Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO | RURAL REPORT VICTORIA WITH ANGUS VERLEY

Topic: Right to Repair; John Deere sued by FTC

20 JANUARY 2025

Angus Verley, Host: John Deere is being sued in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission. It alleges John Deere has restricted the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair equipment such as tractors and combines. Olivia Saunders spoke to the Assistant Minister for Competition, Andrew Leigh, about what the legal action means.

Andrew Leigh: We know this is a billion-dollar industry and it involves some pretty complicated machinery. John Deere now has more software engineers than mechanical design engineers, which really tells you something about the level of IT that's in modern farm machinery. What we've done is to champion right to repair in the area of motor vehicles, where it was really important for independent repairers. And we've encouraged in the agricultural sector, the National Farmers Federation and the peak body representing the dealers who produce the material to come to a voluntary arrangement to share information. We do recognise that growing an independent repair sector is something that many farmers would benefit from. We've been encouraging those in the industry to come to an arrangement that would make that happen.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP

Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, and Treasury
Assistant Minister for Employment

ARTICLE

THINK THAT LIFE IS UNFAIR AND GETTING WORSE? THIS WILL SURPRISE YOU

Over the past decade, the discussion of inequality in Australian politics has reached unprecedented levels.

This isn't just because the income share of the top 1 per cent has grown; it's also because inequality tugs at our sense of fairness. Inequality isn't just about economics; it's also about what's right.

In a breezy 119 pages, Equality: What it Means and Why it Matters is an edited conversation between Thomas Piketty, one of the leading economists working on inequality, and Michael Sandel, a political philosopher whose course ‘‘Justice'' has for many years been Harvard's most popular undergraduate class.

One of Piketty's most powerful points is that inequality is not inevitable. He points to Sweden, whose strong social safety net has delivered a high degree of gender equity and social mobility.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO

Topic: Labor delivering faster and more reliable NBN speeds for 100,000 Canberrans; Making multinationals pay their fair share

14 JANUARY 2025

Stephen Cenatiempo, Host: The Prime Minister said yesterday we came up with the plan, the NBN is ours and only will keep it in public hands. When Labor's plan was, as I said, to sell it and privatise it within five years, well that didn't happen. And we're supposed to forget all of that. Let's get talking. Canberra who am I? Joining us is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury and the member for Fenner, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.

Stephen Leigh: Morning Stephen, how are you?

Cenatiempo: Very well. Happy New Year. Look, this is, this is a great.

Leigh: Good to be with you. Happy New Year,

Cenatiempo: This is a ridiculous scare campaign. I mean the whole privatisation arm, Labor's plan was to privatise this thing at the beginning, at the very outset.

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER
Minister for Finance
Senator for The Australian Capital Territory

THE HONE MICHELLE ROWLAND MP
Minister for Communications

THE HON ANDREW LEIGH MP
Member for Fenner

ALICIA PAYNE MP
Member for Canberra

DAVID SMITH MP
Member for Bean

MEDIA RELEASE

LABOR IS DELIVERING FASTER AND MORE RELIABLE NBN SPEEDS FOR 100,000 MORE CANBERRANS

Canberrans will benefit from a major upgrade to the National Broadband Network (NBN), with almost 100,000 premises across the ACT set to get access to faster, more reliable full-fibre internet connections.

The significant investment from the Albanese Labor Government will mean even more ACT homes and businesses will have access to full-fibre connections, upgrading from the current copper based fibre-to-the node (FTTN) networks.  

In the ACT, this will deliver improved speeds and less interruptions to an additional 97,000 homes and businesses and by December 2030, 94% of premises in the ACT will reach gigabit capability, doubling the number of premises that are currently gigabit capable.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC WITH LEON DELANEY

Topic: Inflation; Retail Sales; Interest Rates; Why Labor are Better Economic Managers than the Coalition

9 JANUARY 2025

Leon Delaney, Host: Canberra, seven minutes past four. And yesterday we saw the latest inflation figures which came in. Well, it was a bit of a mixed bag really. We saw the headline inflation go up, but the underlying inflation go down. It is a little bit more complicated than that, but at best you'd have to say the Reserve Bank is currently receiving mixed messages from the economic data. Joining me now, the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, Assistant Minister for Employment, professional economist, and our local member here in the Federal seat of Fenner, Dr. Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

Andrew Leigh: Good afternoon, Leon. Happy 2025. Did you know that 2025 is 45 squared?

Delaney: I did not know that.

Leigh: As a mathematics nerd, I thought you and your listeners would enjoy that fun fact. Hopefully you managed to get a good break.

