Andrew Leigh

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC CANBERRA MORNINGS

MONDAY, 28 MARCH 2022

SUBJECTS: Increasing threats to politicians and political staff; Canberra protesters; the federal election.

ADAM SHIRLEY, HOST: When you get talking politics, how do you express yourself? Do you get a bit passionate? It's understandable. Fiery? It’s a bit on the margins. Aggressive? Politicians, journalists, you listening now, I want to have a frank discussion about the words, the sledges and the abuse that can seep in and what that can lead to. The federal Member for Fenner here in Canberra, Andrew Leigh, was last week granted a personal protection order in the ACT Magistrate's Court. He doesn't want sympathy, he doesn't want sorrow. What he does want is for us to be aware of the way the environment is changing for MPs. Dr Leigh, thanks for your time today.

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

SHIRLEY: I know that discussing the specifics of the protection order is problematic. But in very general terms, why have you sought it and needed it?

LEIGH: It's because of the nature of a particular threat that we faced in the office, and that's a challenge to me being able to do my job as an MP and to engage with the general public. One of the things I really love about representing Canberra is being out on the street stalls, door knocking, engaging directly with people. And the last thing I want to do is to be forced to retreat from that sort of activity. But I mentioned it publicly, Adam, because I think it is important for people to know that the environment is changing. The sort of toxic brew that we've seen in the United States now has a situation where there's more Americans that believe in the wacky QAnon conspiracy theory - that the government's controlled by a Satan-worshipping paedophile sex trafficking ring - then there are left handers in America. Fifteen per cent of Americans believe in QAnon. In Britain, there's been two members of parliament killed over the past decade, just doing their jobs. And so we need to make sure in Australia that we carve out a safe space for political discourse, for people to disagree without being disagreeable. Because if we lose that, I think that is really a danger for democracy.

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TELEVISION INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS FIRST EDITION

FRIDAY, 25 MARCH 2022

SUBJECTS: Australia and the Pacific; the Federal Budget; Cost of living rising under Scott Morrison; Fuel excise; Vaccines.

PETE STEFANOVIC, HOST: Joining us live now from Canberra is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning to you. Before we talk about the budget, what's Labor's response to that deal?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Pete, it's ultimately a matter for the Sogavare Government and the people of the Solomon Islands. But Australia's traditionally had a close relationship with the Solomon Islands, going back to the 2003 RAMSI stabilisation mission. And this really does point to what happens when a coalition government takes office, cuts foreign aid to its lowest level, and talks about a ‘Pacific step up’ but fails to deliver. This has got concerning security implications for Australia, and Labor will look to be briefed on what the government’s planning to do.

STEFANOVIC: So we've been sleeping at the wheel here, in your opinion?

LEIGH: Well, this ‘Pacific step up’ just seems to have been talk rather than action. You can't cut foreign aid to its the lowest level in the generation and not expect that to have repercussions. That's why foreign aid cuts don’t just have impacts on poverty. The Morrison Government's decision to cut foreign aid also has its flow on impact on national security.

US LESSON IN WHY WORKERS NEED A BOOST IN REAL WAGES

The Australian, 16 March 2022

They call them “deaths of despair”. In the US, deaths from drug overdoses, suicide and alcoholic liver disease have been rising in the past decade. Well before the pandemic, American life expectancy was going backwards.

There are many causes of this American malaise, but a big one is the fact the economy simply hasn’t been delivering for working people. In the past 50 years, real wages for the typical American man have barely risen. Real incomes for the poorest households have gone backwards.

AUSTRALIA'S LAWS MUST CHANGE TO CONTAIN PUTIN'S DIRTY MONEY

The Canberra Times, 12 March 2022

As advanced democracies tighten sanctions on Vladimir Putin, regulators are looking more closely at how the Russian President made his money. Some sources suggest that he may have $100 billion – others as much as $200 billion. That would put Putin’s wealth higher than the combined annual output of South Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory.

One thing that we can be sure about is that Putin uses tax havens. In 2016, the leak of the Panama Papers revealed a complex web of transactions that Putin and his associates used to hide their assets, including helicopters, planes, a superyacht and a palace on the Black Sea. Tax havens like Panama helped conceal the true owners of these assets.

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RADIO INTERVIEW
6PR MORNINGS
WEDNESDAY, 2 MARCH 2022

SUBJECT: Tax havens and Russia.

LIAM BARTLETT, HOST: Joining us this morning is Andrew Leigh. Andrew’s the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities. How are you, Andrew?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: I'm terrific, Liam. How are you?

BARTLETT: I'm well, thanks. Look, I know you've been campaigning on this for a while, long before the invasion got underway. But how could the government make it easier to put a stop to this dirty money?

