Andrew Leigh

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

The Hon Mark Butler MP
Minister for Health and Ageing
Minister for Disability and the NDIS

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
TUGGERANONG
FRIDAY, 27 MARCH 2026

SUBJECTS: Bulk billing GP clinics for the ACT; fuel; Canberra Stadium; EV road user charges

DAVID SMITH MP, MEMBER FOR BEAN: I'd like to acknowledge that we're here on the land of the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, pay my respect to their elders past and present, and thank them for their stewardship of this land for thousands of years.

And it's just great to be here in the heart of Bean for a really, really exciting announcement, a critical announcement that all my ACT colleagues and myself have worked hard for.

I'm here with Minister Gallagher, Assistant Minister Leigh, and my good friend Alicia Payne, the member for Canberra, and today we're announcing that we've secured the future of the Tuggeranong Family Centre Practice here and announcing the location of the three bulk billing clinics that we committed to during the last federal election.

This, of course, comes on top of the recent opening of the Urgent Care Clinic in Phillip, which I understand has already seen more than 2,000 patients go through, to date.

At a time like this, it's really critical to be delivering that primary health care to as many people across Canberra as possible and in an accessible and affordable way. I'd like to pass over to my good friend, Minister Gallagher.

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Thanks very much, Dave, and it's great to be here with Dave, Alicia and Andrew as the ACT's Federal Labor representatives to deliver on our commitment that we took to the last campaign, which was to provide some additional investment over and above the Bulk Billing incentive and the Bulk Billing practice incentive payment that we have applied across Australia to really specifically intervene in the ACT because of some of the unique circumstances we have here.

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

The Hon Mark Butler MP
Minister for Health and Ageing
Minister for Disability and the NDIS

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

Future Secured For Canberra Health Co-Op And Three New Bulk Billing GP Clinics For ACT

Friday, 27 March 2026

The Albanese Government is delivering on its $24.3 million commitment to strengthen primary care, boost access to bulk billing GPs, and improve access to respite care in Canberra.

Commonwealth funding is delivering three new bulk billing GP Clinics in the ACT as well as securing the future of Interchange Health Co-op at the Tuggeranong Family Medical Centre, by supporting the new provider, ForHealth Group to take over and maintain services.

The clinics will also be supported to attract additional general practitioners to the ACT and help ensure timely access to primary healthcare services. This is funded by a $10.5 million Bulk Billing GP Attraction Initiative.

Following a highly competitive process, the locations and providers of the three new Bulk-Billing clinics will be:

• Macquarie General Practice, establishing a clinic in Gungahlin
• Next Practice Deakin, establishing a clinic in South Tuggeranong
• Ochre Health, establishing a clinic in Molonglo.

The Bulk Billing clinics are planned to open by 30 June 2026.

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

Three Ways We’re Protecting Australia’s Fuel Supply

Matters of Public Importance

House of Representatives

Tuesday, 24 March 2026

The three major parties of the right in this country have one thing in common: they're very happy to trade in anger but unable to actually come up with answers. They are all about slogans, but they have no solutions to Australia's problems.

If you want to think about how Australia is facing the crisis in the Middle East today, just think about how we would have been placed if the Coalition had remained in office. Under them, when fuel prices exceeded $2 a litre, at the beginning of the Ukraine war, what was the biggest penalty that the ACCC could impose? It was a $10 million penalty. We increased penalties to $50 million in 2022...

DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms Claydon): The Manager of Opposition Business, you're not even in your seat!

...and we have made clear that we will now increase them to $100 million, with the Treasurer to introduce legislation to this House tomorrow.

Under them, we had four major refineries close. When the Leader of the Opposition was the Energy Minister, we went from six refineries in Australia down to four. Under them we had Australia's fuel reserve sitting in Texas. Under us it sits in Queensland and Victoria. If the Coalition had had their way, Australia would have continued to languish, rejecting the electric vehicle revolution. Under us, we've seen EVs go from four per cent to 12 per cent as a share of new vehicle sales. That means fewer Australians are lining up at the bowser and that the fuel is better able to get around existing vehicle owners. They opposed the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, which is seeing more Australians move to more fuel-efficient vehicles, taking pressure off the fuel supply. In their last summer in office, there was twice the amount of gas used in the national electricity market as in the most recent summer.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 24 MARCH 2026

SUBJECTS: Fuel supply; ACCC

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Alright. Time to talk about all of these issues with the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.

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

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: What is the answer here, because it wasn't that long ago the government was telling us there was no crisis? Well, it's pretty clear there is now, when the Minister was forced to admit in Parliament yesterday that at least 166 Australian service stations are without fuel?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well Stephen, I often think that fuel pressures can be a bit like bank runs in that they can be self‑fulfilling, and what we've got now is a spike in demand but no significant issues with supply. We've had a handful of tankers that haven’t been able to get through…

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: But hang on, hang on. The Minister also said. Yeah, that's the point. The Minister said yesterday there is an issue with supply because those tankers aren't getting through?

