E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING
TUESDAY, 27 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Labor’s economic policies; Scott Morrison’s vaccine failures.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Let's catch up with one of those inner-city lefty elites, sipping a latte, no doubt, after a major shift in economic policy from his party. Andrew Leigh, good morning to you. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Marcus. Always great to be with you. 

PAUL: No comment on that intro, I guess? 

LEIGH: No lattes this morning, Marcus, I'm sorry. I went off coffee a couple of years back, so I'm a tea drinker, I'm afraid.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC CANBERRA LIVE WITH LEON DELANEY 
MONDAY, 26 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Labor’s announcements on tax and an anti-corruption commission; Scott Morrison’s failures on policy, wages, waste and vaccines; multinational tax avoidance; Labor’s plans for a more equitable Australia; return of parliament.

LEON DELANEY, HOST: Dr Andrew Leigh, good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good afternoon Leon. Following that last conversation, I just hit up Google to find out the origins of your name. It turned out Leon of Sparta in the fifth century BC was the first Leon.

DELANEY: Goodness gracious me!

LEIGH: What a proud lineage you have there, mate. 

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RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC NEWSRADIO BREAKFAST
FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2021

SUBJECT: Scott Morrison’s historic $13 billion in JobKeeper waste.

TOM ORITI, HOST: First this half hour: the ABC has revealed that 150,000 businesses received JobKeeper despite increasing their turnover during the height of the pandemic last year. The Federal Government announced the $1,500 a fortnight wage subsidy last March, of course, as parts of the economy began shutting down. Some of you might remember, to qualify for the wage subsidy businesses needed to demonstrate or, importantly, predict a fall in turnover below certain levels. New data from the Parliamentary Budget Office reveals turnover actually rose for more than 157,000 employers, and they accrued more than $4 billion in JobKeeper between April and June last year. Turnover did fall for about another 200,000 employers, but not below the thresholds.

Now, Federal Labor MP Andrew Leigh has been a strident critic of the program and joins us now. Good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Tom. Great to be with you.

ORITI: Thanks for joining us. Big numbers there. what's your reaction to this data?

LEIGH: JobKeeper was a good idea terribly implemented by the Coalition Government. The fact is that if this degree of waste is true across the entire program then some $13 billion of JobKeeper went to firms with rising earnings: firms like Harvey Norman, Best & Less, Cotton On, Accent Group; institutions such as The Australian Club in Sydney that bans women members; for independent schools such as The Kings School, Wesley College or Brisbane Grammar, organisations that were doing pretty well through 2020 and didn't need taxpayer handouts.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC RADIO CANBERRA MORNINGS WITH ADAM SHIRLEY

FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s historic $13 billion in JobKeeper waste; return of parliament.

ADAM SHIRLEY, HOST: Dr Andrew Leigh is the Federal Labor member for Fenner and is with us on ABC Radio Canberra. Good morning to you, Dr Leigh.

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

SHIRLEY: I used that analogy of the Community Chest or Chance card in Monopoly, a bank error in your favour. If people get a JobKeeper error in their favour, is it their fault?

LEIGH: Adam, I love the fact you started with Monopoly, because it's one of the games I really dislike. It always seems to cause fights in our household and I don't think monopolies are good for the Australian community.

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RADIO INTERVIEW
2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING
TUESDAY, 20 JULY 2021
 
SUBJECTS: Euthanasia; JobKeeper; Scott Morrison’s vaccination bungles; Scott Morrison’s government by rorting

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: I’m going to put my mate on the spot here. Andrew Leigh, good morning. how are you mate?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Marcus. Always pleased to be put on the spot.

PAUL: Alright, for or against euthanasia - if you were asked to vote with your conscience, how would you go?

LEIGH: I'd support it, Marcus. I've certainly been in a situation with family members who suffered unduly at the end of their lives. I know for myself I'd want to be able to choose the time to go if I had an incurable disease, and have my kids remember me as somebody who was strong and with all their faculties. I respect there's a lot of differences on this, but certainly when I look at the attitudes of Australians, most Australians are supportive. You've got a majority of Anglicans, a majority of Catholics, a majority of Liberal Party voters, Greens Party voters, One Nation voters. Right across the spectrum there's very strong support for euthanasia.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 13 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Scott Morrison’s vaccine failures

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Andrew Leigh MP joins me on the program each Tuesday. Morning, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day, Marcus. How are you?

PAUL: Good. Bill Shorten, obviously, summed it up succinctly yesterday. I know that you're a man who doesn't refer to language like that, but you probably agree with his sentiments.

