Andrew Leigh

LAUNCH OF THE 2021 CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING DATA

TUESDAY, 28 JUNE 2022

Good morning to you all and thank you Wally for the warm Welcome to Country. I too wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on, the Ngunnawal people. I acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the region, and I pay my respects to their elders, past and present.

It is an honour to be here today to officially launch the 2021 Census of Population and Housing data as the Assistant Minister with responsibility for the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I do so with enormous respect for the ABS, and for Census data, as it inspires deeper conversations about the social health of the nation. 

Prior to joining politics, I was a professor of economics at the Australian National University. During this time, I learnt to appreciate how much Census data is relied upon by governments, businesses and community organisations to help understand what we as a country need now and into the future. I’ve used the cross-tabulations, the microdata, and the community profiles to research everything from income inequality to whether child gender affects divorce.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC CANBERRA DRIVE

MONDAY, 20 JUNE 2022

SUBJECT: Labor’s plans to support the charities sector.

ADRIENNE FRANCIS, HOST: Andrew Leigh is Assistant Minister for Charities, and also Member for the Federal ACT seat of Fenner, and he joins us on ABC Radio Canberra. Yuma. Good evening, Andrew Leigh. Thanks for being with us.

ANDREW LEIGH, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY: Good afternoon, Adrienne. Great to be back with you.

FRANCIS: Why did you fight to get this charities portfolio?

LEIGH: Oh look, I love charities and the work they do in the community. And I thought it was just beautiful the way you talked about Margaret and Paul McGrath, and what they do with Ngunnawal Street Pantries really is remarkable. I remember when I was out there, they were telling me the story of a time when people had been lined up to receive support and someone had mentioned that she had been the victim of family violence. Somebody else in the queue just quietly said, ‘I went through the same experience a couple of years ago, if you'd like somebody to come with you to the support counselling services I can’. And they said that was what was really special about it - they weren't just providing food and clothes and essential living provisions, but they're also connecting people up into a broader community. I've had the charities portfolio since Labor went into opposition in 2013 and spent those nine years engaging with charities - even wrote a book about some of their ideas for building community - and really had a chance to get a sense as to the problems that were being caused by the coalition's adversarial approach to charities.

ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL YOUTH FUTURES SUMMIT

THURSDAY, 9 JUNE 2022

[Acknowledgements omitted]

It has been a really tough time for young Australians. Over the course of the past nine years, we've seen work become less stable for many people. The rise of the gig economy is good for consumers, but tough for those who work in the sector. We had a period a couple of years back where in just six months we had more than five fast food delivery drivers killed. And because they were working under casual conditions, their families didn't get the compensation they might have received if those workers had been part of a regular firm.

We increasingly have workers working in an environment in which their boss is an app, in which they can't set their hourly charge, but they're treated like contractors. That instability of employment has extended across the labour market. I remember one labour market economist telling me that if you went back a generation, pretty much anyone who graduated from university could expect to walk into a full time job. And now increasingly, he said, part time employment is common even for people coming out of university.

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO STAFF AT THE AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS

CANBERRA

THURSDAY, 9 JUNE 2022

As a stats nerd, this is a pretty exciting job to have.

I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to have Assistant Ministerial responsibility for the Bureau of Statistics, and I do so with a huge respect for the work that you all do. As you know, the great maxim ‘what gets measured gets managed’ really holds up. You determine many of the key things that Australians focus on. You shape the national conversation around inflation, unemployment and growth, but also deeper conversations too about the social statistics - about how we're tracking as a country in terms of our environmental measures, the social health in the nation, the levels of trust.

AUSTRALIA RECONNECTED

ADDRESS TO THE AUSTRALIAN PROGRESS CONFERENCE

CANBERRA

TUESDAY, 7 JUNE 2022

It's an honour to be in the room with so many friends, activists, people who I greatly admire. The Australian Progress conference is Davos for altruists.

I want to talk about the civic crisis that Australia is facing today. Over the last couple of generations, we've seen a four-fifths decline in the number of organisations per person. We've seen a decline in the share of Australians who say they can trust government to do the right thing. We've seen a drop in the volunteering rate from 35 per cent of the start of the millennium, now down to 25 per cent. In the 1950s, half the population used to regularly attend a religious service – now that’s down to a seventh. In the 1980s, union membership was half the workforce - now down to a seventh. Australians are less likely to participate in team sports. Compared with the mid-1980s, Australians have half as many close friends and know half as many of their neighbours.

Now I've been involved in progressive politics for over three decades, since I joined the Labor Party in 1991. If you'd asked me when I first joined the Labor Party how much should we care about community and social capital, I would have said it's not that important an issue. I've fundamentally changed my view over that period, as I’ve come to believe that it goes to who we are as a society. Just as inequality is a choice between a society of ‘we’ and a society of ‘me’, so too civic community is a choice between a society of ‘we’ and the society of ‘me’. Inequality and community are two sides of the same coin.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC CANBERRA MORNINGS

MONDAY, 6 JUNE 2022

SUBJECTS: The resignation of Gary Johns; Labor’s plans to support the charities sector; Canberrans and donations; ACCC.

