Andrew Leigh

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

FutureReady Belconnen: Opening Doors, Building Futures
Opening of the MTC FutureReady Skills for Education and Employment Training Centre

Belconnen, ACT

13 February 2026

We gather today on Ngunnawal Country, and I pay my respects to Elders past and present.

It is a real pleasure to be here for the opening of the MTC FutureReady Skills for Education and Employment training centre in Belconnen.

At its heart, this centre is about something simple and powerful: giving people the tools to move forward. When someone strengthens their English, builds their digital skills, sharpens their numeracy, or returns to learning after time away, doors open.

The Australian Government’s SEE program rests on a clear idea: when people gain strong foundational skills, everyone benefits. Employers gain capable workers. Communities grow stronger. Individuals discover abilities that carry them further than they imagined.

Across the ACT, thousands have already stepped forward through Free TAFE and related programs. Yet numbers only tell part of the story, so let me share two that bring the impact to life.

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

Opinion Piece

Stop the checkout trickery

Published in The Daily Telegraph

12 February 2026

You know the moment. You click ‘buy’, feeling quietly pleased with yourself for finding a decent deal. Then, at the final screen, the price jumps. A service fee appears from nowhere. A processing charge sneaks in. Suddenly that cheap deal looks less like a bargain.

Or perhaps it is the subscription that seemed harmless at first. Signing up took seconds. Cancelling feels closer to an endurance sport – buried menus, unanswered emails, ‘are you really sure?’ prompts designed to wear you down.

These practices are spreading across the economy, and they are quietly draining household budgets.

That is why the government is launching a nationwide crackdown on hidden transaction fees and subscription traps, with draft legislation released earlier this month to ban unfair trading practices.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO PERTH, DRIVE WITH WITH OLIVER PETERSON
TUESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: Albanese Government’s ban on Unfair Trading Practices

OLIVER PETERSON: It’s eight past three. You know that free trial that you signed up for but maybe you forgot to cancel? Do you realise how much you are actually paying? And I'm talking about streaming services, apps, airline bookings, gyms, antivirus software – the list goes on and on. Now you might not even realise the few dollars that you are missing. Well, the federal government wants to do something about it and crack down on these hidden fees and charges. The Assistant Minister responsible is Andrew Leigh, who is drafting some new laws and he joins you and me live on Drive. Good afternoon!

ANDREW LEIGH: Good afternoon Ollie, great to be with you.

OLIVER PETERSON: Good to have you on the program there Assistant Minister. What are you trying to stop with these new laws?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, subscriptions are super convenient. Many of us use them for magazines, meal delivery, streaming services, fitness memberships and software. But too many Australians are finding it hard to get out of their subscriptions Ollie. Three out of four Australians with subscriptions have been caught in subscription traps. And one estimate says it's costing the country $46 million a year. So we're putting in place reforms which will make it as easy to end a subscription as it was to start it and stop these ‘dark practices’ that make it too difficult for people to get out of a subscription when they've decided they've had enough.

OLIVER PETERSON: Why are you cracking down on this now?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, we know it's been a big issue and we've done a couple of big consultations on this with consumers and industry groups last year and the year before. Based on that, we've now got these draft laws out there just for a short, sharp consultation for a couple of weeks. We've got agreement from states and territories to work on this, which is really important because it means that WA Fair Trading and the Australian Competition Consumer Commission will be enforcing these laws when they're in place.

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

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RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: Israeli President’s visit to Australia; Albanese Government’s ban on Unfair Trading Practices

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Dr Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner and joins us now. Andrew, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning, Stephen. Glad to be with you.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: The visit of President Herzog. I mean, it stands to reason that the Jewish community has welcomed the comfort that the President of Israel has brought them by coming out to mourn with them in the wake of the Bondi Terror Attack in December. Extraordinary, the opposition to this.

ANDREW LEIGH: Well Stephen, you're right. The focus of this visit really is on President Herzog being out here in order to console the Jewish community. It was a request from the Jewish community that he be invited out to Australia and the principal focus is on him being with those friends, relatives, family, the extended Jewish community who are mourning after Australia's worst terrorist incident.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: He will meet with the Prime Minister. What are we expecting to come out of that meeting? Because the relationship between Israel and Australia has been strained in recent times. Will this go any way to fixing that?

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING, WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
MONDAY, 9 FEBRUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: Inflation; economy; productivity; Albanese Government’s competition reform; replacing the Capital Gains Tax discount with inflation indexation; National Anti‑Corruption Commission

PATRICIA KARVELAS: With all the Liberal Party turmoil, the building story around the economy and inflation has been a little drowned out but we think it's very important, so the Assistant Productivity Minister, Andrew Leigh joins me now. Welcome to the program.

ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks, Patricia, great to be with you.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: You'd have to agree that it might be fun for you to watch your opponents fall apart at the moment. But at the moment, Australians really just care that they're paying more in interest rates and on their mortgages, right?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, it is with a sense of sorrow that I look at what's happened with a three-ring circus on the other side of the Parliament. I think Australia does benefit from a strong Opposition. I think it's a pity that the Liberals and Nationals are so focused on themselves rather than on their constituents.

In terms of the economy we've got very strong unemployment, we've had consistently unemployment sitting around 4 per cent. That is incredibly important for the opportunities for Australians. We do have a cost‑of‑living challenge, and that's why the government is so focused on getting inflation down and making the contribution that we can on that.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Question Time, you know this – you were there, was absolutely dominated by quoting Michele Bullock, who's the Reserve Bank Governor, and her confirmation that government spending is part of aggregate demand, which she said is contributing to inflationary pressures and that's why they've decided also to raise interest rates. That is not quite what the government was saying. Do you see that there is a distinction between the way that she raised it?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, government spending is a little over a quarter of aggregate demand, and last year was growing more slowly than private demand. And so, the comments that the Reserve Bank Governor has made is that principally the challenges we're facing are around bottlenecks and things like housing supply; they're the principal drivers of why inflation has gone higher than the Reserve Bank Board anticipated last year, and why they've ended up having to change course.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: There's almost – you know, I've studied economics. I'm not comparing myself to you Dr Andrew Leigh, but I know something about the way it works.

ANDREW LEIGH: You know a lot Patricia.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Something, let's just go with something. And you can't have the demand that the taxpayer essentially funds not affect private demand. You'd agree with that right? You can't delink the two?

ANDREW LEIGH: But public demand was growing more slowly than private demand last year. We saw the withdrawal of the state and federal energy subsidies, in that sense that's making a contribution to what's bringing inflationary pressures down.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: But that money that's being expended by the Commonwealth in all sorts of ways. We're not going to go through all the line items but it has been growing, that is incontestable. That is fuelling private demand too, isn't it?

ANDREW LEIGH: But Patricia, growing at a slower rate than private demand. So private demand is the principal challenge that the economy faces, the principal challenge which has contributed towards inflation. We see pressures in all kinds of areas, such as travel and some of the inputs into housing that we talked about before. Getting rid of some of those skills shortages are important, so the work that we're doing in Free TAFE and construction apprenticeship bonuses are critical in terms of dealing with some of those supply bottlenecks in the economy, and of course, boosting productivity, which I know is something you flagged in your opening there.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: We are going to talk about productivity, because the Treasurer talks about inflation, productivity, all these issues as being essentially the issues to tackle in the Budget, including intergenerational fairness which we'll get to in a moment – my favourite pet topic. But let's talk just on that issue if we can. How do you intend to deal with productivity in the Budget? There was a big roundtable – things went rather silent post the roundtable, but there is kind of a manifesto of ideas; many are just sitting there?

ANDREW LEIGH: We've got a big, bold, ambitious agenda on productivity Patricia. We saw our competition reforms in the first term, the historic overhaul of the merger laws, the announcement of scrapping non‑compete clauses for nine out of ten workers to make it easier for people to move to a better job. We've revamped national competition policy, which really was an engine of productivity growth in the 1990s with a big productivity fund collaborating with the states on things like occupational licensing.

The work we're doing in order to create a more dynamic and competitive economy really stands in contrast to that couple of decades where we saw increased market concentration, increased mark‑ups, a slowing down in the small business creation rate, which worried many economists and caused a sort of sclerosis in the economy.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Do you believe in bold tax reform being part of the Budget?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, of course we have a deliberate bold tax reform, we've revamped those Stage 3 tax cuts so they were fairer – delivered income tax cuts for Australians.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Sure.

ANDREW LEIGH: We've been very bold on multinational tax. I think our last term of multinational tax reform stacks up against any government around the world in terms of what we did around thin capitalisation and other measures. Our transparency measures are world-leading, the country‑by‑country reporting that will soon kick in. So yes, we're ambitious on tax reform and we're delivering.

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

Government Targets Hidden Fees And Subscription Traps In Crackdown On Unfair Trading Practices

9 February 2026

The Albanese Government is launching a nationwide crackdown on unfair trading practices including hidden transaction fees and subscription traps, releasing draft legislation today that would ban these practices across the economy.

Too many Australians have clicked “buy” only to discover extra charges at the final screen, or found themselves locked into subscriptions that are far easier to start than to stop. These practices chip away at household budgets and undermine trust in the marketplace. With cost-of-living pressures front of mind, the Government is acting to ensure the price consumers see is the price they pay.