ANDREW LEIGH: We've had a handful – we've had six tankers that weren't able to get through. We've spoken to those fuel supply companies and they've secured supply from alternative sources. But what we're seeing now is much more akin to the panic buying of toilet paper during COVID than it is to a supply crisis. We have fuel supply flowing through, we have the national fuel stockpile, and we've released a fifth of that from the minimum stockholding obligation. But the challenges that we're seeing with a small proportion of fuel outlets running out of fuel is driven by spikes in demand and I don't think it's helpful, frankly, to be over‑blowing this issue.

We have strong supply links. The Prime Minister spoke yesterday with the head of the International Energy Agency and the Prime Minister of Singapore about securing that supply…

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING, WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
MONDAY, 23 MARCH 2026

SUBJECTS: One Nation; gas; budget; Middle East conflict; fuel supply; Reserve Bank Governor

PATRICIA KARVELAS: I want to bring in my political panel for today. Zali Steggall is the Independent MP for Warringah. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury. Welcome to both of you. Now, you know, I'm going to let people in on a little secret. Zali Steggall was basically heckling while Barnaby Joyce was speaking right there.

ZALI STEGGALL: I was not!

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Why were you heckling?

ZALI STEGGALL: Oh look, I think it's an interesting – I think there is definitely a pushback against the major parties. People are doing a protest vote. But there's a real question of when you look at that result, there isn't a growth of the conservative vote. There's a realignment of conservative voters going from the Coalition and Liberals to One Nation. But ultimately the beneficiary is Labor. Labor now has a whopping majority and there really is no effective opposition in yet another state. So, I think we have to be really careful about understanding the analysis. It's that right side of politics realigning in a more, I think, extreme way – not a growth overall from the community.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay. I understand that point broadly. But Andrew Leigh, it is sending some messages about no doubt, some economic grievance. People are feeling under the pump, we know that. But also, according to your own political leaders like Peter Malinauskas, perhaps some cultural issues, patriotism, the way people view these issues. Do you agree with that?

ANDREW LEIGH: Absolutely Patricia. I think One Nation is out there trying to make people angry and people need to be asking, ‘What does One Nation stand for?’ This is a party that wants to take us back in terms of winding back abortion protections. That wants to increase tariffs that would make Australian goods more expensive. That wants to move to much more expensive ways of producing energy by opening three coal fired power stations at a time when we've just passed 50 per cent renewables in the grid. So that grievance, as Peter Malinauskas pointed out, is very real and it needs to be addressed by looking at policies which are going to see Australians earn more and keep more of what they earn.

Five books that offer a disquieting window into our possible futures

Andrew Leigh

Published in The Sydney Morning Herald

March 19 2026

Contemporary fiction chronicles the things around us. Science fiction imagines a futuristic world. But speculative fiction sits in between – envisaging a world that is not ours, but is nonetheless close enough to touch. Like the Netflix series Black Mirror, speculative fiction offers a disquieting window into our possible futures.

The Dream Hotel
Laila Lalami
Bloomsbury, $29.00

Hoping to improve her sleep, Sara Hussein installs an innovative prosthetic device in her brain. Unfortunately, Sara doesn’t read the fine print – who does? – and she fails to realise that the company is also sharing her dreams with the authorities. One night, Sara dreams of killing her husband. A few days later, landing at Los Angeles International Airport, she is detained by officials who inform her that her risk score has gone beyond the acceptable level. For the safety of her husband and the community, Sara must be detained in a retention centre for 21 days.

And so the dream becomes a waking nightmare. Echoing the worst patterns of custodial institutions, the retention centre is operated by Safe-X, a commercial firm that profits from keeping costs low and penalising even trivial breaches. Each infraction extends Sara’s stay. Complaints must be made to automated systems, which reply with non sequiturs. Legal help is slow to arrive. Friends desert her, fearful that visiting will lower their own risk scores.

Franz Kafka’s 1925 novel The Trial begins: “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.” A century on, Lalami’s novel updates the story for a technological age, except that this time a corporation is in charge. Sara’s attempt to leave the retention facility to see her husband and two children collide with the company’s goals of squeezing as much profit as possible out of its retainees. She isn’t in a prison, she is told, and she hasn’t been convicted of a crime. But she can’t leave until her risk score makes her safe.

If The Dream Hotel lacks the pace of Minority Report, that’s partly the point. Incarceration shrinks the world of those inside. Sara comes to recognise the smell of her roommate’s skin cream, to loathe the “greyish liquid” ladled onto her plate at mealtimes, and to worry endlessly about what she might have done differently to avoid being incarcerated. In a world where brain-computer interfaces and predictive analytics are rapidly improving, Lalami helps us imagine how we would feel if the machines got it wrong, and she reminds us of the dangers of surveillance capitalism run amok.

