Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE WITH ANDY PARK
THURSDAY, 2 MARCH 2023

SUBJECTS: How Uncompetitive markets hurt workers; Non-compete clauses in employment contracts; Superannuation tax breaks worth more than the full-rate aged pension

ANDY PARK (HOST): The cost of living is rising, interest rates are going up, groceries are getting more expensive, and it's getting harder to travel with the rising price of airfares. None of this is news to you, but in recent weeks we have heard stories of people who are really struggling, which are in stark contrast to some of the eye boggling profits from some of Australia's largest companies and their reporting. So what can we do? What should we do to ease the pressure on the average Australian household? Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, he joins me now on RN Drive. Good day, Andrew

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Great to be with you.

PARK: You've spoken about market concentration allowing companies to lift profits excessively and keep wages low. Are Australian consumers and workers being rorted here?

LEIGH: We certainly know that excess monopoly power is bad for consumers. It drives up prices and drives down choice. It means that firms don't do as much research and development and you don't get the sort of innovation that you'd expect in a highly competitive economy. But what I'm increasingly concerned about now is that market concentration might also hurt workers too. The classic extreme is a company town where you've only got one choice as to who to work with. In that situation, you have the employer exerting a sort of power over the workers that a monopoly exerts over consumers. And this monopsony power, the power that employers have over workers, seems to be prevalent in a lot of parts of Australia, particularly regional Australia. That might be a reason why we haven't seen the sort of real wage growth we would have hoped over the last decade.

How Uncompetitive Markets Hurt Workers
Maurice Blackburn, Melbourne
Thursday, 2 March 2023

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin.

I pay my respects to their Elders, extend that respect to other First Nations people present, and commit myself, as a part of the Albanese Government, to the implementation in full of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Special thanks to Per Capita and Maurice Blackburn for hosting today’s event.

Company Towns

Sixteen Tons was written by Merle Travis in 1946.

It’s been covered many times, most famously by Johnny Cash.

It’s about a real group of coal miners who lived and worked in a company town in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. The chorus goes:

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store (Travis 1946)

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC NEWS RADIO WITH GLEN BARTHOLOMEW
TUESDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2023

SUBJECTS: Changes to superannuation; Need for more competition; Consultations on 2026 Census topics.

GLEN BARTHOLOMEW (HOST): The Federal Government will cap superannuation tax concessions in a move it says will hit about 80,000 Australians. The changes will impact people with super balances of $3 million or more and will come into effect from the middle of 2025. At the moment, earnings from superannuation are taxed at up to 15 per cent, but that will increase to 30 per cent for those people. There will be no change for Australians with superannuation balances of less than $3 million. Dr. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury in the Albanese government and joins us now. Thanks for your time.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Real pleasure, Glen. Great to be with you.

BARTHOLOMEW: Explain why this change is necessary.

LEIGH: Well, if we continue the way we're going, superannuation tax breaks will cost more than the pension by 2050. Superannuation is meant to deliver a dignified retirement, not to be a tax-preferred inheritance vehicle. And yet there's 17 Australians with more than $100 million in superannuation. Think of it this way. Someone with $100 million in superannuation earning a 5 per cent return is getting a tax break, in the order of one and a half million dollars a year. Now, if Peter Dutton wants to stand up for those people, then he's welcome to do so. But our focus is making these reforms is to ensure that superannuation is sustainable.

I'm looking for a full-time office manager to join my team, working out of my electorate office in Gungahlin. Women and people from racial or ethnic groups that are traditionally underrepresented in politics are especially encouraged to apply.

This position will involve lots of community engagement and local problem solving. In a typical day, you might be helping someone at the front counter with a Centrelink problem, coordinating a 5000-letter mailout, planning a campaign on local issues, and arranging an online community forum. Below, there’s some dot-points that will give you a better sense of what our office does.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC CANBERRA BREAKFAST WITH ADAM SHIRLEY
WEDNESDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2023

SUBJECTS: Workplace giving; Consultations on 2026 Census topics.

ADAM SHIRLEY (HOST): Do you give, I mean in a financial sense, to a given charity? I don’t know whether it’s Vinnies, whether it’s the Salvos, Red Cross, Hands Across Canberra, Thinking Locally, Communities At Work; there are so many different not-for-profits that need extra funds to support those who are in need. Well, a new workplace giving program is being started by Vinnies Canberra, it’s a monthly set up of donations that come straight out of your account. There are other Canberra workplace giving programs, I am sure, and I’d like to hear about one you might be involved with.

Well, someone who oversees giving and also the charity sector more broadly is Dr Andrew Leigh, Federal Member for Fenner and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Dr Leigh, thanks for your time today.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Pleasure, Adam. Always great to be with you.

SHIRLEY: How important are these workplace-giving programs in our cost-of-living/inflation–ridden times?

