Andrew Leigh

I spoke in Parliament on Monday night about the economics and politics of boosting growth in sub-Saharan Africa.

Development in Africa
21 February 2011

The Third World has shrunk. For most of the past century, the development challenge has been how to get the rest of the world up to the living standard of the top one billion. Now that challenge has been reversed. With rapid growth across much of Asia, the future looks increasingly bright for billions of Indians and Chinese. As economist Paul Collier puts it, the challenge now is to raise living standards for ‘the bottom billion’. These are the one billion or so world citizens who live in countries with stagnant growth rates, with living standards at about the level of 14th century Europe. Most of the bottom one billion live in Africa. In the 1970s, both China and India had African per capita development levels. Since then, per capita incomes in India have doubled and those in China have quadrupled, but in sub-Saharan Africa incomes barely rose from 1970 to 2000.

Yet over the decade since 2000, there are hints that things might be changing, with sub-Saharan per capita incomes rising at around three per cent per year. Although this is modest by Asian standards, economist Edward Miguel suggests that things are starting to go right for Africa. Despite the occasional step backwards, Africa has undergone a wave of democratisation. Miguel also points to rising commodity prices, increasing mobile phone usage, and fewer conflicts, notwithstanding the gut-wrenchingly awful violence in Sudan and the Congo.

For Africa, some novel development strategies have been suggested. Miguel proposes rapid conflict prevention support as a means of targeting aid to fragile states at times of drought or falling commodity prices—as a means of insurance against collapsing into war. If left unchecked, dangerous climate change could make some of the driest places on earth—like Chad and Niger—even drier. So, while we should deal with climate change here in Australia by putting a price on carbon, a 2008 Lowy Institute report by Joel Negin and Glenn Denning also suggested that Australian aid agencies can play a vital role in using our agricultural expertise to improve productivity in African farms and assist with adaptation to climate change.

Recognising that resources have more often been a curse than a blessing to Africa, some experts have proposed a natural resource charter available at www.naturalresourcecharter.org. It has 12 economic principles for governments and societies on how to best manage the opportunities created by natural resources for development.

For Australia, aid to Africa this year amounts to around $201 million. We give because this region is one of the most impoverished in the world. For the most part, our donations are driven by generosity, but it so happens that even a selfish Australia would want to donate. By raising African living standards, we create new markets for our exports and probably also reduce the threat of extremism.

Overseas aid is an area where people have sometimes focused too much on inputs such as aid as a percentage of national income rather than outputs—poverty reduction. As in other areas of the aid portfolio, AusAID are working hard to ensure that the effectiveness of our aid to Africa is maximised. Under Bob McMullan, my predecessor as the member for Fraser, AusAID created the Office of Development Effectiveness to provide what it describes as a ‘health check of the Australian aid program’. ODE has not pulled its punches, with past reports suggesting that Australia might have been overinvesting in technical assistance. Discussing evaluation, ODE has in the past emphasised the importance of carrying out more impact evaluations, asking not only whether the program was properly administered but also whether it helped improve the lives of the poor.

My personal view is that the Australian aid program should carry out more randomised trials—a rigorous evaluation tool that is becoming increasingly common in the developing world. Much as I admire the audacity of big push strategies such as the Millennium Villages project, I think we can learn more when programs can be rigorously evaluated. More recently, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has established an independent panel to undertake a review on the future direction of Australia’s aid program. The expert panel—Sandy Hollway, Stephen Howes, Margaret Reid, Bill Farmer and John Denton—are carefully scrutinising how we can improve the effectiveness of our aid program. This kind of analysis is critical if we are to maintain public support for the Australian aid program. I look forward to their report.

With the release of the ALP National Review, there has been some commentary recently about how the Labor Party can improve its membership base and engagement with the community. I think it's critical that we do better, but we also shouldn't forget the good work that's currently occurring. So I spoke in parliament this week about some of that activity.

Constituency Statements, 22 February 2011
Australian Labor Party

There has been some public discussion recently about the role the Labor Party plays in the local community. This is an important debate, and I am glad we are having it. Australia’s oldest and greatest political party has a long tradition of being enmeshed in the local community. Sports clubs were a feature of party life in the 1930s, as were camps and excursions in the 1940s. In recent years the Labor Party has struggled to retain members. In this we are no different from hundreds of other mass membership organisations. As I documented in a book last year, Australians are less likely to join the Scouts and the RSL, to attend a religious service and to know their friends and their neighbours well.