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RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 6 JULY 2021

SUBJECTS: Government’s vaccine bungles; Julia Banks

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Someone who, I don't know whether he's fully vaccinated, but I know he's had at least one jab, Andrew Leigh. Good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G'day Marcus. I'm halfway there. Next is due at the middle of the month.

PAUL: I get my first today. I'm off to Royal North Shore this afternoon, and then I get my follow up on 30/7, so in less than a month. My first one, a Pfizer-vaxxed day, and then the second one, dose two is on the 30^th. That's not too bad. By the end of this month, I'll be fully vaccinated.

LEIGH: That's the thing about Pfizer, that three-week rather than three-month gap means that you can actually get people vaccinated more quickly than if you go with AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca still has the efficacy, but a little bit slower to get people done.

No need to play Agatha Christie games with the nation's charities

If you listen to the Morrison government talk about activist charities, you'd think they were engaged in an epidemic of lawlessness.

Yet over the past three-and-a-half years, the charities commission deregistered just two charities for breaking the law in pursuit of activist goals. With 59,000 charities in operation, that means the annual chance of a charity being deregistered for illegal activism (10 in 1 million) are about the same odds that the typical Australian will commit a murder (9 in 1 million).

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS

THURSDAY, 17 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Territory Rights, Mitochondrial Donation Bill, Deliberative Democracy, Commonwealth COVID Hotspots.

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Welcome back well a host of states have either already enacted or are looking at euthanasia legislation, or voluntary dying as it’s often called. The ACT, well it wanted to go down that path, but it’s unable to, The Commonwealth in a bill that was introduced back in the 1990s blocking it from having that power. Joining me now is Labor MP and, of course, proud Canberran, Andrew Leigh. Thanks for your time.

ANDREW LEIGH: Pleasure Tom, great to be with you.

CONNELL: Where does Labor federally sit on this in terms of I know there’s a sort of general feeling that they’d like the ACT to have the power, but is this firmly in the policy platform, where are you at?

LEIGH: It would be a conscience vote if this came up Tom, but I think it would be supported, because the issue here is fundamentally one of territory rights. We’ve now got three states out of the six that have legislated on euthanasia, and others are considering it. And yet the two territories, the ACT and Northern Territory can’t even debate voluntary assisted dying: something that is supported by four out of five Coalition voters, four out of five Catholics, four out of five Protestants. This is an issue on which the Australian community is well ahead of the parliament, and at the very least, the territories should be able to debate the issue.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2CC CANBERRA LIVE WITH LEON DELANEY

WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2021

SUBJECTS: Morrison Government’s failure to tackle tax havens and multinational tax dodging; Morrison Government’s crackdown on charities engaged in public debate

LEON DELANEY, HOST: Well, we've heard a lot of talk about making multinational companies pay their fair share in tax. This is a topic that has emerged once again after a decision taken at the G7 meeting in the last few days, in order to levy taxes on companies like Facebook, Google, and other internet giants that shift their sphere of operations from one jurisdiction to another to avoid tax and the G7 nations have vowed to take steps to combat that. Somebody who's been beating this drum for some time, the Federal Member for Fenner and Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury, Shadow Assistant Minister of Charities, Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good afternoon, Leon. Terrific to be characterized as a drum beater. I like that description.

DELANEY: Well, that's what you've been doing. You've been beating this particular drum for quite some time, about getting multinational companies to pay a decent share of tax. Now the basic problem is that a company like Google or Facebook or whatever can come and operate here in Australia, generate revenue here in Australia, but because the parent company is in some offshore tax haven, they have to pay fees to their parent company for intellectual property or some other such nonsense, which means they don't make any taxable profit here in Australia and hence pay little or no tax. It's a dodge isn't it?

LEIGH:  Sure is, and if you're a video game designer in Gungahlin, I know we've got a bunch of terrific local firms, then you can't headquarter yourself out of Ireland or Netherlands or the Cayman Islands. You've got to pay tax like everyone else. If you're a pay-as-you-go earner then you end up paying the regular tax rate. But multinationals have been getting away with too much for too long and the Group of Seven rich countries has finally said we need to put a floor under company taxes. It's quite a different philosophy, Leon, from the one that Scott Morrison was touting a couple of years ago when he said we had to be part of this race to the bottom in company taxes. Back then there was a race he believed in. It was a race to the bottom. Now we're actually seeing Britain and the United States looking to raise rates, and all of these rich countries putting a floor under the company taxes, which I think is a great thing for making multinationals pay their fair share