Andrew Leigh

HOW MONOPOLIES HURT THE ECONOMY

When my three boys were younger, there was one sure way to start a family fight: play Monopoly. The board game would start calmly enough, with some teasing over who got to be the battleship, the boot and the thimble. But within the hour, lucky dice rolls would create a clear divide between the moguls and the marginalised. Sure, Monopoly might be the only place where rich and poor have an equal chance of going to jail. But like life, the game entrenches privilege. When you’re rich, you buy houses and hotels, which bring in rent from the other players. As the monopolist brother started taunting their soon-to-be-bankrupt siblings, yelling was sure to follow.

Monopolists aren’t evil – they’re just acting in line with their incentives. Writing in 1776, Adam Smith observed: “The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.”

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH GREG JENNETT
THURSDAY, 6 JUNE 2024

SUBJECTS: Government’s productivity agenda, reform on non-compete clauses, release of 10^th Australian Charities Report.

LORNA DUNKLEY (ABC NEWS): Assistant Minister for Treasury, Andrew Leigh, says Australia needs to put greater emphasis on productivity to curb slowing GDP growth. The economy grew just 0.1 per cent the first quarter of this year.

Despite this, Mr Leigh told Afternoon Briefings', Greg Jennett, he's optimistic about the future of Australia's economy.

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH: The Coalition's productivity agenda tends to be about cutting; cutting wages, cutting regulation. Ours is about investing, investing in people, investing in infrastructure and investing in institutions like our National Competition Policy reforms.

That's how we're going to get the sustainable wage growth into the future. I'm really confident that we're going to harness the best the technology has to offer in order to increase living standards.

WORLD LEADING COUNTRY-BY-COUNTRY REPORTING INTRODUCED TO PARLIAMENT

The Government has introduced provisions to establish one of the world’s most comprehensive public country-by-country reporting regimes in a major step forward for tax transparency. This implements a key election commitment of the Government to make multinationals pay their fair share in tax.

Public country‑by‑country reporting will provide the community with a better understanding of how much tax multinationals pay relative to their activities. It puts the onus on large multinationals (with annual global income of A$1 billion or more) to be upfront about where they pay tax and how they plan their tax strategies.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC CANBERRA DRIVE WITH LEON DELANEY
MONDAY, 3 JUNE 2024

SUBJECTS: Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review, Government’s responsible cost-of-living support, impact of non-compete clauses, regional bank closures, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights recommendations.

LEON DELANEY: Now, the big headline news today, of course, is the decision by the Fair Work Commission to award minimum wage earners an increase of 3.75%. Joining me now the, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, our local member for the federal seat of Fenner, Doctor Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH: Good afternoon, Leon. Great to be with you and your listeners.

DELANEY: Well, I'm sure you're very cheered by the news that the Fair Work Commission has decided to award this pay increase to Australia's lowest paid workers. Of course, I've already spoken to the CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, Luke Achterstraat. His main concern? Well, he's got two of them. One is he says that the 3.75% is too high because it's outside the target range for inflation and therefore reduces the likelihood that the Reserve bank will see its way clear to reduce interest rates anytime sooner. And secondly, he says that you can't have sustainable wages growth without proper productivity growth. And he's right on that point, isn't he?

THE COMPETITIVE WEDGE

Twenty-one-year old “Tony”, a boilermaker, switched to work in-house for a former client. It was a rural town and customers were hard to find, so his previous employer wasn’t pleased about losing a customer. Tony was branded a troublemaker and was sent a letter saying he breached his post-employment obligations. The letter further applied the blowtorch by threatening court action seeking thousands of dollars in damages plus costs.

“Lauren”, a young mum, worked for a hairdressing business. She was a casual employee, who could be terminated with one day’s notice. After 14 weeks, Lauren quit and started her own business. When she posted about it on her Facebook page, her former employer sued her for $200,000 for breaching a two-year non-compete clause.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC CANBERRA DRIVE WITH EMMA BICKLEY
FRIDAY, 31 MAY 2024

SUBJECTS: Teen mental wellbeing and social media, Australian National University response to protests on campus.

EMMA BICKLEY: The Honourable Doctor Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, Assistant Minister for Employment. Minister, welcome to the Drive program.