While we should always aim to improve, we should be proud of what we have achieved. Today I want to speak about some of the community activities of the ACT branch of the ALP and how my own part of the party is working to make itself more engaged and accessible. Local Labor members are involved in community festivals across Canberra. In my own electorate we organised a stall at the recent Canberra Multicultural Festival; at last year’s Fairday, which is an annual event of the AIDS Action Council; and at the Belconnen Community Festival, where I learned the hard way that, when the local strongman offers you a chance for an arm wrestle, discretion is the better part of valour.

This coming weekend ACT Labor members will be at the Canberra Show. We will be there to share the community spirit, offering face painting and balloons, and speaking with ACT residents about how we can work together to build a better city and nation. In the neighbouring electorate of Canberra, I have it on good authority that Labor is an active presence at the Woden and Tuggeranong community festivals.

In our local sub-branches and policy committees people have worked hard to build an environment that encourages new members to actively participate in the discussions. Recognising that moving motions is not always the best way to canvass a complex issue, some have built a ‘general discussion’ component into their meetings. Others have made a habit of holding occasional meetings as a barbecue in a local park and encouraging members to bring along their friends and families. Another successful strategy is to invite regular guest speakers, including community leaders, businesspeople, union leaders and academics. ACT Labor also holds regular social events in Parliament House, including budget night drinks and policy forums. From its origins, Labor has been a regular presence in the community. I pay tribute to the many Labor Party members who continue that tradition in Canberra today.

I spoke in Parliament yesterday in favour of the flood reconstruction package.

Flood Reconstruction, 22 Feb 2011

I rise to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Temporary Flood Reconstruction Levy) Bill 2011. The recent floods and cyclone had a devastating impact on Queensland and Victoria, with major infrastructure now needing to be rebuilt. In order to fund this rebuilding effort Labor has proposed a $5.6 billion package. Two dollars out of three of this package will be funded by savings measures from the budget while the remainder will be funded by a one-off levy in 2011-12. The levy, as previous speakers have noted, will be progressive, so that flood victims and taxpayers earning less than $50,000 will pay nothing. For most of those who do pay the levy, the cost will be less than a cup of coffee a week.

At the same time we need to recognise that the economic environment is strong. The latest labour force figures show that 62 per cent of the adult population has a job. By contrast the US employment rate has fallen five percentage points translating into millions of lost jobs in that country. Last November when I asked the Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, about the Australian economy, he replied:

I sit around the table with my counterparts from 40 to 50 countries a number of times a year, and I have not yet found one whom I would want to swap places with.

Yet despite the powerful performance of the Australian economy and the fact that our public debt share is less than one-tenth the average for most developed economies, the Liberal Party seems unable to acknowledge that the fiscal stimulus worked. Perhaps that is because the Liberal Party opposed the second fiscal stimulus package. The modern Liberal Party has become the party of no.

As though that was not enough, the Liberal Party have now decided to oppose a progressive flood levy. Yet again the Liberal Party are the party of ‘no’. While we in the ALP are introducing a modest levy to help rebuild Queensland, Liberals are appalled that we could even consider such an idea. Levies, they tell us, are an unconscionable imposition on the Australian people, except for the ones the Liberals introduced when they were in government.

Let’s go through those levies. There was the superannuation surcharge levy, the gun buyback levy, the stevedoring levy, the milk levy, the sugar levy and the Ansett airline levy—and those levies were imposed by the Howard government against a backdrop of strong budget revenues. The Liberal Party’s opposition to a levy lacks any semblance of principle. Although he was part of a government that enacted six levies, the Leader of the Opposition has opted to oppose the flood levy, dragging out his tired-old ‘big new tax’ line. The Leader of the Liberal Party has argued that circumstances are inappropriate to impose a levy. This despite the fact that, during the election campaign, the Liberal Party itself proposed a company tax levy. Not only would that levy have been effectively imposed on all taxpayers—since company taxes end up being paid by consumers and workers—but it would have been permanent not temporary. In the election campaign it was ‘yes’ to levies but today the Liberals are the party of ‘no’.