ADAM SHIRLEY, HOST: Gary Johns - head of the Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission - will step down at the end of next month. Now his stewardship caused some consternation and open criticism from the then opposition, now federal government. Andrew Leigh is the federal Member for Fenner and newly appointed Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Dr Andrew Leigh, good morning to you and thank you for your time.

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

SHIRLEY: You've had some days to get, well a few days to get your knees under the desks of these new portfolios. First of all to Dr Gary Jones, you were quite critical of some of his decisions and he in that role in the months prior. Did you ask for his resignation?

RECONNECTING AUSTRALIA

ADDRESS TO THE CONNECTING UP CONFERENCE

MELBOURNE

THURSDAY, 12 MAY 2022

*** CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ***

Over the course of the last two generations, Australia has become more disconnected. We've seen a decline in the share of Australians who give money to charities. We've seen a fall off in the share of Australians who volunteer their time. There are now fewer associations per person than they were in the late 1970s, and our big mass membership organisations - whether they be Scouts, Guides, Rotary Lions, or indeed political parties - have shed members of an alarming rate. We've surveyed the number of close friends Australians had in the 1980s and done so again more recently, and those surveys show that Australians have half as many close friends as they did a generation ago. The same is true of neighbours. Australians know about half as many of their neighbours as they did in the mid-1980s - ironically, when Neighbours itself first hit the screens.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC CANBERRA MORNINGS

TUESDAY, 12 APRIL 2022

SUBJECTS: AIS funding; Anthony Albanese.

ROSS SOLLY, HOST: Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities, and federal Member for Fenner. He joins us on the program. Good morning to you, Andrew Leigh.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Ross. It's so good to have you back in Canberra. It feels like just the other day we were chatting on the radio, but of course, you've been away for nearly a decade.

SOLLY: What’s a few years between friends. Yes. I must say, it is really nice to be back in the national capital and it's really nice to have people saying that it's nice to have me back in the capital.

[laughter]

SOLLY: At least to my face. At least to my face, Andrew Leigh.

LEIGH: Gone, but not forgotten, you were.

HOW AUSTRALIA CAN DOUBLE PHILANTHROPIC GIVING BY 2030

MELBOURNE, THURSDAY, 7 APRIL 2022

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and pay my respects to elders past and present. My thanks to our hosts, and the many friends and social entrepreneurs in the room. Special thanks to my parliamentary colleagues - Mark Dreyfus, Bill Shorten, Kate Thwaites, Josh Burns, and Ged Kearney. And Linda White, who will shortly be joining us in the Senate. It is a real treat to have you all here – parliamentarians who are just as passionate about the community sector success as I am.

In the late 19th century, Alfred Nobel got to read his own obituary. His brother Ludvig had died, and a European newspaper mistakenly published an obituary that had prepared for Alfred. Nobel might have hoped that it would talk about his inventing dynamite, but instead it read ‘the merchant of death is dead’. Nobel, who didn't have a wife or children, suddenly had a foresight as to how history was going to remember him. But he had time to change that. And over the course of the next decade, he set up the Nobel Prizes, giving nine tenths of his wealth to establish what are now the most prestigious prizes in the sciences.

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TELEVISION INTERVIEW

BUSINESS NOW

WEDNESDAY, 6 APRIL 2022

SUBJECTS: Engaged Egalitarianism and why the Australian recovery must prioritise openness; Labor’s plans to tackle multinational tax avoidance; Labor’s Powering Australia plan; Labor’s plan to ease the costs of living and support economic growth.

ROSS GREENWOOD, HOST: The Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury Dr Andrew Leigh today laid out a plan to increase foreign investment into Australia as he delivered the Economic Society of Victoria's biennial Stan Kelly lecture. Andrew Leigh joins us now from Melbourne. Andrew, many thanks for your time, as always. Before we get to foreign investment, I want to go to Scott Morrison, who's in the Hunter Valley. We've just heard him only just in the last few minutes criticising Labor for not putting in a tax cap of 23.9 per cent as the government has, saying that effectively if you did not have a tax cap, this would mean Labor would continue to tax at higher levels and therefore hang on to more of the people's money. How do you respond to that?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Scott Morrison's a desperate man who will say anything and do anything. The fact is that his tax to GDP ratio of 22.1 per cent is considerably higher than the tax to GDP ratio of 20.9 per cent of the previous Labor Government. This is the second highest taxing government in the post-war period, after only the Howard Government. So Scott Morrison has no leg to stand on when it comes to higher taxes-