LEIGH: They could do three things, Liam. The first is to crack down on tax havens. The second is to tighten the anti-money laundering laws. And the third is to put in place a beneficial ownership register that would let people really know who owns Australian shares. All of those are straightforward transparency measures, and without those changes it makes it really hard to track down the sources of Putin's illicit cash. It's not as though they're all sitting in a big bank account marked ‘Vladimir Putin’. His cronies have stashed money in tax havens like Panama or the Bahamas. They're using illicit shell companies, and they're hiding the source of the transactions very deliberately. And Australia's laws just aren't up to date enough in order for us to be able to track down the sources of the dirty money.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

5AA MORNINGS

TUESDAY, 1 MARCH 2022

SUBJECTS: The Liberals dragging their feet on reform and costing charities millions; Ukraine.

GRAEME GOODINGS, HOST: Well, the Prime Minister has been under attack on the fundraising front. Dr Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Charities, claims Scott Morrison's failure to act on fundraising reform is costing Australian charities millions. Let's get him to explain this to us. Dr Andrew Leigh, good morning to you.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Graeme. Great to be with you and your listeners.

GOODINGS: Yeah. What's your major grievance?

LEIGH: Charities have called for years for fixing Australia's outdated charitable fundraising laws. They were designed in a pre-internet age, and they're just not fit for purpose for online fundraising. Right now, if a charity wants to fundraise online, it needs to register in seven different jurisdictions - paperwork that takes them a week. That means that the cost to Australian charities in complying is over a million dollars a month. Yet the government, despite being told to fix it by the Royal Commission on Natural Disaster Preparedness and a bipartisan Senate report, has done absolutely nothing. So regular charities continue to have to jump through unnecessary hoops. Meanwhile, Peter Dutton sets up a fundraiser which if he was a charity wouldn’t be allowed under current fundraising laws.

FASCIST FLAGS, QANON AND EXTREMIST TIES: THE MANY FACES OF ‘FREEDOM’ PROTESTERS

The RiotACT, 23 February 2022

Over recent weeks, far-right antivax protests have cropped up in Canada, Britain, France and New Zealand. But never have these protests come to a city with a higher vaccination rate than Canberra, where unvaccinated adults are as rare as UFO sightings.

They have a right to peacefully protest, but those of us who believe in science also have a right to point out that vaccines save lives and conspiracy theories can kill. Since the Morrison Government belatedly began rolling out COVID vaccines in Australia, these free vaccines have protected thousands of Australians from hospitalisation and death. COVID vaccines work. Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and Vitamin C do not.

HONEST AUSTRALIANS PAY THE PRICE FOR COALITION’S REFUSAL TO COME DOWN HARD ON TAX RORTS AND SCAMS

At its peak, the Stawell tyre dump held nine million tyres, making it one of the biggest tyre dumps in the world. After being inactive for more than a decade, the state Environmental Protection Authority finally stepped in and cleaned it up, recycling more than one million tyres, weighing around 10,000 tonnes.

Yet when they looked for someone to pay the bill, the government found that ownership of the dump had been transferred to an internet marketing company based in the tax haven of Panama.  Asked about the sale, the former owner admitted ‘I have never been to Panama and can't speak or understand any Spanish’. When the case went to court, Justice Karin Emerton called the sale of the site ‘outrageous’, suggesting that ‘It's open to infer that shifting assets between two companies, to a shelf company in Panama, is a device being used to avoid obligations under the fire preventions notice’.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

5AA MORNINGS

FRIDAY, 18 FEBRUARY 2022

SUBJECTS: Battlers struggling and billionaires soaring under Scott Morrison; NBN; Fuel prices and cost of living; Labor’s policies for a better Australia; Unemployment, the gig economy and worker protections; Anthony Albanese.

GRAEME GOODINGS, HOST: Well, elections both state and federal in the wind, and the economy and the handling of Covid certainly front and centre. Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury Andrew Leigh has launched a withering attack in Parliament on the government's handling of the economy. He joins me now. Andrew, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Morning, Graeme. Great to be back with you.

GOODINGS: Yeah. Look, we've just gone through two years of COVID. Is your attack really warranted?

LEIGH: I do think we need to take economic growth seriously again, Graeme. We've had almost a decade now of lousy economic growth. This has been the slowest decade for growth per person of any decade, going right back to the post war era. And if we don't take productivity seriously, then Australians will keep on finding that prices are rising faster than their wages. Now, last couple of years, we've seen beef prices up 17 per cent. We've seen childcare up around 10 per cent. Now we've seen petrol go over two bucks a litre. And yet many people are earning basically what they earned a couple of years ago. Wage growth has been tepid, unless of course you're a billionaire - billionaires collectively have doubled their wealth since Scott Morrison became prime minister.