The draft laws would outlaw harmful business conduct that unreasonably manipulates or distorts consumer decision-making, in addition to targeting subscription traps and hidden transaction fees.

Under the proposed reforms, businesses offering subscriptions in Australia would need to disclose key information before sign-up, notify customers at critical points during a subscription, and provide a clear, straightforward way to cancel. Transaction fees would also have to be prominently disclosed, so consumers are not ambushed by unexpected costs at checkout.

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

Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics Conference 2026
Convergence in the Capital
Opening Speech

Canberra

9 February 2026

Hello everyone, and welcome to ANZIAM 2026.

I’m Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities & Treasury. I would have loved to be with you in person, but Parliament is sitting this week – which is rather like an optimisation problem solved in real time. The constraints are real, the objective function evolves as new information arrives, and convergence takes patience.

Still, I’m delighted to welcome you to Canberra – a city that is sometimes described as discrete rather than continuous, highly structured, and with a surprising amount of empty space between nodes. In other words, a place many of you will feel instantly at home.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which you’re meeting, and to pay my respects to all First Nations attendees.

This is the 62nd ANZIAM conference, and Canberra has hosted you before – which suggests either that Canberra is a stable fixed point of the ANZIAM conference map, or that the basin of attraction is larger than it looks. Given the program this week, I’m confident someone here could tell us which.

Looking at the abstracts, what struck me is just how broad and unapologetically applied this conference is. In the next few days you’ll move from malaria modelling to distributed convex optimisation, from groundwater clogging to vegetation patterns in drylands, from high-dimensional networks to the fluid mechanics of your morning coffee. It’s a reminder that applied mathematics is the connective tissue of much of modern life.

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

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RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, AFTERNOONS WITH LEON DELANEY
FRIDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: Albanese Labor Government’s right to repair delivering for motorists, small business and the economy; interest rates; inflation; replacing the Capital Gains Tax discount with inflation indexation

LEON DELANEY: First up today, the federal Member for Fenner and Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury, Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good afternoon Leon, great to be with you.

LEON DELANEY: Well thanks for joining us today. You've travelled a long way out of your electorate today to Fyshwick. Why was that?

ANDREW LEIGH: All the way to Fyshwick to catch up with Anthony Costello Automotive – one of our terrific independent mechanics here in Canberra. We're bringing down a report that benchmarks the benefits of Labor's Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Scheme, which we put in place three and a half years ago.

Leon, as you know, modern cars are computers on wheels, and without the ability to tap into those computers, independent mechanics really were trying to do the job with their hands tied behind their back. So, we put in place the Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Scheme that required manufacturers to share that data on fair and reasonable terms with independent mechanics. The new report I released today found that that benefited independent mechanics and to the tune of more than $2 billion, and of course it benefits consumers, because independent mechanics tend to be cheaper.

LEON DELANEY: This is part of a broader concern about something called right to repair, and it applies not only to motor vehicles, but to all kinds of consumer goods, doesn't it?

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
ANTHONY COSTELLO AUTOMOTIVE, FYSHWICK
FRIDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2026

SUBJECTS: Albanese Labor Government’s Right to Repair delivering for motorists, small business and the economy

ANDREW LEIGH: It’s a real pleasure today to be here at Anthony Costello Automotive. They’re one of Canberra's terrific independent mechanics. Increasingly as modern cars have become more computerised, they have found it harder to get access to the information they need to fix them.

Modern cars really are computers on wheels. And so, three and a half years ago, Labor put in place the Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Scheme. The Scheme has ensured that independent mechanics get the data they need to fix modern cars. This report we're releasing today has shown that that's been a boon to the independent mechanics sector and increasing their revenue by some $2.4 billion.

That means more apprentices, more jobs and more sustainability. It's also critical to Australian households because independent mechanics are on average, 25 per cent cheaper than taking a car to a dealer to get it fixed.

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

The Hon Anne Aly MP
Minister for Small Business
Minister for International Development
Minister for Multicultural Affairs

Right To Repair Delivering For Motorists, Small Business And The Economy

6 February 2026    

The Albanese Government is delivering greater choice for motorists while backing small businesses and improving competition and productivity across Australian economy.

Released today, the Review of the Motor Vehicle Service and Repair Information Sharing Scheme confirms Australia’s first right to repair scheme is delivering expanded consumer choice, improved access to repair information and supporting safe and timely vehicle repairs.

Since commencing in July 2022, the Scheme has required vehicle manufacturers to provide independent repairers with access to service and repair information available at a price no higher than fair market value.

The Review reports that the scheme has been associated with a $2.4 billion increase in automotive industry turnover annually, and that independent workshops are experiencing greater capability, productivity and profitability. It also finds that consumers now have more choice and face fewer barriers when servicing modern vehicles.