What is the Liberal solution to funding the rebuilding of Queensland? It turns out they would rather see us cut spending on unnecessary frivolities—like schools for poor Indonesian children. That is right, those Indonesian kids without education have had it too good for too long. But the Liberals are not hypocrites—they have Aussie kids in their sights as well. They want to cut spending on financial literacy programs for our young people. This of course is from a party whose budget costings were short by a cool $11 billion. Apparently, the Liberals want a nation of young people who understand costings as badly as the Liberal Party front bench. Who knows, maybe it is a party recruitment tool! Even if the Liberals do not manage to cut spending on financial literacy lessons, Aussie kids will not have new places to learn them anyway because the Liberals want to cut spending on building Australian schoolrooms as well. We have no assistance for poor people overseas and uneducated Aussie children. That is the Liberal plan for rebuilding Queensland—stirring stuff!

When we turn to more independent commentators we can find substantial support for this flood levy. CommSec’s Craig James said:

this is the right levy for the times—modest in size, temporary, progressive and applying to those on higher incomes …

… … …

The fact that the Government is cutting spending and applying a new levy on Australian consumers may reduce the need or urgency for the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates over the year.

The ANZ said

this policy change is relatively minor when placed in context of the broader Australian economy. The Government estimates the flood levy will raise $1.8bn, which is equivalent to just 0.12% of nominal GDP.

Christopher Joye, Managing Director of Rismark said:

… if you want the real proof in the pudding of the government’s case, consider this—interest rate futures markets have rallied hard today in response to the package, materially reducing the probability of future rate hikes on the basis that the measures are anti-inflationary.

Let’s move from the levy to what will be done with it. From an economic point of view, what could have a larger pay-off than rebuilding public infrastructure after a flood? From a social point of view, what could be more important than helping communities get back on their feet quickly? From a moral point of view, don’t we have a duty to help our brothers and sisters in Queensland?

The Liberal Party’s stance comes direct from the playbook of the US Republicans, the original party of no. Unlike Democratic senators, who under President Bush opted to negotiate on his top priorities of tax cuts and schools reform, Republicans sought to block President Obama on healthcare, which was of course his signature campaign issue. As former Bush speechwriter David Frum described it:

No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles.

The strategy was pure politics, but even Frum had his misgivings:

Politically, I get the ‘let’s trip up the other side, make them fail’ strategy,’

he told the New York Times.

‘But what’s more important, to win extra seats or to shape the most important piece of social legislation since the 1960s?’

The result of the Republican strategy, of course, is well known. Far from winning all the marbles, the US Republicans got none. The biggest threat to mainstream Republicans today is the Tea Party, who lost their marbles long ago.

Although the Australian Liberal Party may be less right wing than their US counterparts, there are times when the two parties seem to be working from the same playbook. When they were led by the member for Wentworth, the opposition voted against a fiscal stimulus package that saved around 200,000 jobs. The member for Warringah came to the leadership with one promise: he would say no to any sensible policy to tackle climate change. Since the member for Warringah’s ascendancy to the leadership, the blocking game has accelerated. Alongside climate change, the opposition have voted against means testing the private health insurance rebate and have announced that they will oppose the minerals resource rent tax. At every opportunity they criticise the Building the Education Revolution program. This is the ‘party of no’ in action.

Another clue that US Republicans have some close followers Down Under is the fact that the Liberal Party has often sought to cast its position as delay rather than obstruction. In the midst of the US healthcare debate, a key Republican strategy memo argued that the best way to defeat President Obama’s healthcare bill was by putting on the brakes. US Republicans were urged to use the message: ‘Slow down, Mr. President’. If you cannot be the party of no, be the party of later.

In Australia, the Liberal Party has accused the government of moving too quickly on fiscal stimulus, health reform, and an emissions trading scheme. In the short term this may be a cunning political strategy. But delaying would have been absurd in the case of fiscal stimulus, since the very point of that package was timely action. And because the cost of climate change abatement rises over time, the Liberal Party’s decision to block an emissions trading scheme has merely raised the future price tag for businesses and households.

Indeed, it is not even clear whether obstruction serves parties’ long-term political interests. A policy of ‘just say no’ may temporarily fire up the base, but the current chaos in the US Republican Party shows where it leads. Politicians who play obstruction for its own sake merely fuel the rise of radical fringe movements. The more often the Leader of the Opposition reaches for the glib one-liner instead of a sound policy choice, the less likely the Australian people are to believe that he has the skills and temperament to govern the country. And the more the Liberal Party becomes the party of no, the more they will have to deal with the rise of reactionary movements to their right.

I spoke in parliament yesterday about the important role that environment groups play in Canberra.