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

Opinion Piece

The “lone genius” founder myth is dead; innovation works like elite sport

Published in SmartCompany

23 March 2026

The stereotypical story of innovation features a solitary genius, a garage and a lightning-bolt idea that changes everything. The narrative is neat and cinematic. Unfortunately, it also obscures how technological progress usually happens.

In reality, modern innovation looks more like elite sport. Success depends on a coordinated effort involving talent, coaching, facilities and fair rules. Countries that understand this tend to build deeper and more resilient technology sectors. Those that do not risk watching the global competition pull away.

Talent remains the starting point. In the digital economy, that talent takes the form of entrepreneurs, software engineers, designers and data specialists who transform concepts into products. Australia has produced firms that have shown what is possible. Atlassian and Canva illustrate that companies founded here can reach international scale. Their rise reflects technical skill, creative design and an appetite for tackling large markets.

The pool of digital expertise has grown markedly. Employment in occupations linked to ICT, software and database management has increased by more than 40 per cent over the past decade. Demand for AI-related skills has expanded rapidly as well. References to these capabilities in job advertisements have more than tripled in ten years.

Marketing professionals now use generative tools to refine campaigns. Engineers draw on machine learning to improve systems. Analysts routinely work with datasets of a scale that would once have seemed implausible. The digital economy rewards people who can connect technical understanding with practical judgement.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH ROSS SOLLY
FRIDAY, 20 MARCH 2026

SUBJECTS: Canberra Stadium; Commonwealth infrastructure investment in the ACT, fuel supply; ACCC; budget; APS Data Awards; Celebrate Gungahlin Festival

ROSS SOLLY: Well, let's go to Andrew Leigh because we want to talk to him about the fuel situation et cetera. But a couple of people earlier on said, is there anything the Commonwealth can do to help us fast-track a better stadium? And I know Andrew Leigh loves his sport. Andrew Leigh, good morning to you.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Ross, great to be with you.

ROSS SOLLY: And you as well. I know we want to talk about fuel and budgets and stuff like that, but just on the stadium – you've been there a few times. It bubbled over again last night. The opposing coach broke his hand – broke his hand, cut his hand on a window. There are leaky change rooms. The tunnels are leaking everywhere. It is a bit of an embarrassment, isn't it?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, the infrastructure spend from the Commonwealth Government to the ACT is at record levels Ross. We have projects right across the ACT – a lot of cranes in the sky. You think about the National Security Precinct, the work going on with the War Memorial, the work going on with light rail. There are significant infrastructure projects and we're always guided by the ACT Government in terms of those priorities. So we’ll work with the ACT Government.

ROSS SOLLY: And has the stadium been put forward as a priority or not?

ANDREW LEIGH: Look, I think there's been a number of discussions over different models for the stadium. That's an ongoing conversation. But in terms of the commitment from the federal government to ACT infrastructure, it is at record levels. Certainly very different from that Liberal period in which we were getting a fifth of our fair share of infrastructure spending. There is a lot of infrastructure spending going into the ACT. And we'll work with the ACT Government on all that full range of priorities.

The Hon Clare O’Neil MP
Minister for Housing, Homelessness & Cities

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

Albanese Labor Government delivering more homes for Canberrans

16 March 2026

Work is underway on 315 new social and affordable homes in the ACT, back by the Albanese Labor Government’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF).

This mixed‑tenure project will deliver 420 homes, including 211 affordable homes and 104 social homes near the heart of Belconnen, close to shops, public transport, schools and parks.

This project is a clear example of the HAFF delivering more homes for low and moderate income Australians while boosting overall housing supply and attracting more long‑term investment into the housing system.

The project has been supported by Housing Australia through Round 1 of the HAFF and is being developed by Assemble on behalf of its capital partner, AustralianSuper.

Once complete, the social homes will be managed by Housing Choices Australia who will also jointly manage the affordable housing component along with Assemble.

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

The Best Charts Ever Drawn

2026 APS Data Awards,
Canberra

Wednesday, 18 March 2026

1. Seeing Clearly

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet tonight, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present; I also thank the Data Awards team for bringing us together, and Chief Statistician David Gruen, head of the Data Profession.

It’s a pleasure to be among people who know that data is where opinions go to face consequences.

These awards celebrate excellence across the full data enterprise – building systems, linking information, analysing patterns, and strengthening capability.

Each step matters.

Because data, on its own, doesn’t change anything.

Data lives in spreadsheets, dashboards, and occasionally in PowerPoint decks dense enough to qualify as insulation.

What changes things is understanding.

Most humans find spreadsheets confronting. They look like the Matrix – except without Keanu Reeves to explain what’s going on.

The brain evolved to spot patterns.

A good visualisation speaks that language. It reveals structure. It makes the complex graspable.

It allows people to see clearly.

And once you see something clearly, you can’t unsee it.

Tonight, I want to show you some visualisations that do exactly that.

And the first may be the most famous statistical graphic ever drawn.