Andrew Leigh

I gave my first speech to parliament today. The full text is below.

Thank you to all those who came along to hear it.

First Speech
Andrew Leigh
Member for Fraser
18 October 2010

It is hard to imagine a greater honour than to represent your friends and neighbours in our national parliament. Each of us brings to this place the hopes and dreams of the people who chose us. I am keenly aware both of the incredible opportunity the people of Fraser have bestowed on me, and the very great responsibility to them which that opportunity entails.

Let me begin, then, by telling you about my electorate of Fraser, and the city of Canberra in which it lies.

Fraser rests on the right bank of the Molonglo River, stretching north from the office blocks of Civic to the young suburbs of Bonner and Forde on the ACT’s northernmost tip. Because the leaders of the time decided that a capital city must have its own port, the electorate of Fraser also includes the Jervis Bay Territory, home to a diverse community, and a school where kangaroos graze on an oval overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

In the electorate of Fraser, some locations carry the names given to them by the traditional Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, who used what is now modern-day Canberra to hold their corroborees and feast on Bogong moths. Other suburbs are named after Australia’s great political leaders. For the people of Canberra, a nation’s proud history is embodied in our local geography.

Thanks to far-sighted decisions by generations of planners, Canberra’s hills are largely undeveloped. This means that many residents have the pleasure of looking up from a suburban street to see a hill covered in gum trees. From the Pinnacles to Mount Majura, the Aranda Bushlands to Black Mountain, our city’s natural environment offers ample opportunities to exercise the body and soothe the soul.

Economists like me are trained to believe in markets as the best route to environmental protection. And I do. But I also know that smart policy will only succeed if there is a will for action – if we believe in our hearts that we cannot enjoy the good life without a healthy planet.

As vital as our natural environment are the social ties that bind us together. In an era when Australians are becoming disconnected from one another, Canberra has some of the highest rates of civic engagement in the nation. Canberrans are more generous with our time and money, more likely to play sport with our mates, and more inclined to participate in cultural activities. Part of the reason for this is that we spend less time in the car than most other Australians, but I suspect it also has something to do with the design of Canberra’s suburbs.

During my time in this parliament, I will strive to strengthen community life not only in Canberra, but across Australia. In doing so, I hope to follow in the footsteps of my grandparents – people of modest means who believed that a life of serving others was a life well lived. My paternal grandfather, Keith Leigh, was a Methodist Minister who died of hypothermia while running up Mount Wellington in Hobart. It was October, and the mountain was covered in snow – as it is today. Keith was 59 years old, and was doing the run to raise money for overseas aid.

My mother’s parents were a boilermaker and a teacher who lived by the credo that if there was a spare room in their house, it should be used by someone who needed the space. As a child, I remember eating at their home with Indigenous families and new migrants from Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.

That early experience informs my lifelong passion for Australia’s multiculturalism. With a quarter of our population born overseas, Australia has a long tradition of welcoming new migrants into our midst. Earlier this 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.

Near my home in Hackett, the local café is run by the three sons of James Savoulidis, a Greek entrepreneur who opened the first pizzeria in Canberra in 1966, and taught Gough Whitlam to dance the Zorba a few years later. Elsewhere in the Fraser electorate, you can enjoy Ethiopian in Dickson, Indian in Gungahlin, Chinese in Campbell, Vietnamese in O’Connor, or Turkish in Jamison. Canberrans who are called to worship can choose among their local church, temple, synagogue, or mosque. And yet I’ve never heard a murmur from my religious friends about the fact that the local ABC radio station broadcasts on the frequency 666.

My views on diversity and difference were also shaped by spending several years of my childhood in Malaysia and Indonesia. Sitting in my primary school in Banda Aceh, I learned what it feels like to be the only person in the room with white skin. And as I moved through seven different primary schools, I got a sense of how it feels to be an outsider, and the importance of making our institutions as inclusive as possible.

But clearly the experience didn’t scar me too much – because at 38, I’ve spent more than half my life in formal education. Sitting in Judith Anderson’s high school English class, I learned to treasure the insights into the human condition that come from the great storytellers – the works of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, George Orwell and Les Murray, Leo Tolstoy and Tim Winton. Studying law, I learned that open government, judicial independence, and equal justice are principles worth fighting for. And picking my way through the snow drifts to attend Harvard seminars with Christopher Jencks, I came to appreciate the importance of rigorously testing your ideas, and the power of tools such as randomised policy trials (a topic about which members can be assured I will speak more during my time in this place).