Constituency Statements
Fraser Electorate: Environment Volunteers
22 February 2011

I have often spoken about the role that volunteers and voluntary organisations play in bringing the community together, acting as a kind of social glue. People volunteer for many reasons and in many different ways, but I firmly believe that some of the most important voluntary work is done by those groups involved with the local environment. My home of Canberra is blessed with a number of park care, catchment and bushland groups, all of which are active in conserving the natural environment in our bush capital.

I recently held a community forum for members of my electorate who are involved in the conservation and environment sector. Among the groups that attended were Friends of Mount Painter Park Care Group, Mount Rogers Landcare Group, Dunlop Environment Volunteers, the Conservation Council, the Cooleman Ridge Park Care Group, ANUgreen, the Ginninderra Catchment Group, Friends of Aranda Bushland and Friends of Mount Majura. As you can imagine, these organisations and others, like the Molonglo Catchment Group, Friends of Grasslands and Greening Australia Capital Region, are incredibly active organisations.



Working in partnership with the community and government, they are able to deal successfully with a range of areas. Every weekend, whatever the weather, volunteers from these groups are out tackling issues as varied as stormwater quality, invasive flora and fauna, environmental restoration, cultural and heritage conservation and urban and regional planning. While the electorate of Fraser is a largely metropolitan one, it is also a diverse natural environment, from grass flats and wetlands in the valleys, to rugged woodland dominating the hill tops. The diversity of the natural environment is extraordinary.

From environmental organisers like Jean Geue, Waltraud Pix, Anna See, Sarah Hnatiuk, Pamela and Fred Fawke, Bart Meehan and John Sullivan, I have learnt a lot about our local geography. For example, Black Mountain supports a diverse natural ecosystem that hosts an astonishing 59 varieties of orchids. I have also become accustomed to the ongoing battles against rabbits and the purple peril—the noxious weed Paterson’s curse that Landcare groups have to take the fight to when it invades the ACT each spring.

I heard how people from all backgrounds—university students and staff, public servants, tradespeople, retirees—come together to make a difference to the environment that we all share. Volunteering with a park care group is not only an enjoyable opportunity to look after the environment, it is also a great way to learn about nature, get to know likeminded people in your local community. To get involved all that is needed is a pair of strong shoes and a bit of enthusiasm.

I spoke in parliament tonight against a private members' motion moved by shadow immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison.

'A Line in the Sand', 21 February 2011

In 1983, I was attending Sutherland Primary School, in the electorate of the member for Cook. One day, a person from the computer company Microbee came and set up a computer in the back of the room. It was the first computer most of us had ever seen. The program was a database of the First Fleet, and each of us took it in turns to search the name records to see if our ancestors were on the ship. In that classroom, every eleven year old child wanted to answer the same question: could I possibly be descended from a boat person?



Nearly three decades later, how is it that some people in Australian politics think they can use the term ‘boat person’ as a form of abuse? When they celebrate Australia Day, do they think that the arrivals of 1788 held valid visas? Why do they applaud the courage of one risky sea journey to reach Australia, but spread fear and loathing about another?

In my own electorate, I have had the privilege to meet some extraordinary migrants. Last year, I attended a prize-giving ceremony for an art competition run as part of Refugee Week. First prize went to a Karen Burmese woman who had woven a traditional crimson tunic. Because she didn’t have a proper loom, the woman had taken the mattress off her bed, and fashioned a loom from her pine bed base. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the courage and spirit of Australia’s migrants.

The great success of multiculturalism has been the way suburban Australians have – without fuss – welcomed successive waves of new migrants into our neighbourhoods. As a local MP, one of the things I most enjoy is to stand in a school assembly - amidst children from all ancestries in the world – and sing with them those lines from the national anthem: ‘For those who’ve come across the seas / We’ve boundless plains to share’.

Yet today, that consensus threatens to shatter. Senator Cori Bernadi tells us that ‘Islam itself is the problem’. And according to journalist Lenore Taylor, the Member for Cook, Scott Morrison, told Shadow Cabinet last year that the Coalition should capitalise on the electorate's growing concerns about Muslim immigration. Neither of them have been rebuked by the Leader of the Opposition.

In his motion today, the Member for Cook continues his efforts to make political capital out of the Australian refugee program. Yet like the Coalition’s election costings, it is riddled with errors. The motion conflates the Refugee and Special Humanitarian components of the Humanitarian Program which are effectively quarantined from each other in terms of the number of visas granted and the priority accorded to processing them.

