The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 16 JUNE 2026
SUBJECTS: Political donations; One Nation; competition reform; productivity
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Alright, time to talk federal politics now with the Member for Fenner and Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.
ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning, Stephen. Great to be with you.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: This is a debate that needs to be had about public funding of elections. You know, Simon Holmes à Court is arguing that the major parties have built a wall around themselves, effectively cutting smaller parties out because they get a higher return on these per vote allowances and that independents, you know, and my point to him is, you know, I mean, his teal candidates basically play by the same rules, but there are imbalances here?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, we have publicly funding elections so people don't have to rely on deep-pocketed donors and anyone's able to run for election. And the reason that kicks in at 4 per cent is to make sure that people don't just gum up the ballot and run when they've got absolutely no chance of winning. Because when you've got 30 candidates on a ballot, then it makes it pretty complicated to people.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Yeah, but I mean the argument is though that if you get this money and you still can get access to deep pocketed donors, and the Labor Party's a classic example of that. I mean, you get funded to the tune of millions by the unions every year. The average punter that you're talking about can't get that?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, anyone who runs for election gets the same amount of public funding per vote once they exceed that 4 per cent threshold.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Yes, but the balance is still in favour of major parties because they can get that alternative funding?
ANDREW LEIGH: Yeah, I mean if you win more votes, you get more…
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: No, no, no, no. I'm talking about, you know, you getting donations from the unions or, you know, One Nation getting donations from whoever it might be. I mean, this grassroots campaign of theirs is extraordinary. I mean, $29 from 70,000 average Australians is something we've never seen before. But there are alternative funding methods other than the public funding that the Labor Party and the Liberal Party get?
ANDREW LEIGH: Yes, that's right.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Yeah, so do we need to have a broader conversation about how we do this?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, I think public funding has ensured that people are able to run without being overly dependent on outside sources. That's the reason that many countries have public funding. We're not unique in this as you know Stephen. Countries have tended to do this because it means that you get less deep-pocketed donor influence.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Yeah, I don't know that that's actually played in Australia. But I want to talk about a speech that you're going to make today at the Ashurst competition, and you're going to take part in a consumer law panel in Sydney. Talking about open markets, now you've said that post-war era, the case felt almost self-evident. Economies that traded, competed and welcomed new ideas tended to become richer. Countries that turned inward tended to fall behind. But surely there's got to be a balance?
ANDREW LEIGH: Yeah, that's right. We've got to look after those who are small players, look after small businesses and start-ups and give them a chance to break into the market. And what we've seen over the last couple of decades has been rising market concentration and increased markups. So when we came to government, we made competition law a big priority of our government. We banned unfair contract terms, we increased the penalties for competition and consumer rip-offs, we reformed the merger laws and now we're getting rid of non-compete clauses to make it easier for workers to move to a better job. All of that is about trying to create a more competitive, more dynamic economy – an economy that works for everyone.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: But the problem with this free market and you know, and I, you know, once upon a time probably called myself a free marketeer and I'd rather government got out of the way and left it to business rather than not. But there's also got to be a level of protection for Australian industry that we don't see. And I know you're going to point to your Future Made in Australia campaign, but we know that that's failing at the moment and it's largely driven to uncompetitive industries. But when it comes to, you know, heavy manufacturing, whether it comes to textiles, whether, you know, there's a whole lot of industries we used to have in Australia that we just can't sustain anymore. What level of protectionism is right?
ANDREW LEIGH: We need to make sure we've got that core capacity through providing a cheap and accessible energy. One of the things that we've been doing through ensuring that there is a more sustainable energy system through the Rewiring the Nation program which has been about moving Australia on to lower marginal cost sources of electricity. We're also looking at ways of ensuring that we have that R&D system working better. And the Budget has a big revamp of the research and development tax credits which sees each dollar of research and development tax credit be about a fifth more productive than it was in the past. So they’re a couple of the big productivity measures we've got in place along with making the instant asset write-off permanent and giving loss carryback for small firms.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Yeah, I'm not sure that that actually helps us rebuild our manufacturing base but it's going to be interesting to see what the outcome of your panel is today. I might touch on it when we catch up in a couple of weeks.
ANDREW LEIGH: Sounds good, thanks Stephen.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: All the best Andrew. Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner.
ENDS