E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO CANBERRA BREAKFAST WITH ROSS SOLLY
THURSDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2025
SUBJECTS: Swing voting; Peter Dutton's share trading scandal; Brindabella Christian College; National Charitable Fundraising Principles
ROSS SOLLY, HOST: Dr. Andrew Leigh, good morning to you.
ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning, Ross. Great to be with you.
SOLLY: Good to be with you too. I've got a few things I want to talk with you about. How are you, by the way? Are you well?
LEIGH: Terrific. Just got back from a lovely run. Terrific to be out in the Canberra bush.
SOLLY: How many K's this morning, just out of interest?
LEIGH: I did 14 this morning.
SOLLY: 14. And your splits?
LEIGH: I was doing sprints. I think my quickest sprints at the moment are about a 4:20 per k, which is not very good. I had a race on the weekend.
SOLLY: What were you doing? Did you have a block of cement tied to your back or something? No, that's actually. That's actually very good. Now, Dr. Andrew Leigh, interesting. In our poll so far this morning, I don't know what you take away from this, but so far I'm just updating it. 82% of people voting in our poll are saying they would vote exactly the same way this time around as they did three years ago. I guess you'd take that as a positive.
LEIGH: I was thinking last time I analysed this as an academic, about 10% of people switched votes from one election to the next. Obviously, a lot of people are going in opposite directions and so the overall swing is never 10%, but the average from the elections I was looking at was about 10%. So, you've got a swingier poll than average.
SOLLY: Yeah. Now 81% say no, they're going to vote exactly the same way. 19% say they would vote differently just on the election. Some interesting stuff. We watched 7:30 last night and some interesting questioning regarding Peter Dutton and some of his investments and Andrew Leigh, questions about him buying shares in banks in the middle of the banking crisis. And there seemed to be some suggestion from Andrew Charlton last night, one of your colleagues who worked at Kevin Rudd, that it smelt. It smelt bad that a politician would deem that as something he should be doing during a time when Australia was going through this crisis. Do you think Peter Dutton has any questions to answer regarding buying on the eve of the bailout of the banks?
LEIGH: I think you have to worry about his conduct there, Ross. This is a crisis which saw unemployment go up 2 percentage points, which saw the wealth of Australian households go down about 10%, and the concerns of all serious policymakers were on how to ameliorate the crisis. Yet at the very same time you've got Peter Dutton whose main concern seems to have been thinking about how he could personally profit from the crisis by trading bank shares.
SOLLY: I mean, if you had cash available though, some loose cash lying around, you'd be crazy, would you not? If you thought that the government might step in or that the banks might rally, you'd be crazy not to invest. Isn't he just doing what most sensible people would do if they had that money lying around that they could invest in that area?
LEIGH: Our responsibility as policymakers, Ross, is to look after the Australian people. And as a senior member of the Opposition at the time, Peter Dutton's first obligation should have been working out how he could help Australians rather than about how he could enrich himself and his family. The fact that he was trading in bank shares in particular does raise questions about what he knew and about the precise timing of those trades, which he still hasn't come clear about. He also hasn't come clear about whether he had attended the opposition briefing on the stimulus measures on 3 February 2009.
SOLLY: I'm sure there'll be more questions asked in the next day or so on the Brindabella Christian College, Andrew Leigh, also as Minister for Charities, the Brindabella Christian College is registered as a charity. It's also. Correct me if I'm wrong. In the heart of your electorate, what are your concerns? Do you have concerns about what's going on there and what have you done to try to get to the bottom of what's happening?
LEIGH: Brindabella Christian College certainly seems to be in considerable amount of strife at the moment. I mean, I'm just seeing what I've read in the press there. But there's obviously the ATO court action, the underpayment of staff and concerns from the ACT Government. My first thoughts are with the students, parents and teachers at the school. Those teachers have a right to get paid on time regardless of what the school is getting in terms of fees. Parents have a right to know what the long-term future of the school is. So, I do hope that the leadership of the school is able to step up there. The charities commission has a role. It doesn't report to me on that, much like the Tax Office plays an independent role from the Assistant Treasurer. But we're certainly watching and hoping that a resolution can be to the interest of the school community.