In the decades ahead, education will be the mainspring of Australia’s economic success. Great childcare, schools, technical colleges and universities are the most effective way to raise productivity and living standards.

Improving education is also smart social policy. First-rate schooling is the best antipoverty vaccine we’ve yet invented. Great teachers can light a spark of vitality in children, a self-belief and passion for hard work, that will burn bright for the rest of their lives.

As an economist, much of my research has been devoted to the vast challenges of reducing poverty and disadvantage. I believe that rising inequality strains the social fabric. Too much inequality cleaves us one from another: occupying different suburbs, using different services, and losing our sense of shared purpose. Anyone who believes in egalitarianism as the animating spirit of the Australian settlement should recoil at this vision of our future.

But my research has also taught me that good intentions aren’t enough. As a professor-turned-politician, one of my role models is the late great US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan was innately sceptical about every social policy solution presented to him. Indeed, his starting point was to expect that any given social policy would have no measureable effect. But these high standards didn’t make him any less of an idealist, and Moynihan never lost his optimism and passion. What we need in Australian policy today is not more ideologues, convinced that their prescriptions are the answer, but modest reformers willing to try new solutions, and discover whether they actually deliver results.

This spirit of optimistic experimentation has deep roots in our nation. Manning Clark once said that Australia was an experiment for the multiple faiths of the Holy Spirit, the Enlightenment and a New Britannia. So you get the sense that in these early days, the Australian project was one of expansiveness, enlargement and possibility, where people were prepared to take risks and try new ideas in an effort to show that in Australia we did things differently, and better, than elsewhere around the world.

This Australian project is not finished. It’s not something that stopped with the end of the First World War or with the death of Ben Chifley. And all of us, as today’s Australians, are the custodians of this project, a project that stretches back over generations and centuries, and binds all Australians, past, present and future, together in this greater cause. It is like the red sand that Gough Whitlam poured into the hands of the great Gurindji elder Vincent Lingiari, who declared ‘we are all mates now’. We have a responsibility to make sure that the Australian project, for the time that it rests in our hands, is advanced and continued. 

To me, the Australian project is about encouraging economic growth, while ensuring that its benefits are shared across the community. It is about making sure that all Australians have great public services, regardless of ethnicity, income or postcode. And it is about recognising that governments have a role in expanding opportunities, because no child gets to choose the circumstances of their birth.

Internationally, the Australian project should be one of principled engagement. Australia’s influence overseas will always rely on the power of our values. A respect for universal human rights and a passion for raising living standards should always guide the work of our military and our diplomats, our aid workers and our trade negotiators. In the shadows of World War II, Australia helped create the United Nations – guided by a belief that all countries must be involved if we were to create a more peaceful and prosperous world. That ideal must continue to inform how we engage with the rest of the world.

Another important part of the Australian project has been democratic innovation. What we call the secret ballot is elsewhere termed ‘the Australian ballot’. We introduced female suffrage a generation before many other nations. We made voting compulsory, recognising that with rights come responsibilities.

Yet for all this innovation, Australians have increasingly become disenchanted with their elected representatives. The problem has many sources: the rowdiness of Question Time, too much focus by the commentariat on tactics rather than ideas, and a tendency to oversimplify problems and oversell solutions. I hope to help rebuild a sense of trust between citizens and politicians.

It starts with respect, and a recognition that we can disagree without being disagreeable. Working as associate to Justice Michael Kirby taught me that intellect and compassion together are a powerful force for change. Admit that most choices are tough. Listen to others. Be flexible. And remember that the fire in your belly doesn’t prevent you from wearing a smile on your face.

Australian politics isn’t a war between good parties and evil parties. At its best, it is a contest of ideas between decent people who are committed to representing their local communities. I am happy to count among my friends people on both sides of this house – and I am sure some of those friends will be happy to know that I don’t plan to name them today.

That said, choosing between the parties has never been an issue for me. I was born in the year that Gough Whitlam won office, and when my mother’s pregnancy reached the nine month mark, she pinned an ‘It’s Time’ badge onto the part of her shirt that covered her belly.

It is a true honour to serve as a Labor representative today, alongside so many capable and talented individuals. Thank you to those who have given me advice already. There is much more I have to learn from each of you.

In the Labor pantheon, the parliamentarians I most admire are those who have recognised that new challenges demand fresh responses. Among these I count John Curtin and Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Button, Lindsay Tanner and Gareth Evans. For each of these men, their ideals and values were their guiding light; yet their proposals were as flexible and innovative as the situation demanded.

