Andrew Leigh

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

What Should AI Love?

National Press Club of Australia,
Canberra

Wednesday, 7 October 2026

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, on whose lands we meet. My thanks to the Italian Embassy and the National Press Club for organising and hosting this event. It is a pleasure to share the stage with Father Paolo Benanti and our moderator Corrie McLeod.

Today’s discussion matches the arc of how many Australians have been thinking about AI. After ChatGPT launched in 2022, most of us were focused on how it could make us more productive – summarising documents, checking our work or planning holidays.

Since then, progress has been rapid. One measure of AI agents’ ability to carry out complex tasks has doubled roughly every seven months. As the technology has become more capable, the talk has turned to its impact on humanity. 

In these short opening remarks, I want to ask two questions. What can AI do for human wellbeing? And what values should guide our AI systems?

Start with a man with ALS who had largely lost the ability to speak.

In 2025, researchers implanted 256 electrodes in the part of his brain involved in speech. AI decoded his neural signals and turned them into speech almost instantly.

The synthetic voice resembled his own voice from before ALS. He could change his intonation, emphasise particular words and even sing short melodies.

Now let’s move to a more vexed use of AI.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

Joining the Dots: Towards a Seamless Australian Economy

CEDA

Edith Cowan University City Campus,
Perth

Wednesday, 23 September 2026

I acknowledge the Whadjuk Noongar people as the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we meet, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. I extend that respect to all First Nations people here today.

Thank you to CEDA and Edith Cowan University for bringing us together, and to my former colleague, the talented economist Professor Colm Harmon, for leading the conversation to follow.

By my count, this is the seventh time I have spoken at a CEDA event. Past talks have covered multinational tax, productivity, job security, gender equality, program evaluation and merger reform. It is good to be back.

CEDA has been part of Australia’s economic conversation since 1960, when it was founded by Sir Douglas Copland. Copland held senior academic posts at the universities of Tasmania and Melbourne. He later became the Australian National University’s first Vice-Chancellor. He was a remarkable institution builder.

For 66 years, CEDA has brought together business, government, academia and the community around a distinctly Australian goal: sustainable long-term prosperity. CEDA forums give governments a place to test policy against business experience and academic evidence. With researchers like chief economist Cassandra Winzar and under the leadership of CEO Melinda Cilento, CEDA is in good hands.

My talk today is about competition policy. But you need not fear that it will get too abstract. We will start with bicycle helmets, move to prefabricated bathrooms, and finish with electric trucks.

I’ve chosen these examples because they each have something to say about making the national economy work better. With Western Australians voting to join the federation in July 1900, our nation sprang into being in January 1901. The economic benefits of federation have been immense, yet 125 years on, the job still isn’t quite done.

Businesses and workers often tell us that they encounter eight regulatory economies. Sometimes the differences are small, but added together, these differences consume time and deter entry. They constrain scale and slow the spread of better technology. The bill arrives through higher prices and weaker productivity.

The Albanese Government’s revitalised National Competition Policy is all about making it easier for workers and firms to operate across Australia. 

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

The Learning State: Building Experimentation into Australian Government

Shann Memorial Lecture

University of Western Australia, 
Perth

Tuesday, 22 September 2026

1. How Many Hoops Should a Jobseeker Have to Jump Through?

I acknowledge the Whadjuk Noongar people, on whose lands we meet, and recognise all First Nations people present. Thank you to the University of Western Australia, to Alison Preston, president of the Economic Society of Australia (Western Australia), and to everyone involved in organising the Shann Memorial Lecture. It is a huge honour to give a lecture bearing Ed Shann’s name. I will say more about Shann shortly, and how his approach to economics fits today’s theme.

But I want to begin with a much more recent Australian story about how our government is using randomised trials to shape government policy.

When people receive income support through Workforce Australia Online, the government sets mutual obligations. Jobseekers can meet these obligations through job applications, training, study and other activities. Each activity is allocated a certain number of points under the Points Based Activation System. The standard monthly target has been 100 points, which typically includes a minimum of four job applications.

The logic seems straightforward. Looking for work takes effort. Requiring more effort should, up to a point, increase the chances of finding a job.

