Andrew Leigh

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RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC 1206 WITH LEON DELANEY
TUESDAY, 24 JANUARY 2023

SUBJECTS: Reforms to process for approving the tax-deductibility of charities; The role of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission; Investigation into Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints; Referendum to implement an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

LEON DELANEY (HOST): Andrew Leigh, Federal Member for Fenner. Are you ever tempted to sit in Bob Hawke's chair?

ANDREW LEIGH, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CHARITIES, COMPETITION AND TREASURY: Oh, yeah, and I love going to Old Parliament House. There's just that sense of history radiating out of the walls. You know, you stand on the steps, you think about that moment in 1975, when Gough Whitlam stood there after the dismissal. You walk into the chambers, you can just you can get that sense of Curtin and Chifley and Menzies standing at the despatch box. It's just a magical place. We're so lucky to have it in the capital.

DELANEY: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Museum of Australian Democracy, although, sad to say, I haven't actually been there for a little while. But I do remember Bob Hawke's office as being quite impressive and I just imagined myself sitting in the big chair. But you know what? They wouldn't let me.

LEIGH: Well, you can wander into the chambers, you can sit on those lovely padded green seats, remind yourself that these were rooms designed for ample bottomed men. And the decor of the place does sort of it feels very much like a cigar club to me. So while it's beautiful, it's also a relic of that kind of much more masculine era.

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RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL WITH CATHIE SCHNITZERLING
THURSDAY, 12 JANUARY 2023

SUBJECTS: King Charles III coin effigies, cashless society

CATHIE SCHNITZERLING (HOST): If you go through your wallet right now and you’ve got some coins in there, the silver and gold coins will have the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II. She’s been on Australian coins since 1953 after her father King George VI’s death in 1952. But with her passing last year new coins with the face of King Charles will come into circulation. Last year the Royal Australian Mint confirmed they will begin minting coins with the effigy of King Charles III early in 2023. But is that still the plan?

Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Charities, Competition and Treasury. Hello, Andrew.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES, AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: G’day, Cathie. How are you? 

SCHNITZERLING: Very well, thank you. When will the Royal Australian Mint start producing and circulating the new coins?

LEIGH: We’re expecting it in the second half of this year. There’s a more complicated process than you might imagine in terms of designing an effigy, having it cleared with Buckingham Palace and then testing that the dies work. One of the challenges in producing these coins, Cathie, is that the dies need to be able to last for some 200,000 to 300,000 coins. And so the image needs not only to be an appropriate likeness but also one that can be printed again and again. Now, coin production is mass manufacturing.

Monopoly is a Game Best Played at Home
Daily Telegraph, 4 January 2023

If your family pulls out a board game this summer, there’s a good chance that it’s the world’s most popular board game, Monopoly. The game has sold over a quarter of a billion sets, and more than half a billion people have played it.

If Monopoly makes your blood boil, then you’ll know how its designer once felt.

The inventor of Monopoly was a feminist writer and actress, Lizzie Magie. Born in Illinois in 1866, Magie grew up in the aftermath of the US Civil War when the ‘Robber Barons’ dominated her country.

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RADIO INTERVIEW 
ABC RADIO NATIONAL WITH SARAH DINGLE  
FRIDAY, 30 DECEMBER 2022 

SUBJECTS: Summer reading

SARAH DINGLE (HOST): The season of reading is upon us. What are you reading and what's on your list for this summer? Even if it's just an aspirational list, let's face it, we've all got them. Isn't it nice to think you have time to tackle that very big stack of books? Every day for the next few weeks, we'll be speaking to politicians of all stripes about the book they'll be turning to this summer, or books plural. Labor MP Andrew Leigh is one of those with books, plural, you have quite a list. Andrew Leigh, welcome. 

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RADIO INTERVIEW
2GB MONEY NEWS WITH LUKE GRANT
THURSDAY, 22 DECEMBER 2022

SUBJECTS: Increasing workplace giving

LUKE GRANT (HOST): It is, isn't it, the season of giving. Have you heard of workplace giving?  I'll tell you what, I could throw a line in there. Essentially, it's donating to charity direct from your salary. Oh, it's tempting. So, you could contribute a small portion of your pre‑tax salary to charity and receive the tax benefit straight away rather than waiting until the end of the financial year. It's not a bad idea.

Most recently ATO stats show there are 4.3 million employees at workplaces that had a workplace giving program, yet just 5 per cent of people are participating, and I think the question is why? So let's ask a man who might know. He should know; he's the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, for goodness sake, he's Dr Andrew Leigh, and I'm delighted to say that he's on the line from, I'm assuming the nation's capital; is that where you are, good sir? 

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES, AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: I'm in Melbourne at the moment, Luke.

GRANT: What? 

LEIGH: But delighted to be chatting with you and your listeners.

Market power and markups
The Australian, Tuesday 20 December 2022

It’s hard to ignore the growing body of evidence that excessive market concentration can lead to economic problems.

