Andrew Leigh

MORRISON’S BRANCH SOLICITS FUNDS FROM CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

Scott Morrison’s NSW branch of the Liberal Party has reportedly been caught out taking donations from children’s charities.

In the latest example of the Coalition’s culture of dodgy deals, the Liberal party have been hosting events to harvest campaign funds from money that was donated to charities for the support of vulnerable children and the disabled.

This is not the first time the branch has gone down this path in pursuit of campaigning funds. In 2017, the NSW Liberals courted RSL Lifecare for thousands of dollars of support, through attendance at events involving Gladys Berejiklian and her colleagues.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM WITH MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Parliamentary Friends of Cycling; Anti-Poverty Week; social housing; the Morrison Government’s cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker; food insecurity.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Andrew Leigh, Shadow Assistant Minister for Charities, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. Hello, mate. How are you?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G’day, Marcus. Great to be with you. 

PAUL: Yeah, nice to talk to you as well. Now you have just launched the Parliamentary Friends of Cycling. Tell me all about this, mate. It’s a great idea. 

LEIGH: Absolutely. We're on the bike. Helen Haines, Dave Sharma and I decided that it was important to have a group that represented cyclists, as so many cyclists around Australia do it to stay fit, to commute, to just hang out with the kids. So Steven Hodge, who is one of Australia's great cyclists, got us all together and set up this group, which will campaign to get more people cycling more often.

LINDA BURNEY MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR FAMILIES AND SOCIAL SERVICES

MEMBER FOR BARTON

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CHARITIES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

SENATOR JENNY MCALLISTER

SHADOW CABINET SECRETARY

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE LABOR LEADER IN THE SENATE

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMMUNITIES AND THE PREVENTION OF FAMILY VIOLENCE

MILLIONS OF AUSTRALIANS LEFT BEHIND THIS ANTI-POVERTY WEEK

This Anti-Poverty Week millions of Australians have been left behind by the Government – less than a week after delivering its budget.

Australia is in the middle of the most severe economic crisis in almost a century.

160,000 Australians are expected to lose their jobs between now and the end of the year – and there are simply not enough jobs for everyone who needs one. 

THE GOVERNMENT HAS DELIVERED A BUDGET THAT SET ITS SIGHTS LOW, BUT STILL ASKS TOO MUCH OF AUSTRALIANS

The Canberra Times, October 10 2020

A trillion dollars is a lot of money – one with twelve zeros after it.

That’s where Australia’s debt will peak. To put it in perspective, when the Liberals launched their ‘debt truck’ scare campaign in 2009, they did so with the figure ‘$315 billion’ emblazoned on the side – one third of the level of projected peak debt under the Coalition today.

So what does Australia get from that spending?

The economy came into this crisis from a position of weakness. Last year, productivity went backwards, investment was in the doldrums, wage growth was among the slowest on record. We had problems in retail and a downturn in construction.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC CANBERRA BREAKFAST
FRIDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Federal Budget; Budget in reply.

ADAM SHIRLEY, HOST: Dr Andrew Leigh is the Federal Member for Fenner and the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. And he, like many, was watching very closely Anthony Albanese’s words last night. He’s Opposition Leader. Dr Leigh, good morning to you.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Adam. Great to be with you.

SHIRLEY: Given childcare is such a central theme of the Opposition's reply last night, what do you make of Ruth's comments, for instance, on how to structurally make the standard better - not just provide more money and places?

LEIGH: I think Ruth’s spot on. We need to think about early childhood as education, not mere babysitting. Anyone who's tried to look after three of their own children, as I have, will have huge respect for someone who sits down and looks after 13 children for an entire day. Ensuring that you've got a high-quality play based learning is absolutely vital. So one of the things we did when we were last in government was to improve education standards for early childhood educators, to reduce ratios and to ensure that there was real respect around the sector. But there's also this affordability question, and that was what Anthony was going to last night. We know that childcare fees have increased by an average of $3,800 a year since 2013. We know that many families are simply just priced out of childcare, and for families with a couple of kids, then often it's just not worth both parents working a full five days. That burden falls disproportionately on women.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2SER THE WIRE
THURSDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECTS: The Federal Budget leaving behind women, older workers, the homeless and those in insecure housing; tax cuts; population.

