Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
TRIPLE J HACK
MONDAY, 26 AUGUST 2019

Subject: New research on Australia’s incarceration rates.

AVANI DIAS: You probably know that when Australia was first colonised, the UK transported thousands of convicts here to serve out sentences for their crimes. Well it turns out Australia's back to where it was in that time. In fact, a new report has found we're entering a second convict age and that's despite a drop in crime rates. Perhaps the worst part of this report is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are now more likely to be imprisoned than African-Americans. Federal Labor's Andrew Leigh wrote this research. He's also an economist and he's with us now. Andrew, Australia's incarceration rate is at the highest level in 120 years. Why is that?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY: Avani, it's more likely now that police will press charges, that judges will impose a custodial sentence. Compared with the mid-1980s, that  custodial sentence will be longer, and that while you are awaiting trial, you likely won't be out on bail, you will be behind bars. So we've had a whole lot of tweaks to the law, which have together caused our incarceration rate to go through the roof. What's striking about this is it's come at a time in which crime rates have fallen. The murder rate’s now half what it was in the 1980s. Car theft is down. Robbery rates are down. But incarceration rates are substantially up.

LABOR’S CENTRIST ECONOMIC AGENDA

PER CAPITA REFORM AGENDA SERIES

MAURICE BLACKBURN LAWYERS, MELBOURNE

11 APRIL 2019

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and pay respect to their elders. My thanks to Per Capita, particularly Executive Director Emma Dawson, for the chance to speak with you today.

Last month, journalist David Speers asked senior Liberal Party frontbencher Linda Reynolds a reasonable question: ‘Do you agree that flexibility in wages and keeping wages at modest levels is a deliberate feature of our economic architecture?’.

‘No, absolutely not’, replied Reynolds. ‘For Bill Shorten to even suggest that…’

‘I’m quoting Mathias Cormann’, Speers pointed out.