Andrew Leigh

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

Only 7% of Australian businesses broadly use AI. That should worry us

Published in Startup Daily

15 May 2026

Australia will be more productive when good ideas travel faster.

We rightly celebrate invention: new medicines, better software, advanced manufacturing and clean technology. Discovery matters. But discovery is the opening chapter. The larger economic prize comes when useful tools and smarter systems spread across ordinary workplaces.

A breakthrough in a laboratory is valuable. A breakthrough that helps a nurse, teacher, farmer or small business owner do better work is more valuable still. Innovation changes an economy when it reaches the people who can use it.

That is the diffusion dividend.

Australian agriculture offers a powerful example. For thousands of years, farming began by turning the soil over. The plough broke the ground, buried weeds and prepared a seedbed. It was so familiar that many people scarcely thought of it as technology. It was simply farming.

Then Australian grain growers began asking a practical question: could crops be planted while disturbing the soil less? Could stubble stay on the surface, moisture stay in the ground, erosion fall, and farmers save time and fuel?

Zero-till farming was an antipodean kind of innovation: fewer launch events, more farmers standing beside seeders asking whether the thing would work. Scientists helped. Machinery changed. Farmers learned from farmers. Local knowledge turned a promising idea into a working system.

The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury

Statement On Significant Matters - David Malouf AO
Federation Chamber, Parliament House

Thursday, 14 May 2026

I rise to honour David Malouf AO, one of the great makers of Australian literature who died on 22 April 2026 at the age of 92. Some writers describe a nation and some enlarge it. David Malouf did both. He widened the imaginative map of Australia and did so with a prose style so exact that many of his sentences seemed less written than tuned.

Born in Brisbane in 1934, Malouf grew up in a city often treated by the southern capitals as a place of verandahs, heat and provincial manners. Malouf turned it into one of the great literary landscapes of Australia. In Johnno, Brisbane became a place of memory, desire, comedy and loss. It gained weather, depth, danger and metaphysics. The jacarandas acquired a syntax.

As the son of a Lebanese Christian father and an English mother descended from Sephardic Jews, Malouf had an instinctive sense that identity is a set of crossings rather than a sealed compartment. Australia, in his work, became a country of inheritances and unsettled borders. His fiction understood that people carry histories they can scarcely name and that a nation is made as much by what it half remembers as by what it declares. Malouf's range was astonishing. He was a poet, novelist, essayist and librettist. For most writers, that would be a crowded CV; for Malouf, it seemed the natural result of having more than one instrument in the house.

He wrote in conversation with the great dead and the vividly living. An Imaginary Life returned to Ovid in exile; Ransom returned to Homer. He inherited a literary landscape in which Patrick White had shown that Australian fiction could bear the weight of myth and metaphysics. Yet David Malouf found his own light, which was quieter, more sensuous and more hospitable to ambiguity. Among later writers, Nam Le and Christos Tsiolkas have written of him with evident admiration. That's a mark of a major writer. He gives other writers permission to become more fully themselves.

The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury

Thursday, 14 May 2026   

Standing Up For Shoppers, Backing The ACCC

Today’s decision against Coles is an important win for Australian consumers.

The Albanese Government acknowledges the Federal Court’s finding that Coles breached the law and thanks the ACCC for its careful work in holding large firms to account.

This case affirms a basic principle: a discount should mean a real saving, not a pricing trick. Consumers shouldn’t be treated like mugs. Shoppers should be able to trust the ticket on the shelf, without needing a spreadsheet at the checkout. Australians deserve clear and honest pricing every time they shop.

The ACCC is doing exactly what it should, enforcing the rules and taking on some of the largest players in the economy. Since 2022, the Albanese Government has backed that work by lifting maximum penalties to $100 million, strengthening consumer protections and investing in enforcement.