But where is that point?

How many applications should someone be required to submit? How demanding should the points target be? At what stage does an obligation stop encouraging useful job search and begin consuming time that could be spent finding work in other ways?

Trevor Smith, 1931-2026
Condolence Speech

House of Representatives,
Parliament House

Wednesday, 16 September 2026

I rise to pay tribute to Trevor William Edward Smith, who died peacefully at home on 21 August, aged 94, just a few weeks short of his 95th birthday. Trevor was born in London in 1931 and grew up in central London during the Blitz. As a boy, he would report back to air raid wardens on which houses had been damaged. He later served in the air force in Britain and married his beloved Dorothy when he was just 20.

When the family decided to emigrate, they considered Canada but chose Australia partly because the boat schedules worked better. They were among the many 10-pound Poms who made this country home. Trevor worked in communications at Woomera then moved to Canberra in the early 1960s, in time to watch the lake fill. He and Dorothy became Australian citizens here. His career later included a secondment to the US navy, working in Maine and California.

On returning to Canberra, he helped install the sound and vision systems in this building.

As a retiree, Trevor was active in COTA, SCOA and Probus. He made handmade cards, painted garden gnomes, practised photography in his own darkroom and took his children to Canberra Airport simply to watch the planes. Trevor played tennis, racquetball, table tennis and, above all, squash. A left-hander, he was a regular on the ACT masters team and quite possibly the oldest player at the Dickson courts. His daughter Janice joked that by the end he was not terribly mobile around the court, but he still had a wicked drop shot. Remarkably, Trevor was still playing squash until a fortnight before his death.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Bridie Lee and Ryan Riethmuller

House of Representatives, 
Parliament House 

Thursday, 10 September 2026

On the morning of 27 August, five members of the Canberra Bilbys Triathlon Club were riding on Gungahlin Drive when a car struck the group. Bridie Lee, 32, died at the scene. Ryan Riethmuller, 39, was critically injured and died in hospital seven days later. I thank the first responders, including parliamentary security guard Ralph Whitten.

Bridie had come to Canberra from Western Australia in 2022 to join the Australian Bureau of Statistics. She leaves her parents, John and Carolyn, her brother David and her sister Amy. At the ABS, Bridie worked on health statistics. Bindi Kindermann said, Bridie brought ‘warmth, kindness and genuine care to every interaction.' Her ABS colleagues called her 'a ray of sunshine, incredibly intelligent, adaptable and positive'. She volunteered across the graduate program, mentored new graduates and threw herself into social events. Bindi remembers mornings chatting with Bridie in the kitchen as she made her 'big cup of tea'.

That same character was evident at the Bilbys. Glen Sturesteps said Bridie ‘made the Bilbys a warmer, more welcoming place', adding simply, 'Bridie cared.' The night before Bridie died, Glen spoke to her about her work. She talked passionately about health, statistics and nutrition because, he said: 'She believed the work mattered. She believed it could improve people's lives.'

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury

The Himalayan Floods
House of Representatives, Parliament House

8 September 2026

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ENTRANCE
MONDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2026

SUBJECTS: Albanese Government banning unfair non-compete clauses, wage-fixing cartels and no-poach clauses

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning, my name is Andrew Leigh. I'm the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities, and Treasury. Right now, millions of Australian workers are being stopped from moving to a better job by so-called non-compete clauses. 

Non-compete clauses are holding workers back. They don't just affect high-paid executives; they're impacting early childhood workers and security guards. Even gardeners are being subject to what we used to call gardening leave. What this means is that we get less productivity and lower wages. e61 research says that the average worker subject to a non-compete loses $2,500 a year, relative to where they would have been without that non-compete clause. 

Labor will scrap non-compete clauses for workers earning below the Fair Work Act's high-income threshold, currently $190,100. We're also getting rid of wage-fixing agreements, which allow employers to collude in keeping wages low. Right now, employers can't collude in keeping prices high, but they can get away with colluding to hurt workers. That's unfair. It hurts productivity and it hurts the dynamism and the mobility that we need to get productivity moving again. Labor is also cracking down on no-poach clauses, which say to firms that they can't poach each other's employees. For example, the no-poach clauses that currently exist in the franchise agreements of some fast-food companies. 