I also had the privilege to work briefly as trade adviser to the late Senator Peter Cook. Peter was an instinctive internationalist, as keen to chat with a visiting Chinese delegation as to swap stories with the Argentinean ambassador. He believed in ideas, enthusiastically working to persuade colleagues that anyone who cared about poverty should believe in free trade. Peter passed away in 2005, far too early. I wish he were with us today.

I also count among my role models two former members for Fraser. As a 16 year-old, I came to Canberra to volunteer for John Langmore, and was struck by the depth of his principles and the breadth of his knowledge. Never did I imagine that one day I would succeed him.

My immediate predecessor is Bob McMullan. Over two decades in federal politics, the people of the ACT supported Bob for being a superb parliamentarian, and because they were proud to have, on their home turf, a true statesman, who embodied every day the best of what politics can be. I acknowledge Bob, and all those elected by the people of Fraser before him. Their service has set a high bar.

As elected representatives, one of our most important jobs is to speak out on behalf of those who struggle to have their voices heard. The Labor Party has a proud tradition of defending individual liberties. Past Labor governments outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender or race. This Labor government has removed from the statute books much of the explicit discrimination against same-sex couples, and strengthened disability discrimination laws. And all Labor governments strive to protect the right of workers to bargain collectively for better pay and conditions. Our party also stands firmly committed to democratic reform, including the simple yet powerful notion that every Australian child should be able to aspire to be our head of state. 

The Labor Party today stands at the confluence of two powerful rivers in Australian politics. We are the party that believes in egalitarianism – that a child from Aurukun can become a High Court Justice, and that a mine worker should get the same medical treatment as the bloke who owns the mine.

But what is sometimes overlooked is that we are also the party that believes in liberalism – that governments have a role in protecting the rights of minorities, that freedom of speech applies for unpopular ideas as for popular ones, and that all of us stand equal beneath the Southern Cross. The modern Labor Party is the true heir to the small-L liberal tradition in Australia.

Alfred Deakin was one of the earliest Australian leaders to make the distinction between liberals and conservatives. Deakin argued that liberalism meant the destruction of class privileges, equality of political rights without reference to creed, and equality of legal rights without reference to wealth. Liberalism, Deakin said, meant a government that acted in the interests of the majority, with particular regard to the poorest in the community.

As for conservatives, to quote Deakin’s description of his opponents, they are:

‘a party less easy to describe or define, because, as a rule it has no positive programme of its own, adopting instead an attitude of denial and negation. This mixed body, which may fairly be termed the party of anti-liberalism, justifies its existence, not by proposing its own solution of problems, but by politically blocking all proposals of a progressive character, and putting the brakes on those it cannot block.’

A century on, it is hard to escape the conclusion that if Deakin were in this parliament today, he and his brand of progressive liberalism would find a natural home in the Australian Labor Party. (And given the numbers in today’s parliament, I am sure my colleagues would welcome his vote.)

For my own part, I would not be here without the support of the Australian Labor Party – Australia’s oldest and greatest political party – and the broader trade union movement. Ours is a party that believes in the power of collective action. When the goal is just and we are one, our movement and our party are unstoppable.

On a more personal level, I would also not be here without the bevy of volunteers who doorknocked, staffed street stalls, and handed out on polling day. Let me thank all of those who worked with me on this campaign, and gave up vast amounts of their time for a cause greater than any of us. Thank you also to my staff, who make me proud to walk into the office each day. I am deeply touched that so many friends, staff and supporters are here in the galleries to share this special day with me.

Let me also acknowledge and express my love for my parents Barbara and Michael, who instilled in my brother Timothy and me the simple values that guide us today: Be curious. Help others. Laugh often.

I hope that I can be as good a parent to my two sons – Sebastian and Theodore – as you have been to me.

To my extraordinary wife Gweneth, who left her home state of Pennsylvania for the unknowns of Australia. No matter how chaotic our lives become, you will always be the fixed point that puts everything else into perspective. In the words of John Donne, writing four hundred years ago to the love of his life: ‘Thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where I begun.’

Finally, to the people who sent me here, the voters of Fraser. With the exception only of the neighbouring federal seat of Canberra, more votes were cast in Fraser than in any other electorate in Australia, and I am keenly aware both of the deep and diverse needs of our seat, and of the great trust and confidence Fraser’s voters have placed in me.

To them, I express my enormous gratitude for the honour they’ve given me of representing them in our nation’s Parliament. And to them I make this pledge – to do my utmost always: to represent their interests to the very best of my abilities, to remember always that their support for me is not my entitlement but their precious gift, and to ensure that, in their name, I make Fraser’s contribution to securing a better, fairer, more prosperous and more just future for our great nation.    