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks, Emma, great to be with you.

BICKLEY: Look, there's been a recent push to lift this minimum age. As I said, it's 13 at the moment. New South Wales, Queensland and Victorian premiers have all supported these tighter restrictions, but our government a little bit slower to commit to this. Why is that the case?

LEIGH: Well, Emma, as the Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has said, there's no country around the world that's got this right. But it is the number one topic of conversation among the parents that I chat with. We all feel as though the childhoods that our children are experiencing don't involve as much outdoor activity and involve too much screen addiction. In some sense, as Jonathan Haidt argues in The Anxious Generation, we've become overprotective in the real world and underprotective in the virtual world. So, this is a really important conversation and the age assurance trial that the government has on train is going to inform that conversation.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY AFTERNOON AGENDA WITH TOM CONNELL
FRIDAY, 31 MAY 2024

SUBJECTS: Impact of non-compete clauses on productivity, Issues paper on non-compete clauses, Inflation figures, superannuation reform.

TOM CONNELL: Welcome back. Well, for people that perhaps are looking to venture out, start their own business, perhaps start afresh in the same industry, they sometimes get a big surprise. A non-compete clause that they've signed maybe many years ago means they're very restricted on doing so. Labor, we think, are going to do something about this. Joining me is Andrew Leigh, who's Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Thanks for your time. So, submissions on this are flooding in. I think they're closing today.

So, what happens? You go through these and you decide how hard to act. Presumably, you're going to hear from business too, that are going to say, we build up this IP; this is our property as well, and don't go too far. How are you going to balance that?

MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH: If you're a business who's looking to start up, then non-competes really are an impediment. If you're hiring in a full employment economy, typically you're going to be hiring workers from another firm. But if all those workers are locked up by clauses that say they can't work in your city for 12 months, you're not going to be able to hire the same number of people, which is a drag on productivity. We know one in five workers are bound by non-compete clauses, including not just executives, but early childhood workers, security guards and the like, and that they are potentially a drag on wages and a drag on productivity.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH MATT DORAN
FRIDAY, 31 MAY 2024

SUBJECTS: Trump verdict, Impact of Peter Dutton’s mismanagement of immigration, Former government’s stacking of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Issues paper on non-compete clauses.

MATT DORAN, HOST: Bit of ground to cover today with the Assistant Minister for Charities, Competition and Treasury, Andrew Leigh. He joins us now in the studio. Andrew Leigh, welcome back to Afternoon Briefing.

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks, Matt.

DORAN: It would be remiss of me not to ask you about events in the United States. Pretty remarkable seeing a conviction against Donald Trump, considering he could still be the occupant of the White House, even with this conviction against his name. Does it sort of change how the government has to plan for a potential change of government, knowing that this is hanging over?

APPOINTMENT OF ASSOCIATE MEMBERS TO THE ACCC

The Albanese Government has appointed Mr Adam Suckling and Dr John Small as part‑time associate members of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Mr Suckling is a member of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and has been appointed as an ACCC associate member until 24 July 2028.

Dr Small is the Chair of the New Zealand Commerce Commission (NZCC) and has been appointed as an ACCC associate member until 7 June 2025.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 28 MAY 2024

SUBJECTS: Impact of social media on teen mental health.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST: Talking federal politics and a couple of interesting topics that I want to discuss with Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, and the Member for Fenner. Andrew, good morning.

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning, Stephen. Great to be with you.

CENATIEMPO: Social media has become, well, a major talking point for a whole bunch of reasons at the moment and I want to just get your personal view on this, because your view on social media has changed in recent times.

LEIGH: I used to think a couple of years ago that this was just part of what was going on with the worsening of young people's mental health. But increasingly now, the more I read, works by people like Jonathan Haidt, the more I'm concerned that this really is the number one culprit, in terms of the worsening mental health of young Australians. And the worsening is really substantial. Rates of depression have doubled, social phobia has tripled, rates of panic disorder are up fourfold, and there's an extraordinary 47 per cent of young women who say they've experienced a mental disorder in the last year. All of this has come about in the 15 years since smartphones and social media emerged. Even the set of randomised trials, which look at what happens when people take a break from social media, show an immediate improvement in mental wellbeing.