These reforms are vital to productivity. Labor is committed to a more competitive and dynamic economy. As the Assistant Minister for Productivity and the Assistant Minister for Competition, I'm really proud of our reforms in getting national competition policy moving again. The merger reforms that overhauled our merger laws for the first time in 50 years, and the vital work that we're doing on economic dynamism. 

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

Randomising Our Way to Better Policy

Asian Evaluation Week 2026,
Asian Development Bank, Manila

Online Address

Tuesday, 1 September 2026

Thank you for the opportunity to speak at this year’s Asian Evaluation Week.

I thank the Asian Development Bank for bringing together policymakers, practitioners and researchers from across our region.

This year's theme, ‘Put Your Money Where Your Evidence Is’, is  a powerful reminder that we have a responsibility to direct funding and resources towards programs that make a real difference.

At its core, evaluation is about answering a straightforward question: did a policy or program improve people's lives?

That question is surprisingly difficult to answer. We can observe what happened after an intervention was introduced, but we cannot directly observe what would have happened in its absence. Rigorous evaluation helps bridge that gap, because it gives us a credible counterfactual.

Evaluation moves us beyond assumptions. It helps us distinguish between correlation and causation.

Just as importantly, evaluation encourages humility.

Many policies that appear promising fail to deliver meaningful results when tested rigorously. Equally, some simple and inexpensive interventions produce benefits that exceed expectations.

Rigorous evaluation helps policymakers become more curious.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

How Frictions Reinforce Class

TASA Social Stratification Symposium,
University of Melbourne

Online Address 

Friday, 28 August 2026

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, on whose lands we meet today, and pay respect to their elders.

Thank you to Jenny Chesters, Penny Toth, TASA and the Social Stratification Thematic Group for convening today’s symposium. Professor Chesters and I worked together at the Australian National University many moons ago, and it has been a pleasure since then to watch her build a body of work that has deepened Australia’s understanding of education, family background, opportunity and social class.

Thank you for the chance to join you virtually to consider one of the biggest questions any nation can ask itself: who gets what chance, and why?

Let me start with a story.

Picture a young worker in her twenties. She has a job in childcare, hairdressing, disability support or aged care. She likes her work, but the pay is modest and the rent keeps rising. One day, a better job comes up. Higher pay, shorter commute, perhaps a roster that makes life a little easier.

Then she remembers the contract she signed on her first day.

Somewhere in the pages, perhaps after the probation clause and before the leave provisions, there is a non-compete clause. It says she cannot work for a competitor for a period after leaving. She does not know whether it is enforceable. She does not know whether anyone would sue. She does know that a letter from a lawyer would be terrifying.

So she stays.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

Stronger Charities, Stronger Communities
Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) Governing For Good Forum

Online Address

Friday, 14 August 2026

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people where I am recording this and the Wurundjeri people where you are meeting, and pay respects to all First Nations people present, as well as the many charities that work to close the gap.

One of the best books I’ve read this year is Nicholas Epley’s A Little More Social, which argues that most of us would be happier and healthier if we connected with people more often. Drawing on decades of research in social psychology, he makes a powerful case that we should have more conversations with strangers and deeper chats with friends.

Some of that is about individual actions, but it’s also about institutions. A society with thriving charities is one that provides more chances for us to be a little more social. Community groups are essential to building community, and good governance in the charity sector helps the organisations that connect Australians remain effective, trusted and resilient.

Before turning to that topic, I want to thank Sue Woodward for your leadership of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, and for bringing us together for this year’s Governing for Good Forum.

I also acknowledge the members of the ACNC Advisory Board, chaired by Sarah Davies. I thank retiring members Myles McGregor-Lowndes, Rosina Loria, Anna Bacik and David Crosbie for their service over the past three years. I welcome new members Alice Macdougall, Ian Murray, Krystian Seibert and Rosy Walia. I congratulate Sarah Davies, Sara Harrup, Ian Hamm and Nick Maisey for their continuing contribution.