SOLLY: Have you been in to have any discussions? Have you tried to speak with the board? Have you spoken to any of the parents, any of the teachers? Are you doing anything, Andrew Leigh, to get to the bottom of it?
LEIGH: Look, I don't think that's appropriate in terms of the ACNC and ATO actions, Ross. Those are independent agencies and they…
SOLLY: No, but I'm more talking about as a concerned local member. Many of these people are your constituents, Andrew Leigh. They're frustrated, they're, they're distressed, they're worried about what's going on. As the local member, I don't think there'd be anything untoward in you going in on behalf of your local membership, your local constituents. Sorry. And asking, okay, what's going on here? Have we got a solution? What is happening?
LEIGH: I've certainly been engaging with constituents of mine whose children attend there. Their main Lyneham campus is in Alicia Payne's electorate. Their Norwest campus is in my electorate in Charnwood. But like all my colleagues, Katy, Dave and Alicia, we've been talking about it and concerned about the school finding a resolution.
SOLLY: Yeah, but there's one thing for you to be talking with your colleagues about it. What about picking up the phone and calling chairman of the board or maybe the principal or something like that? Do you think that would be inappropriate?
LEIGH: If I thought there was an appropriate role that I could play there, Ross, then I would certainly be doing that. I know the ACT Government, as the main regulator of ACT schools, has been working with them, and I do hope that a resolution can ultimately be found. It can be really disruptive for kids to be moving schools and I know there's a lot of investment has been put into that school community and I know there's a lot of people are watching closely to see how it will pan out.
SOLLY: It's 21 past seven on ABC Canberra Breakfast. We're speaking to Dr. Andrew Leigh, the member for Fenner and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Just one other story which came through yesterday, Andrew, Julie, where a charity got kicked out of one of the main shopping centres here in Canberra because it had been accused of harassing customers as people walked past. It's a fine line, isn't it? And we were talking about it here at the station yesterday, about how many of us will actually go a long way out of our way to avoid walking. And it's a terrible thing to say because charities are there trying to raise money, they're trying to get people to sign up and all that sort of stuff. But a lot of people feel intimidated by it. A lot of people don't want to be hassled by it. How do we get that balance right? Because now we've had Amnesty International kicked out of a shopping centre because people there were accused of harassing people.
LEIGH: I certainly read the story, Ross, and was deeply concerned. We set in place a set of national charitable fundraising principles when we came to office, harmonising the different fundraising principles at various states. And one of those principles, principle 8, is ‘never exploit the trust, lack of knowledge, lack of capacity, apparent need for care and support, or vulnerable circumstances of any donor’. It certainly seems on the face of it that that principle was being breached. The reason for the national fundraising principles is we wanted to set a minimum necessary standard for the social licence for charities to operate. It is absolutely vital that charities adhere to those national fundraising principles. And just from what I've read in the paper, doesn't seem as though there's been compliance with that.
SOLLY: Yeah, it is a fine line for these charities to work, isn't it, Andrew Leigh? I mean, you can understand they go there, they have, you know, they're public facing, they want people to sign up, they want people to donate and all that sort of stuff. But I don't know about you, but there have been times when I've been busy and you feel guilty, it's a terrible thing to have to do, but sometimes you do just. You feel bad and you try and avoid any situation.
LEIGH: Well, the big trend of fundraising over the last couple of decades has been the move away from face-to-face donations. It used to be the main donation channel, now it's a very small donation channel if you look at the overall pool of donations. And it's no surprise that people refer sometimes to and to solicitors of that kind as being ‘chuggers’, charity muggers. So, charities need to really be thinking about their reputation if they're going to be raising money through face-to-face solicitation in public places. And need to make sure that any of those fundraisers are adhering to the standards that those charities expect. And one more point on this, Ross. It is no excuse to say that you've outsourced it to a third-party company. The charities themselves bear the responsibilities on charitable fundraising. This was true when we had the Pareto Phone hack with a range of donors details released a couple of years ago. It doesn't let the charity off the hook that they've chosen to use a third-party organisation.
SOLLY: Andrew Leigh, good to chat with you as always. Thank you for that.
LEIGH: Thanks, Ross.
SOLLY: That's Dr. Andrew Leigh, the member for Fenner.
ENDS