The motion erroneously suggests that Australia has rejected women at risk because irregular maritime arrivals have crowded them out, an mistake repeated by the member for Cook in his media release last November. This is not the case. The number of places available for refugees overseas is not affected by the number of Protection Visas granted to onshore applicants (and that includes irregular maritime arrivals).

Australia continues to settle a significant number of refugees from overseas. Indeed, the Labor Government has increased this program since coming to office with an additional 250 places in 2009-10, following an increase of 500 places in 2008-09, bringing the total program to 13,750 for 2010-11.

Beyond this, Australia also works to improve the situation of displaced populations in the region by providing substantial support to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration.

Still, if we overlook the factual errors in the Member for Cook’s motion, it is plain that he is trying to make a simple point. The government should give preference to asylum seekers applying offshore rather than those who apply onshore.

This is simple enough to say, but hardly straightforward to implement. It raises the question: when the Coalition’s proposed ‘cap’ has been filled, what should we do with those people who arrive in Australia with valid visas and apply for protection? What should we do with irregular maritime arrivals found to be refugees? Should they stay in indefinite detention? Perhaps that’s the kind of solution that appeals to people who wish for a return to the ‘grand old days’ of the Howard Government’s migration policy. But whether you look at it from the point of compassion or cost-benefit analysis, indefinite detention for those who come to our shores doesn’t make sense.

We should control our borders – of course we should – but controlling our borders does not require us to add to the suffering of people who merit our compassion. The current refugee program is a reasonable response by the Australian community to a world wide challenge.  Australia needs policies that are based on a humanitarian response, not only because that’s what we committed to as signatories of the 1951 Refugee Convention, but also because it reflects the concerns and interests of the community.

While scrutinising the flaws in this motion, let’s not miss the broader context in which this motion is being moved. In the Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday, commentator Mike Carlton quoted Bruce Baird - the predecessor to the Member for Cook, and a man who served the Liberal Party in the NSW and federal parliaments for 20 years. Indeed, when I lived as a time in Pennant Hills, Mr Baird was my state member of parliament (and even as a member of Young Labor, he earned my grudging respect). Last week, Mr Baird said of the Liberal Party: ‘There's no doubt the party has shifted to the right. It seems like One Nation is calling the tune. They are going for the blue-collar, right-wing vote. Moderate views in the federal party have largely disappeared."

Mr Speaker.

• As the Prime Minister told the Lowy Institute last year: ‘it would take about 20 years to fill the MCG with asylum seekers at present rates of arrival’. Yet there are those who claim that asylum-seekers are a threat to the Australian way of life. They are on the wrong side of history.

• There are those who think that Australia’s religious freedoms are too narrow to apply to all religions. They are on the wrong side of history.

• There are those who tell us that when a rich nation like ours is hit with a flood, our generosity to Indonesia should cease. They are on the wrong side of history.

• There are those who tell us that when family members lose one another in a tragic accident off Christmas Island, we should deny them the chance to attend the funeral. They are on the wrong side of history.

If you read the history books, you’ll see that these seeds of hatred have been sown before. Brewing up racial discontent has its own special recipe. Start with a cup of rhetoric about how ‘those people’ with their ‘strange customs’ are different from ‘us’. Add a spoon of envy about how those outsiders always seem to get better treatment than ‘ordinary Australians’. And for good measure, why not dash in a suggestion that they could be happier if they just went home where they came from. Then give the pot a good stir, and let it simmer until it’s hot enough to serve up to some unsuspecting racial minority.

Believe it or not, there’s even an academic literature on hatred. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser points out that inciting racial hatred will always be a tempting strategy for political entrepreneurs, but only when the minority group reaches a certain size. Italian-Australians: too big (they might fight back). Luxembourg-Australians: too small (hard to get the base fired up). But Middle-Eastern Australians: just right.

I was asked this morning by a journalist I greatly respect: ‘why are you bringing this up today?’. It’s a good question, so in closing, let me try to answer why I don’t think we should merely let the issue drop.

When Pauline Hanson brought her extremist ideology onto the floor of this parliament in the late-1990s, some people said ‘just ignore it, and it’ll go away’. They meant well, but as the subsequent rise of One Nation showed, they were grievously mistaken.

Sometimes, you just have to draw a line in the sand. Here is mine.