Delaney: I know that now, 2025 is 45 squared. See, mathematics was never my strong subject. I managed to struggle through and achieve a pass mark. But I would never say I particularly enjoyed mathematics and I'm not that good at it. But these are interesting little novelty facts to know.

Leigh: Probably the only square year we will ever experience in our lifetimes.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO MELBOURNE MORNINGS WITH JUSTIN SMITH

Topic: Inflation; Cost of Living Relief; Reserve Bank Independence; Supermarket Prices and Competition Reform

9 JANUARY 2025

Justin Smith, Host: 9 from 10. So, as we said yesterday, we saw the inflation figures come through and it had a lovely 2 in front of it. It was a 2.3. The Treasurer Jim Chalmers sounded thrilled to bits at that point. But what is that going to mean for interest rate cuts possibly for next month? What is that going to mean? Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Treasury. He's good enough to join us on the phone. Mr. Leigh, thank you very much for your time.

Andrew Leigh: Pleasure Justin. Great to be with you.

Smith: In very real terms, when people hear that figure of 2.3 and as we said before, your boss seemed to be thrilled by this number, what does it mean for people? How does that translate to their lives?

Leigh: We do know we need to get on top of the inflation problem, and it shows that inflation is substantially down from the numbers that we inherited from the Liberals when they left office. When they left office inflation was 6 point something and rising. Now it's 2 point something and falling. So, we've got inflation down to almost a third of what it was we saw in some of the latest numbers. Automotive fuel coming down 10% over the course of the year, electricity coming down 21% over the course of the year. But that doesn't take away from the fact that people are under cost-of-living pressure, which is why we're doing all we can to put in place those energy bill rebates, the increases to Commonwealth Rent Assistance, the back-to-back surpluses that we delivered. All of that is helping take pressure off inflation.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO THE COUNTRY HOUR – VIC - WITH WARWICK LONG

Topic: Labor’s Mandatory Food and Grocery Code of Conduct; Coalition’s Failure to Support Farmers

7 JANUARY 2025

Emma D'Agostino, Reporter: The Assistant Minister for Competition, Andrew Leigh, defended the government.

Andrew Leigh: When Labor came to office, we had this problem that the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct was a voluntary code. It was essentially toothless, without penalties. So, we set about getting it reviewed by Craig Emerson, the former competition Minister, and turning it into a mandatory code. The coalition under David Littleproud as Agriculture Minister, had decided to keep it voluntary. And indeed, when we brought our legislation for a mandatory Food and Grocery Code with multimillion dollar penalties to the Parliament, it ended up that the coalition voted against that.

I thought that was a real pity because it was an opportunity for bipartisanship on this important reform. Under Labor, the Food and Grocery Code now has multimillion dollar penalties. It has an anonymous complaints mechanism. It has the highest corporate penalties under any industry code and that'll reset the relationship between supermarkets and farmers. But I understand that many farmers still feel under pressure and that's certainly a legacy of the way in which this relationship was managed under the former coalition government.

D'Agostino: David Littleproud doesn't seem to think that these measures go far enough. Is that a fair comment?

Leigh: When we brought this to the Parliament last year, David Littleproud voted no. He had a chance to vote for farmers. Instead, he voted to keep the status quo. He voted for big supermarkets. What we have as part of this new code of conduct is penalties which are the greater of $10 million, three times the value of the benefit or 10% of turnover. And for multi-billion-dollar firms that means massive penalties. These penalties were not supported by the Liberals, and they were not supported by the Nationals when they came into Parliament.

The Hon Jim Chalmers MP

Treasurer

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP

Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury

Assistant Minister for Employment

MEDIA RELEASE

MONDAY, 23 DECEMBER 2024

IMPLEMENTING A MINIMUM TAX FOR MULTINATIONALS

The Albanese Government is continuing to take action so that multinationals pay their fair share of tax in Australia.

Today the Government has published subordinate legislation in the form of Ministerial Rules as part of Australia’s implementation of a 15 per cent global minimum tax and domestic minimum tax for large multinationals.

To pay for the things that matter most to Australians like Medicare, pensions and housing, it’s important that multinationals operating in Australia pay their fair share of tax and that’s what these Rules help achieve.

The Hon Amanda Rishworth MP
Minister for Social Services
Member for Kingston

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

MEDIA RELEASE

THURSDAY 19 DECEMBER 2024

World-first data asset to improve outcomes for people with disability

Australia will now have a clearer research picture of people with disability aimed at improving their life outcomes, with the release of the first data from the National Disability Data Asset between Commonwealth, state and territory governments.

The NDDA is a world first, co-governed asset that has for the first time, linked de-identified data in a way that has people with disability as its core focus.

It is one of the major innovations of Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021-2031 and will play a key role in helping to measure how policies and programs are delivering better outcomes over time.