It is hard to imagine a greater honour than to represent your friends and neighbours in our national parliament. Each of us brings to this place the hopes and dreams of the people who chose us. I am keenly aware of both the incredible opportunity the people of Fraser have bestowed on me and the very great responsibility to them which that opportunity entails.

Let me begin by telling you about my electorate of Fraser and the city of Canberra in which it lies. Fraser rests on the right bank of the Molonglo River, stretching north from the office blocks of Civic to the young suburbs of Bonner and Forde in the ACT’s northernmost tip. Because the leaders at the time decided that a capital city must have its own port, the electorate of Fraser also includes the Jervis Bay territory, which is home to a diverse community and a school where kangaroos graze on an oval overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Read more

A few pieces that have piqued my interest this week:

• Justin Wolfers on marriage trends


• Malcolm Gladwell on social media and revolutionary change


• The benefits of middle management


• Intergenerational immobility in Sweden (say it ain't so!)


• Maths and poetry

With ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr, I opened a new playing field in Gungahlin today. We celebrated with a kids vs 'celebrities' touch footy game (Darters, Capitals, politicians). While I didn't keep score, I have a sneaking suspicion the kids might have beaten us.

More details below.

Opening of new sporting facility

The largest artificial playing surface in the ACT was officially opened today at the Gold Creek School and the Holy Spirit Primary School, jointly by Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Member for Fraser, and Mr Andrew Barr MLA, ACT Minister for Education and Training and Tourism, Sport and Recreation.



Building on an existing highly successful model partnership between government and non-government schools, this project involved the installation of a synthetic sports ground and associated components including: fencing, lighting, a soccer pitch, a multi-use field with sprint lanes, a running track and cricket practice wickets.

This project is designed to enhance school programs impacting on childhood obesity, while innovative construction methods will minimise water usage.



Dr Leigh congratulated the school and its community on establishing the best possible facilities for their students and school staff.



“These outstanding facilities will help ensure all students at Gold Creek School and Holy Spirit Primary School to realise their full potential and attain their goals,” said Dr Leigh.

“This new surface has educational and environmental benefits. Not only do students have a great new playing field, its one that will use less water,” said Dr Leigh.



The project, totalling $3 million, was funded through $2.5 million provided by the Australian Government under its Local Schools Working Together pilot program and $0.5 million provided by the ACT Government.



Dr Leigh also said “the project demonstrated the Australian Government’s commitment to providing every student with the best possible learning environment through the provision of these new facilities.”



The Local Schools Working Together pilot program is an important element of the Australian Government’s Education Revolution.

“The Gillard Government is committed to finding ways for schools to work together in delivering educational outcomes.  Schools in a community, whether government, catholic or independent schools, should work together in maximising the educational resources available, ensuring we can deliver the best education to our kids.

“The Local Schools Working Together initiative that encourages government, Catholic and independent schools to work together to develop shared educational facilities, facilities which will broaden the benefit of government expenditure on capital infrastructure and help create new opportunities for students who might otherwise be denied access to the range of facilities.”

“The Local Schools Working Together program is all about schools working in partnership to achieve educational excellence and equity,” concluded Dr Leigh.

I'm hosting an event tomorrow to discuss the ideas in John Quiggin's new book, Zombie Economics. Details below.

Event:          DISCUSSION ABOUT ECONOMICS WITH PROFESSOR JOHN QUIGGIN
Date:             FRIDAY 15 OCTOBER
Time:            1.00 PM
Venue:         Parliament House, Committee Room 1R3
Topic:           Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us 

In his new book, Zombie Economics, John Quiggin argues that the recent financial crisis should have killed certain ideas, but they live on in the minds of many. Among the ideas that he critiques are the idea that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, and that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off.

Professor Quiggin will speak briefly about the ideas in his book, and will then take questions.

The discussion will be introduced and hosted by Andrew Leigh MP.  

This morning, I joined five Pedal Power activists, who were waiting for me at 6.45am at the Hackett shops, to cycle into work for their annual 'Ride to Work' day. A very pleasant way to start the day. And fortunately, the gentle drizzle didn't turn into torrential rain until the very end.

My opinion piece in today's Australian Financial Review discussed how social capital can not only be good for our society, but also for our economy.