Dominant firms in a market may have less incentive to carry out research and development. They may have less incentive to produce new products. And in some cases, they may have less incentive to pay their employees fairly.

The challenge for economists is to better understand the problems. That means measuring them. Market concentration tells us how much share the biggest players have. But it doesn’t tell us the extent to which they’re throwing their weight around.

By contrast, markups – the gap between firms’ costs and what they charge their consumers – go more directly to the impact on consumers. In that sense, markups are capturing the market power of firms: their ability to influence the price at which they sell their products.

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RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC BRISBANE
WEDNESDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2022

SUBJECTS: Investigation into accommodation booking platforms, monopoly power.

KATHERINE FEENEY (HOST): It seems as though you can compare prices - get a sweet deal.  Well, a government investigation is looking at whether these sites are actually doing the opposite. Andrew Leigh can tell you more. He's the Assistant Competition Minister. Minister, thank you for your company. What are your concerns about these websites, first off?

DR ANDREW LEIGH, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY: Great to be with you, and thanks very much for taking an interest in the issue. My concern is that we're talking about hotel booking platforms that don't clean the toilets, don't change the sheets, don't help on the front desk; they're simply organising the processing of the payment. And some of the stories I've heard have their fees running into the double digits. So we need to find out what are the fees that are being charged, and more importantly, whether or not these sites are using their monopoly power to prevent hotels from encouraging people to book directly with them. 

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TELEVISION INTERVIEW
6PR MORNINGS WITH GARY ADSHEAD
WEDNESDAY, 14 DECEMBER 2022 

SUBJECTS: The Treasury’s investigation into accommodation and travel booking websites, online monopolies.

GARY ADSHEAD (HOST): All right. Now, we all definitely do this, don't we - it's become the norm, and you know, to a degree, to the chagrin of the humble travel agent, that we just sit at home in our home office, or in our bedroom, or in the lounge room with a laptop, and we just go, "Oh, I want to go here on holiday, so let's start scanning some of those online booking sites to get a really good deal, a cheap deal." Well, is it the case? Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competitions, Charity and Treasury and he's having a good look at this. I want to know why. G'day, Andrew.

DR ANDREW LEIGH, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY: G'day, Gary. Great to be with you and your listeners.

ADSHEAD: Thanks, mate. Now, one of them is obviously Booking.com, for example, you know, Expedia, of course, which has sort of morphed into other companies as well. But what is the problem? What are you worried about? 

LEIGH: I'm concerned about a situation in which Australian hotels are getting too little of the share of the hotel bill. Now, these booking platforms aren't changing the sheets, they're not cleaning the toilets, they're not operating the front desk, and yet they could be charging fees that are in the double digit range, much more than your credit card would charge for processing the payment. 

Many of them have sort of a monopoly position over the market, so I'm concerned that they might be using that monopoly position to get a pretty large share of the pie. And I'm also concerned that they might be telling hotels, that if hotels offer a better deal to customers that book direct, then they'll either not be listed on the platform, or else they'll be downranked in the algorithm, and turn up at the bottom of the search listings. 

ADSHEAD: Geez. 

Joint media release with
Leigh Gordon AO CSM
Royal Australian Mint Chief Executive Officer

FINAL COMMEMORATIVE COIN DESIGN FEATURING QUEEN ELIZABETH II EFFIGY RELEASED

Today, the Royal Australian Mint has released the design of the obverse side to be used on commemorative Australian coins following the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Obverse will be used on collectable and investment coins starting from 1 January 2023.

Since Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, six effigies of the Queen have appeared on Australian coins. Featuring British engraver Jody Clark’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, the Memorial Obverse will have one notable addition – the Queen’s years of reign – it will read “Elizabeth II 1952-2022”. 

When I'm out running on the bush trails, I'm usually listening to a podcast or an audiobook. I've ploughed through a few duds, but have also enjoyed several gems. Here's 38 of my favourite fiction and non-fiction books of 2022 (including a few that were published in prior years, that I'm only now catching up with).

The Rabbit Hutch - Tess Gunty: A darkly beautiful novel, about teens surviving a turbulent childhood in one of the American towns hit hard by deindustrialisation

I Hate the Ivy League - Malcolm Gladwell: Worth reading for every Ivy league graduate, and a reminder that universities are better when they teach more students

QAnon and On – Van Badham: One of Australia’s most incisive writers takes a deep dive into the murky world of conspiracy theories. A fascinating and brave book (if you want to know just how brave, listen to our conversation about the book at ANU, available on my website).

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil deGrasse Tyson: Pop physics books never seem to stick in my brain for long enough, but this one did give me plenty of fun facts to share with my teenage boys

This Is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay: Diary of a young obstetrics doctor, working in the UK NHS. Savagely funny. It came out a few years ago, and I’m just catching up.

The Last White Man - Mohsin Hamid: A remarkable novel about race and racism. The writing is spare and engaging.