• If there’s someone attacking a religion, that matters to me – even if it’s not my religion.


• If there’s someone suggesting that asylum seekers are a threat to our way of life, that matters to me – even if I’m not an asylum seeker


• If there’s a father who wants to attend the funeral of his child, that matters to me – even if it’s not my child.

I urge the House to oppose the motion.

Federal parliament will soon be debating how to rebuild the damage done to Australia by this summer’s cyclone, floods and fires. All Australians will have seen either first-hand or on their television screens the damage that has been done not only to homes, but also to essential infrastructure such as bridges and roads. State and federal governments must now get the rebuilding process underway quickly, so the economic and social impact of these floods ends up being as small as possible.



At the same time, we need to recognise that the economic environment is strong. The latest labour force figures show that 62 percent of the adult population have a job (by contrast, the US employment to population ratio has fallen from 63 to 58 percent). A few months ago, when I asked Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens about the Australian economy, he replied: ‘I sit around the table with my counterparts from 40 or 50 countries a number of times a year, and I have not yet found one whom I would want to swap places with.’

Yet despite the powerful performance of the Australian economy and the fact that our public debt share is less than one-tenth the average for most other developed economies, the Coalition seem unable to acknowledge that fiscal stimulus worked.

As though that wasn’t enough, the Coalition have now decided to oppose a progressive flood levy that would cost less than $1 a week for most taxpayers. Instead, they have offered up a series of budget cuts that would damage to Australia’s economic wellbeing and national standing. These include:

• Scrapping aid to Indonesian schools, a policy that boosts the life chances of thousands of Indonesian children, as well as helping to combat extremism.


• Delaying water buybacks in the Murray Darling basin – a fundamental microeconomic reform that will help move employment in the basin onto a more sustainable footing.


• Scrapping the ‘Helping Our Kids Understand Finance’ program. (You have to wonder whether any Liberal Party advisor thought to mention the irony of cutting financial literacy program just months after their election costings had been shown to be out by $11 billion.)

I guess there must be people in the Coalition who believe in generous engagement with Asia, microeconomic reform, and financial literacy. It’s just a pity that they don’t appear to be the ones in charge.

Always saying no may be good short-term politics for Mr Abbott, but surely he also recognises the risk that it poses to his credibility over the long-run. The more often Tony Abbott reaches for the glib one-liner instead of a sound policy choice, the less likely the Australian people are to believe that he has the skills and temperament to govern the country.

I put out a press release today on the beaut 'Shake Your Family Tree' events that the National Archives are running. In the process, I couldn't resist mentioning one member of the family you mightn't expect - my great-great-uncle Robert Beckett (pictured), who served as a non-Labor MLC in the Victorian Parliament 1913-17.

Time To Shake Your Family Tree

Federal Member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh, has called on Canberrans to shake their family tree on 25 February 2011 and discover their family history.

The National Archives is holding the fourth Shake Your Family Tree day on 25 February 2011. All of the National Archives offices around the country- Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, Perth and Darwin-are providing interesting activities to assist people in tracing their family histories.



Shake Your Family Tree is a major event on the National Archives calendar, drawing around 2500 people to the Archives’ offices around the country. The theme for 2011 is Unexpected Discoveries – Amazing stories you can find in the Archives.

Andrew Leigh said the National Archives plays an important role in family history research.

“The National Archives holds a vast collection of information about people, from the ordinary to the famous, and their diverse interactions with the Australian government,” said Mr Leigh.

The National Archives holds Australian government records since Federation – on men and women who served Australia in wartime, who settled in Australia in the twentieth century or who were employed on public projects.

“People are always amazed to discover what is held in the Archives,” said Mr Leigh.

“Family historians find letters, photographs, immigration and citizenship applications, employment records and copyright registrations that help to build a picture of their past. The search is even easier now, as many of these documents are available online.

“Many of these records are about people – individuals who migrated here, who served in our armed forces, who were interned or investigated by the government, who were Indigenous, who applied for a copyright... the list goes on.

“In my own family tree, we’ve discovered a great-great-uncle of mine, Robert Beckett, who was a non-Labor member of the Victorian Legislative Council from 1913-1917.

“I encourage all Canberrans to access the valuable resources and records held by the National Archives,” concluded Mr Leigh.

Shake Your Family Tree day events include free seminars, workshops, demonstrations and guided tours, all relating to finding family history.

To access more information on the National Archives Australia, visit www.naa.gov.au