Connections Add Value, Australian Financial Review, 12 October 2010

Once a year, Roy Morgan runs a pollsters’ beauty pageant, asking respondents to rate the ethics and honesty of various professions. This year, just 16 percent gave business executives a rating of ‘high’ or ‘very high’. This places CEOs on par with federal MPs, and only a smidgin above the lowest-ranked professions such as car salesman, real estate agents and journalists.

Declining trust in business leaders since the 1970s is part of a general collapse in social capital in Australia over recent decades. In a new book, Disconnected, I crunch data from membership records and surveys and find troubling patterns across the nation. Organisational membership is down. We are less likely to attend church. Political parties and unions are bleeding members. Sporting participation and cultural attendance is down. We have fewer friends and are less connected with our neighbours. Just as Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone mapped the collapse of social capital in the US, my own research finds similar patterns in Australia.

From a community perspective, the decline in social capital is troubling because it means that the network of friends and neighbours that sustains us through hard times is less resilient than in the past. But what is sometimes missed is that social capital matters for business too. If you trust your supplier, it is easier to strike a deal than if you need to spell out in the contract all the ways they might exploit you. In a joint venture, it is often impossible to spell out all the potential pitfalls, so a sense of shared purpose is essential to any good agreement.

Not only does trust helps grease the wheels of commerce – commercial relationships can help build trust. One of the first to recognise this was the brilliant Adam Smith, who wrote: ‘Whenever commerce is introduced into any country, probity and punctuality always accompany it. These virtues in a rude and barbarous society are almost unknown.’

Smith pointed out that when two people are repeatedly interacting with one another in a market, they are more likely to behave well towards one another. ‘When a person makes perhaps 20 contracts in a day, he cannot gain so much by endeavouring to impose on his neighbours, as the very appearance of a cheat would make him lose.’

In the modern economy, it is easy to see plenty of instances in which trust and commerce run together. A plumber who turns up on time and charges the quoted price is a guy you will likely hire again. The barista with a smile helps ensure that her customers will come back for their next day’s coffee. A boss who encourages workers to knock off early on quiet days is more likely to find employees willing to stay a little longer when times are busy.

Where one finds exceptions to Smith’s theory are in occupations where the transaction is a one-shot deal (think of buying a car or house, or hiring a removalist). So it is not surprising that unscrupulous behaviour is more common in those industries. But this is not the norm, as the typical business transacts again and again with the same set of customers, suppliers and workers.

For jobseekers, social connections are an invaluable connection to the world of work. As Stanford University sociologist Mark Granovetter famously wrote, what matters in getting a new position is having a large network of ‘weak ties’. When it comes to finding out about new openings, an acquaintance can be as helpful as your best friend. And because you have more acquaintances than close friends, the odds are that your perfect job will come through an acquaintance.

Yet while the evidence strongly suggests that social capital boosts economic development, trust and civic engagement are often regarded as peripheral to economic policy. The debate over social capital today recalls the economic argument of the 1960s, in which economists on opposite sides of the Atlantic disagreed about whether ‘human capital’ was a viable concept. In a generation’s time, I expect that social capital will be as uncontroversial to economic thinkers as human capital is today.

Which brings me back to those much-maligned CEOs. If trust really matters for economic performance, can it really be true that the best executives are unethical and dishonest? To test this, economists Ernst Fehr and John List ran a set of experiments with two groups: undergraduate students and CEOs. They found that CEOs were in fact much more trustworthy than students, perhaps because business leaders are more used to striking deals and sticking to them. Still, it may be some time before executives can confidently say, ‘Trust me – I’m a CEO’.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser. Disconnected is published by UNSW Press.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority released its 'Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan' last Friday (read it here). If you'd like to be part of the ACT region community information session, here are the details:

ACT Region community information session

11 NovemberVenue: Finkel Lecture Theatre, John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU, Building 131, Garran Road, Canberra

Time : 9am-12pm

Details: We will be holding a three-hour community information session in the ACT region on 11 November.

Many venues are limited in size and we would appreciate RSVPs to 1800 230 067(free).

For public parking visit http://transport.anu.edu.au/index.php

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has just received the Nobel peace prize. Here's an extract from the statement he gave the court at his 2009 trial, just before being sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I'd say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, my sweetheart, that I'm confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison; you are waiting in an invisible one.

Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough to hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummelling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

Given your love, my sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens' speeches are treated the same; where different values, ideas, beliefs, political views . . . both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; where, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; where all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; [where] all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent.

On yesterday's ABC Radio National's 'The National Interest' program, I spoke with Damien Carrick about Disconnected, my new book on the decline in social capital in Australia (and how we can revive it).