In this year’s Budget, we invested $100 million over four years to promote competition and protect consumers, including $67.7 million to boost the ACCC’s enforcement capacity, building on a further $30 million targeted at conduct in the supermarket and retail sectors.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

A Leap Forward: Evidence, Inclusion and Economic Opportunity

Inaugural LGBTQ+ Economists And Allies In Asia-Pacific Summit (LEAP Summit),

Online Address

Thursday, 14 May 2026

Hello everyone – and thank you for the invitation to speak at the inaugural LGBTQ+ Economists and Allies in Asia-Pacific Summit. Economists are trained to respect marginal change, but this gathering feels closer to a LEAP.

I am recording this message from Canberra, a city that quietly tells an important story about modern Australia. According to the 2021 Census, 1.9 per cent of couples in the Australian Capital Territory are same-sex couples – well above the national average of 1.4 per cent. Anytime you would like to visit and check out our rainbow roundabout, you can be assured of a warm Canberra welcome.

I am also pleased that the upcoming August Census will, for the first time, include questions on sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. For statisticians, this is what progress looks like: fewer caveats and one fewer sentence beginning with “unfortunately, we don’t have data on…”. For policymakers, it means more informed decisions. Good policy begins with good measurement. When important variables appear in the data, they appear in the decisions that shape their lives.

As economists, you hardly need persuading of this point. Ours is the profession that believes if something moves, it is worth measuring – and if it stays still, it may simply require a better dataset.

Australia’s National Action Plan for the Health and Wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ People rests on exactly this logic. Its vision is straightforward: that LGBTIQA+ people achieve equitable health and wellbeing outcomes with access to safe, respectful, high-quality and inclusive services.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Unfair Trading Practices – Summing-Up Speech,
House of Representatives, Parliament House 

Wednesday, 13 May 2026

I thank Members who have contributed to this debate: the Members for Page, Melbourne, Kooyong, Fisher, Maribyrnong, Mallee, Holt, Moreton, Griffith, Whitlam, Sturt, Forde, Barton, Bennelong, Hasluck and Brisbane. The breadth of the contributions reflects the passion that so many members feel about cracking down on unfair trading practices, subscription traps and drip pricing. It reflects the energy, particularly on this side of the House, directed towards making the Australian economy more productive, more competitive and more dynamic.

The Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026 strengthens the Australian Consumer Law in three important ways: by banning unfair trading practices, by addressing subscription traps and by strengthening drip pricing protections. Together, the bill ensures that consumers are treated fairly and that honest businesses, including small businesses, aren't disadvantaged by competitors who rely on tricks and complexity rather than value and service.

Some in this debate have questioned whether these reforms are necessary, but the evidence before us is clear and consistent. Years of research, consultation and enforcement experience show that there are gaps in the current law. Certain practices may not be clearly misleading and may fall short of the high bar of unconscionability, yet they still distort decision-making and cause real detriment to consumers. These are practices that quietly pressure, confuse or obstruct consumers, often through design rather than deception.

For Australians, that harm is experienced in very practical ways: time wasted navigating complex processes, fees revealed late in a transaction, subscriptions that are easy to sign up to but difficult to exit and a growing sense that markets are structured to wear them down. Over time that erodes trust and when trust falls, competition and productivity fall as well.

That assessment is not contested among those who see these markets up close. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission supports this bill, informed by its enforcement expertise and its work across consumer-facing markets. On the day the bill was introduced, 17 consumer organisations welcomed it, including national consumer advocates, financial counsellors, legal services and community organisations. They were the Consumer Policy Research Centre, the Consumer Action Law Centre, CHOICE, the Financial Rights Legal Centre, Mob Strong Debt Help, the Consumer Credit Legal Service, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the Consumers' Federation of Australia, Energy Consumers Australia, Financial Counselling Australia, Financial Counselling Victoria, the Justice and Equity Centre, National Seniors Australia, Way Forward, West Justice, AMES Australia and the Western Australia Consumer Advocacy Network. The sheer breadth of support reflects a shared conclusion: these reforms respond to persistent, well-documented problems in everyday transactions.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Address to the ANU Post-Budget Breakfast,
Parliament House, Canberra

Thursday, 14 May 2026

Well thank you Nick and can I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people on whose lands we meet. I acknowledge all First Nations people present, and particularly the many organisations and people here who are engaged in work to close the gaps.