ROD CHAMBERS, HOST: I asked the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury Dr Andrew Leigh what were his first impressions of this big spending budget.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: My overall perspective on the budget, Rod, is it is a human capital recession that we've suffered and the budget doesn't really invest in the drivers of human capital. There's not enough investment in health, we still don't have an Australian Centre for Disease Control unlike every other advanced country. There's barely any investment in education, in schools and vocational training and universities, which is the sort of human capital investment you would expect at a time when we're facing such a substantial human capital crisis.

CHAMBERS: Certainly, the tax cuts seem to be the main tools to provide stimulus. Do you think this is going to be effective?

LEIGH: I think it'll have some impact. But fundamentally, we have some deep-seated economic challenges. We know that productivity was going backwards last year, that wage growth was in the doldrums, retail spending was down. A Morrison Stagnation predated the Morrison Recession. So really, what we need at the moment is reforms that go to the underlying structural weaknesses in the economy and seek to not only give the economy a sugar hit, but provide lasting economic growth.

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RADIO INTERVIEW
2GB MONEY NEWS
THURSDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Federal Budget leaving women behind; Budget in reply.

BROOKE CORTE, HOST: Dr Andrew Leigh is Labor's Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. Hi, Andrew, welcome to Money News. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Thanks, Brooke. Glad to be with you.

CORTE:Now, Scott Morrison is saying this is a budget for all Australians and the government is adamant it's not gendered. Do you think women have been ignored?

LEIGH:I do. I think that women haven't gotten their fair share of the budget response. This has been a human capital crisis. It's particularly adversely affected the services sector, but the budget responses neglected health and education, neglected the services sector. You've got a desultory women's economic security statement - about as big as you'd expect from a prime minister who names his chooks after former prime ministers’ wives - and you haven't got the investments in childcare, in family violence, in sexual harassment, in aged care, in all of those female dominated sectors where women have been suffering so much of the burden of COVID-19. They haven't been receiving the attention and the response.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 8 OCTOBER 2020

On 24 September 2020, Westpac copped the biggest fine in Australian corporate history—$1.3 billion. Ironically, it was that day that the Treasurer chose to announce that the government planned to roll back responsible lending standards. Responsible lending standards were put in place for one simple reason—to protect consumers and to protect the economy against the risk of irresponsible lending. Irresponsible lending isn't a matter of theory; it played a major role in the subprime debt crisis that led to the global financial crisis. Irresponsible lending helped fuel the property bubble in Australian cities.

Responsible lending laws apply to consumer credit, including mortgages, personal loans, payday loans, car loans and credit cards. Those laws don't apply to loans that are predominantly for business purposes. They require credit providers to make reasonable inquiries about a person's financial situation, their requirements and objectives; take reasonable steps to verify this information; and assess whether the credit is 'not unsuitable' before providing a loan. If those laws were to be axed, then lenders wouldn't be required to verify information on loan applications except in limited circumstances. They could turn a blind eye to brokers who provided false information. Again, this isn't a theoretical proposition. The banking royal commission heard from customers who had been hurt as a result of exactly this behaviour.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 7 OCTOBER 2020

In 2009, the coalition launched their so-called debt truck. It had on the side of it the figure at which debt was then projected to peak—$315 billion. That's a third of projected peak debt under the Liberals today.

If they were being honest then with this budget they would have launched their very own 'debt road train'. What does Australia get for $1 trillion—1 with 12 zeros after it?

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 7 OCTOBER 2020

Susan Ryan was the first in her family and the first in her school to win a scholarship to go to the University of Sydney. She studied education and, like many women of that generation, expected to go on to a career in teaching. After graduating, she married public servant, and later diplomat, Richard Butler. She recalled, 'Because of this, I lost my scholarship and had to pay back the scholarship money,' and she noted that this wouldn't have happened had she been a man.

In 1965, they moved to Canberra. For the next six years, she was active in the ACT, becoming a founding member of the wonderful Belconnen sub-branch of the Labor Party. She spent two periods living overseas when Butler was posted first to Vienna and then to New York. There, she was influenced, as Christine Wallace has noted, by the work of Kate Millett and Betty Friedan—and, of course, Germaine Greer was then part of the mix, along with Gloria Steinem.

Susan returned to Canberra in 1971 with her two children but without Butler, who she divorced the following year.