawa was the first recorded Japanese resident in Australia. He settled in Queensland having reached Australia in 1871, applying for naturalisation in 1882.Although most Japanese settlers in the late 1800s worked as pearlers in northern Australia, Sacarnawa was different. He was a professional acrobat.

After travelling around Australia as an entertainer for many years, in 1875 Sacarnawa married a woman from Melbourne. As many of us do in later life, Sacarnawa gave up acrobatics. He and his wife set up a farm in Far North Queensland near the town of Herberton. At its height, Herberton was the richest tin mining field in Australia and was home to 17 pubs. In case you’re wondering, Canberra has 56 pubs and clubs, but on per capita terms Herberton was doing pretty well for a small town.

By the start of Federation, Australia had 4000 Japanese immigrants, mostly based in Townsville where the Japanese Government had established its first consulate in 1896. During Australia’s shameful period of the White Australia Policy, the consulate closed in 1908 and it wasn’t until 1966 that consular offices reopened in Brisbane and, eventually, in Cairns, too.