E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC CANBERRA MORNINGS

WEDNESDAY, 29 JUNE 2022

SUBJECTS: Census; Canberra’s population and political representation; Staffing.

ADAM SHIRLEY, HOST: A day after his self-described Christmas, Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh is with us on Mornings. He is the Member for Fenner, and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Dr Leigh, a very good morning to you.

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

SHIRLEY: How was Christmas and the unwrapping of all your presents?

LEIGH: It's fascinating to get a bit of a picture of the ACT, to get a sense that we're volunteering at higher rates than the national average. An 18 per cent volunteering rate here in the ACT compared to 14 per cent nationally. It reminded me too what a strong Defence community we have here in the ACT, something maybe we don't talk about very much. Canberrans are five times as likely as the average Australian to be currently serving, and much more likely to be veterans. And that veteran community is a really vital part of Canberra.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2GB AFTERNOONS

TUESDAY, 28 JUNE 2022

SUBJECT: Census.

JOE HILDEBRAND, HOST: Dr Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Treasury, but more importantly he is the minister in charge of the census. Minister, welcome to Afternoons.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: G’day, Joe. Great to be with you-

HILDEBRAND: Great to be with you.

LEIGH: I’m feeling tickety-boo like you.

HILDEBRAND: [laughter] I can't stop thinking about it now. Golly gosh, gee whiz.

LEIGH: It’s such a good phrase.

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.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

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.

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.