Nick described himself as a lapsed economist. I'm a lapsed professor, and so thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to play that role today. He was very firm on timing. He said, you've got a 10-minute time budget, and there'll be rewards for being in surplus. So I'm going to do my best on that front.

Now, a bunch of you will have heard a whole lot of speeches about the Budget. You will have heard the Budget speech itself and commentary and follow-up and so on. So I'm going to try and put this much more into an economist's frame. And the frame that I want to present to you this morning is that the Budget is about changing the incentives towards building rather than bidding. We're putting together this Budget in a state of unusual global turmoil. War in Iran was not anticipated at MYEFO and has given a significant shock to inflation, as well as necessitating a range of household supports. But nonetheless, I want to make the case to you that this is the biggest reformist Budget we have seen in over a decade, and there's four aspects to that building not bidding Budget that I want to talk about this morning.

The first is moving from asset inflation to asset creation. The negative gearing and capital gains tax changes have been modelled and discussed for decades. Reformers, including Chris Richardson, but also Allegra and the Grattan Institute –many other organisations have talked about the distortions that are caused by the combination of the 1936 change to negative gearing and the 1999 change to capital gains tax discount. Immediately after that, you saw net rental income turn negative as Australians were encouraged to buy a loss-making asset with the notion that in the future, its value would rise. In the old days, we used to call that encouraging speculation. The benefits of that have been modelled through for the average taxpayer since 2000. The cumulative benefits of the negative gearing capital gains tax measures at $12,000. But if you're in the top 1% then the benefits to you have been, on average, $700,000. These policies have been 50 times as beneficial to those in the top 1% as to the average income earner. Changing these policies changes the balance in auctions towards those who are buying their first house rather than their fourth house, and it sits neatly alongside the unprecedented measures we put in place on boosting housing supply, which is of course where the action is if you want to make homes more affordable.

The next big measure is moving from rent seeking to creating. The measures we put in place in business, really about incentivising long-term investment and encouraging the uptake of innovation. Loss carry back, making the instant asset write-off permanent, more venture capital incentives and changes to research and development tax credit that incentivise core research rather than some of those peripheral activities which have been shown not to have the same impact on R&D. All of this is about creating an environment in which there are stronger incentives for creating new knowledge and for diffusing new knowledge. So much of the productivity benefits come not from the first firm to come up with a shiny new technique, but from spreading that technique right across the economy. We've seen that in agriculture, with agricultural extension encouraging the uptake of new techniques on farms and as artificial intelligence spreads across firms, we'll see potentially the next productivity kick up as a result of a technology which has huge general purpose technology potential to improve productivity and to turn around that productivity challenge that Australia has been facing for so long.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

A Budget for Home Ownership
House of Representatives, Parliament House

Wednesday, 13 May 2026

My maternal grandfather, Roly Stebbins, was born in a tent in 1922. His dad was a veteran who'd fought in World War I and his dad could never afford a home of his own; he never owned a home. During the Great Depression, my grandfather left school at age 14 to support the family and then worked as a boilermaker. It was only after World War II that he was able to afford to buy a home of his own. He got a block of land in Seaholme, near Williamstown, and he and mates worked together to fire the bricks. He and my grandmother, Jean Stebbins, raised four kids in a home they built themselves.

My grandparents’ story was the story of Australia in that period. In the interwar era, about half of Australians owned a home but by the time you got to 1966, thanks to the Curtin, the Chifley and yes, the Menzies government, the homeownership rate had gone up to two-thirds. Yet, what we've seen over recent years is the reversal of that great Australian dream. We've seen the Australian homeownership rate falling now to a 60-year low. We've seen the abandonment of what used to be a great principle of the Liberal Party, just as the Liberal Party members in this House have abandoned so many principles of their party.

At street stalls and town hall meetings, teachers, tradies, nurses talk to me about their sense that it's become too hard to buy a home in Australia, that the statistics out there in the community are what they're feeling in their own lives as homeownership soars out of reach. They keep on saving for a deposit, but house prices are soaring out of reach. And it's not just young Australians; it's their parents and their grandparents that are repeatedly getting in touch with me and so many members on this side of the House, saying we need to do something to boost homeownership.

