Andrew Leigh

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.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

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.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

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.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

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-

ENGAGED EGALITARIANISM: WHY THE AUSTRALIAN RECOVERY MUST PRIORITISE OPENNESS

Stan Kelly Lecture
Economic Society of Victoria, Melbourne

Whenever I take one of my sons to an outdoors shop, I like to point out the Clif Bars. ‘Do you remember how they got their name?’, I’ll ask them. Wearily – because we’ve done this routine a dozen times – they’ll roll their eyes. ‘Yes, dad’, he’ll reply. ‘Gary Erickson had the idea for a great product and named it after his dad’. ‘That’s right, son!’, I’ll reply. ‘And don’t you think there’s a lesson for all of us in that?’.

Like Gary Erickson, Bert Kelly honoured his father in creating today’s talk – truly the act of a ‘modest member’. Stan Kelly was a campaigner for free trade in an era when it was deeply unpopular. When Australian industry was settling down for a long snooze behind high tariff walls, he was arguing for the benefits of trade liberalisation. In 1929, Stan Kelly joined the Tariff Board. The next year, President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Act into law, raising tariffs on over 20,000 goods. This was not a propitious time to be a free trader.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 30 MARCH 2022

The Whitlam government changed Australia and it encapsulated the spirit of the 1960s. And no-one did that better than Moss Cass. Long haired, bearded and described by the Sydney Jewish News as 'with it', he was happy to invite colleagues to smoke pot in his office when they critiqued Australia's drug policy. He was somebody who didn't always get on with the Prime Minister. He carried with him the same drive and passion as his parents, who'd fled the anti-Jewish pogroms in tsarist Russia.

He was a trailblazer in the area of the environment. He was frustrated at the timidity of the Australian Conservation Foundation, which was then chaired by Sir Garfield Barwick and whose patron was Prince Philip. He was an activist in the environmental area, effectively managing to stop sand mining on Fraser Island—an outrage that, when you go to Fraser Island today, you cannot believe ever occurred—and curtailing the Ranger Uranium Mine in Kakadu. He began that process of turning the Labor Party into Australia's leading environmental party, which it remains today.