WHAT SHOULD THE 2026 CENSUS ASK ABOUT?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has today opened the first phase of public consultations on topics for the 2026 Census of Population and Housing. 

These consultations are the first stage of a review the ABS conducts after each Census. This presents an opportunity for the community to provide feedback on information needs that are presently not met by the Census, and to have input on topics that should be added.

The feedback from this process will help to inform the ABS’s recommendations to the Australian Government on the topics that could be included in the 2026 Census.

Running Better Evaluations

The Daily Telegraph

As a keen runner, I’m pretty keen on going where the evidence points. In experiments, high intensity training produces remarkable gains, so I try to build it into every workout. Randomised trials suggest that stability shoes don’t much affect foot strike, so I stick with cushioning shoes instead. After a long run, I’ll use compression socks, since they’ve been shown to improve recovery. I try to eat a Mediterranean diet, randomised trials show to be linked with better heart health. I don’t bother with vitamin pills, which haven’t been shown to improve longevity among otherwise healthy people.

When it comes to improving your workout, the evidence base is remarkably good. The top athletes are always testing new training techniques and gear, and the results trickle down to also-rans like me. But when it comes to figuring out what works in policy, the evidence is a good deal patchier. Unlike the search for the best sneakers and health supplements, there’s a whole lot less impact measurement. Particularly under the last government, too many decisions were made by the principle of GOBSATT: good ol’ boys sitting around the table.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC CANBERRA DRIVE WITH ANNA VIDOT
THURSDAY, 16 FEBRUARY 2023 

SUBJECTS: Harmonisation of state and territory fundraising rules; Reducing red tape for charities.

ANNA VIDOT (HOST): At a time of financial pressure, when more people are becoming dependent or needing the support of charities both here and around the world, making sure that none of that money is wasted is really important. Well, soon there's going to be a consistent approach to the rules about how charities in Australia can raise money. Currently, each state and territory has a different set of rules for charitable fundraising, and compliance requirements are apparently costing charities an estimated million dollars per month nationally. Doctor Andrew Leigh is the member for Fenner and also Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. He's on the line with us this afternoon. Andrew Leigh, thanks very much for your time.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Real pleasure, Anna. Terrific to be with you and your listeners.

VIDOT: Why do we have such strict rules for fundraising and how did we end up with different ones?

LEIGH: The rules around fundraising were developed at a time when going on line was something you did with wet washing. Most of the fundraising that was done a generation ago was face-to-face, so it made sense for the regulation to be at a state and territory level. But now, fundraising is largely done over the internet, which means that an Australian charity that wants to raise money needs to comply with state and territory laws. There's seven different sets of laws -- only the NT doesn't have its own charitable fundraising laws -- so the paperwork can take a charity up to a week of staff time every single year. And that's where you get this total cost of a million dollars a month or more: in complying with all of those different state and territory fundraising laws.

House of Representatives, 16 February 2023

Radovan Leovic was born in Yugoslavia in 1927. He yearned to escape and as a teenager decided that if only he could be selected to represent Yugoslavia in the European Games he'd be able to get out. But he wasn't quite good enough, so he did something else. He got hold of a national team uniform, travelled to the north of the country, where the games were held and, wearing a national uniform, cycled with the peloton over the border, where he escaped and ultimately made his way as a refugee to Australia.

He became a regular in the Canberra triathlon scene, receiving the Legend of the Sport Award from Triathlon ACT just last year, at the age of 95. As recently as 2018 he was running, cycling or swimming every day and said he was 'all the time warm and all the time ready to race'. My friend Alex Gosman said of Rad: 'I can remember Rad always being one of the last to leave after a race as he stayed around to help pack up. Rad always gave 100 per cent, never complained, and had a smile and a hello for everyone.' Triathlon is an extraordinarily competitive sport, but triathletes are generous to one another, and Rad was the epitome of a sport that combines endurance and generosity to fellow competitors.

House of Representatives, 16 February 2023

Ann Harding founded NATSEM, the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, in 1993—over a fish-and-chip shop. She later settled into an $11 million state-of-the-art building on campus, and her legacy lives on in the name of the Ann Harding Conference Centre. Ann worked on microsimulation and was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 1996 and the inaugural president and co-founder of the International Microsimulation Association. She served as the president of the ACT branch of the Economic Society of Australia and authored or co-authored over 300 books, chapters, articles, papers and commissioned reports.

NATSEM did critical work in policy. Ann was constantly serving on academic and government boards, including the Treasury and the departments of social security, health, housing, and community services. I remember meeting Ann for the first time in the 1998-99 discussions over the introduction of a goods and services tax. I was then working for the late Senator Peter Cook. As I brought her upstairs for the hearings she said to me, 'You know, you Labor people will come to like this tax, because it'll allow you to spend what you need on health and education.' Ann always had a ready wit and a generosity of spirit and helped many in NATSEM, including yourself, Deputy Speaker Payne. She was generous to me as a young economist, too.