We have the most ambitious plan on housing supply of any government in recent decades but we're also, through this Budget, tackling the challenges in the tax system. How did we get here? Well, it's the combination of two policies. In 1936, Australia moved to allow taxpayers to deduct interest losses against their salary. You can't do that in Britain. You can't do that in the United States. And then in 1999, the Ralph review was handed to the Howard Government. With not a word on real estate, it was a report that suggested that putting in place a 50 per cent capital gains tax discount would turbocharge investment in innovative firms.

We immediately saw the result of that. The impact was principally felt in the housing investment sector. Previous to that, net tax paid by landlords was positive, but it very quickly turned negative and, in most of the period since those changes, we've seen landlords lose on net some $4 billion to $10 billion a year. Landlords in Australia have become among the biggest recipients of tax handouts.

Senator The Hon Katy Gallagher 
Minister for Finance
Minister for Women
Minister for the Public Service
Minister for Government Services

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Alicia Payne MP
Member for Canberra

David Smith MP
Member for Bean

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
WEDNESDAY, 13 MAY 2026

SUBJECTS: What’s in the Budget for the ACT

MINISTER FOR FINANCE, KATY GALLAGHER: Thank you everyone for coming. It's great to be here with my Federal Labor colleagues. A really strong budget for Canberra, a good budget that has the Commonwealth working with the ACT government on all of the issues that Canberrans care about. This budget and the investment in it brings to a total of about an additional $4.3 billion in investment in the ACT since we've come to government. It's in our investments, in our national institutions, in our public service, but also importantly, in our infrastructure and in the future needs of the city. This budget has a lot in it for Canberra, we're very proud of it. I'm particularly and I'm going to hand to others, but I'm particularly proud of the $30 million dollar investment for the RSPCA, which will finally mean that that organisation that does such important work in Canberra can finish the new build of the best RSPCA the city could hope for. So I'll hand to my colleagues, but this budget overall, strong for Canberra obviously has some Canberra based initiatives, but also importantly, those national programs, national investments, whether it be on tax or in resilience and reform, all have an impact here in our city.

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH, MEMBER FOR FENNER: Thanks so much, Katy. This budget recognises Canberra's dual role as a wonderful community and as the nation's capital. It invests in roads, rail and housing. Provides tax cuts to 260,000 working Canberrans, but it also invests in the national institutions, including MoAD, recognising Canberra's unique role as the nation's capital. It's a serious housing budget, and for the many Canberrans who have chatted to me on street stalls, they'll be valuing the way in which we invest in the enabling infrastructure for housing developments and rebalance the tax settings so as to favour people who are aiming to buy a home of their own. There'll be many Canberrans who are dreaming of turning the key in the lock of their first home, and this budget helps unlock that opportunity. And as the Assistant Minister for Productivity, I'm really proud of the productivity package, which has been modeled to add some $13 billion to GDP. That's around $1,200 for every Australian household through reforms like taking away the cost of buying standards and making approvals easier for the homes we need to build around Australia. I'll hand over now to Alicia.

ALICIA PAYNE, MEMBER FOR CANBERRA: Thanks, Andrew. This is another great budget handed down by Jim Chalmers last night, not just for our nation, but for our community here in Canberra. Obviously, with the situation that it is in the world at the moment, we could have had every excuse to do a budget that's squibbed on the hard reforms, but we have focused on the costs of living that Australians are facing, and particularly the housing crisis that Australians are facing, including here in Canberra. The tax reforms that we are making are really important to ensure that particularly first home buyers will have a fairer playing field as they try to get into that market. And we're also investing in a really great measure that I'd like to talk about briefly, where we're addressing a disparity for young people facing homelessness. We know that too many Australians, young Australians, are facing homelessness, and at the moment, social housing sort of can't afford to offer places to young people because of the way that the benefits they receive translate into the funding. And so we have addressed that disparity for young people, and this has come as part of the Home Time campaign, have really raised the voices of young Australians facing homelessness, including in our community here in Canberra, and this is going to make a big difference for social housing providers being able to offer them a stable home so they can build their lives. I'm so proud to be part of our government that continues to invest in our city and recognise its importance as the nation's capital, but also as a community with the challenges that other communities face. I talk a lot about how wonderful it is as a Canberran and to see the Prime Minister out and about, you know, walking around the lake, visiting our national institutions, and talking about our city as not somewhere to be ashamed of, but somewhere to be proud of. And this budget is another budget that invests in our city. We've invested $4.3 billion since we've been in government into Canberra. I'm particularly proud that this is another budget that invests in our national institutions, around $20 million, including for the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, which has its centenary coming up, and that is absolutely a much loved institution by everyone in our community and around the country, and also for the National Film and Sound Archive to continue protecting the national collections. In the previous government, these institutions were starved of the funding they needed, and it's good to see that we have restored that, but we are continuing that investment. And of course, Canberrans will benefit from the extra tax cuts we're delivering in this budget and the immediate cost of living relief that that will provide. This is a great budget for our country and for Canberra, and I hand over to David Smith.

Senator The Hon Katy Gallagher 
Minister for Finance
Minister for Women
Minister for the Public Service
Minister for Government Services

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Alicia Payne MP
Member for Canberra

David Smith MP
Member for Bean

Tuesday, 12 May 2026

Albanese Government Delivers For Canberra In The Federal Budget

Tonight’s Federal Budget brings the Albanese Labor Government’s investment in Canberra to more than $4 billion in the ACT since coming to office, making sure Canberrans are getting their fair share.

This year’s budget delivers important investments for Canberra, building on our strongest ever commitment to Canberra, with funding for infrastructure, community services, national institutions and practical cost-of-living relief.

This level of investment demonstrates what Labor governments can deliver when they work together, Labor is delivering the projects and services that Canberra needs, while also supporting local jobs and strengthening the national capital for the future.

The Budget builds on our significant local investments that support better services, community organisations and deliver better infrastructure across the ACT including:

The Hon Jim Chalmers MP
Treasurer

The Hon Clare O'Neil MP
Minister for Housing
Minister for Homelessness
Minister for Cities

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
BELCONNEN, CANBERRA
SUNDAY 10 MAY 2026

SUBJECTS: $2 billion housing infrastructure fund, Federal Budget, Farrer by-election

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH MP: Indeed, well, good morning. My name is Andrew Leigh, the local member for the seat of Fenner, and the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury. I'd like to welcome you all today to Belconnen, in the heart of my electorate. There's plenty of gifts that you can give mums around Australia who are celebrating Mother's Day. Flowers are good. Brunch is better. But maybe the best gift of all might be providing a housing policy that allows the adult kids to move out one day.

What we're doing here is investing in housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund backed by Australia's largest superannuation fund - 315 affordable homes that are going to be available right in Belconnen, close to Lake Ginninderra, public transport and all the amenities. And the announcement we're making today is going to see more housing flow to more parts of Australia, not just unlocking more supply directly, but also working with states and territories, on reforms that will see them fast track housing.

As the Assistant Minister for Productivity, I'm really passionate about boosting productivity in Australia and the housing sector. We've seen housing productivity go backwards, adjusted for quality over the last three decades. This will be great for productivity, great for housing supply, and essential for Australia's families. My pleasure now to hand over to the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers.

TREASURER JIM CHALMERS: Very good of you, Andrew, to welcome us to your local community. Terrific local member, and also Assistant Minister as well in the Treasury portfolio. I want to acknowledge the absolute mountain of work that Andy does for our government when it comes to the sorts of announcements we're making today. And also Clare O'Neil, the Housing Minister, who's got an important announcement to make as well. Before I get to that, I wanted to say a big Happy Mother's Day to all of the mums, and if you're missing your mum today, we're thinking of you as well. From my point of view to Laura and Carol and my mother in law, Barbara, Happy Mother's Day. We do Mother's Day on Saturdays in our family, because typically this time of year, we're hanging out with you guys on Mother's Day instead. So big shout out, Laura, Carol, Barbara, all the mums and everyone who's missing their mum today.