Andrew Leigh

Rebuilding Communities in a ‘Friendship Recession'

The Daily Telegraph, 22 May 2023

How many people can you talk to without having to watch what you say? In 1984, Australian adults averaged nine trusted friends. A generation later it had fallen to five.

Two decades ago the typical person got together socially with others about once a week. In a new survey, the average person's response was closer to once a fortnight.

Even before the pandemic community engagement was declining. In Reconnected: A Community Builder's Handbook, Nick Terrell and I documented a drop in the share of Australians playing organised sport, volunteering, attending religious services, joining a union, donating to charity or joining community organisations.

Are we facing a friendship recession? The evidence certainly seems to point that way. Compared with four decades ago, Australians have almost half as many friends and we catch up with our mates only about half as often.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
WRECK BAY VILLAGE
FRIDAY 19 MAY 2023

Subjects: Housing investment in Wreck Bay Indigenous community, importance of housing to closing the gap, Wreck Bay’s PFAS class action

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY, ANDREW LEIGH: Kristy McBain and I are here in Wreck Bay village to announce a historic investment in housing in the local community. We know that for too long housing in this community has been in a state of disrepair. In the last Budget we allocated $5 million as an initial step to make a difference. In this Budget we announced a historic $45.1 million over eight years. This will be working in consultation with the community to repair and build the housing that the community needs. Closing the Gap is one of the critical issues for this government and at the heart of Closing the Gap is improving the quality of housing in Indigenous communities. The Wreck Bay community is an unusual one, it doesn’t have state or territory representatives, it only has representatives in the Federal Parliament. And as the member for Fenner I’ve been arguing consistently for more support for this extraordinary local community. We’ve also got a bill before parliament right now that will provide greater governance for the Wreck Bay community, allowing better long-term arrangements for the community. And we’re putting in place a new mobile tower which will improve the problems with mobile reception that we’ve known exist in this community. It was a policy we took to the last election and I’m very pleased to see the Albanese Government delivering on mobile coverage for the Wreck Bay community.

$45.1 MILLION FOR HOUSING IN WRECK BAY

The Australian Government is committing $45.1 million to invest in housing on Aboriginal Land in Wreck Bay Village in the Jervis Bay Territory as part of the 2023-24 Budget’s $1.9 billion investment in initiatives for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.

This investment will support a capital works program to fix the disrepair of the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council’s residential housing stock. This builds on our investment of $5 million in 2022.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
AFTERNOON AGENDA WITH KIERAN GILBERT
THURSDAY, 18 MAY 2023

SUBJECTS: Unemployment rate, minimum wage submission, Voice to Parliament.

KIERAN GILBERT (HOST): On one of our top stories today, an increase in the unemployment rate from 3.5 to 3.7 per cent. I spoke a short time ago with the Assistant Minister for the Treasury, Andrew Leigh.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Kieran, these are still extraordinary unemployment figures. To have an unemployment rate below 4 per cent is still essentially full employment in the Australian economy. Our Budget forecast that there would be a modest rise in the unemployment rate, but we do hope to maintain full employment because it's so important for ensuring that people have jobs, that we see equity in the labour market and that we see those steady wage rises, including the substantial wage rise number we saw this week.

Volunteering Australia Reception – National Volunteer Week
Government House, Canberra
Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Thank you all for joining us. My name is Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury. I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, pay my respects to their elders, and commit myself, as a member of the Albanese Government, to the implementation in full of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Your Excellencies, thank you for having us here today and for your passion and hard work on behalf of Australian volunteers. To Mark Pearce and Michael Drew from Volunteering Australia, thank you for the important work you do. And to all the volunteers and volunteer peeps in the room. Thanks for keeping the country running.

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TV INTERVIEW
AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH GREG JENNETT  
WEDNESDAY, 17 MAY 2023

SUBJECTS: PwC scandal, deductible gift recipient listings, Stage 3 tax cuts, Housing Australia Future Fund

GREG JENNETT (HOST): Andrew Leigh, thanks for coming back on the programme. Why don't we start out around multinational taxation? Because it does seem with each and every further investigation by the Parliament, the PwC scandal only grows. For those who aren't familiar peddling ill-gotten information and profiting from it, AusTender shows that PwC still has on foot, millions of dollars worth of contracts. Will they pay a price with this government, financially, I mean, because of this sorry episode?

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Well, the first thing to say, Greg, is this was an appalling, shocking breach of trust by PwC. To effectively take this insider information and to use it to peddle a scheme for their clients is utterly outrageous. And I think the reaction you've seen across the community reflects that. I'm glad they set up an inquiry with Ziggy Switzkowski. I'd urge them to fully release the results of that inquiry. In terms of what it means for PwC's tenders, Katy Gallagher, as Finance Minister, has asked for a review of the conditions under which tenderers are selected and whether such a code of conduct should go to behaviour of this kind.

The Albanese government will provide a Measuring What Matters Statement to mark Australia's progress on important social, financial and environmental criteria. 

Traditional economic indicators provide important insights, but not a complete picture of wellbeing. We're introducing a Measuring What Matters Statement to help us assess our national progress on a broad range of social and environmental indicators, alongside traditional measures of economic strength.

Economic measures such as GDP play an important role but they are not the only things that matter. They won't tell us, for example, whether certain groups are getting a fair share of national opportunities and prosperity. Including a broader set of measures of economic wellbeing will help us focus on factors that are important to community cohesion and longer-term prosperity.

Because we want these measures to reflect what matters to you, we want you to be involved in our public consultations about measuring what matters.

Our online Measuring What Matters virtual townhall meetings will be convenient and interactive. Sign up for either of the two sessions at the links below.

• Wednesday 24 May | 6.00 pm - 7.00 pm (AEST) | Register HERE
• Friday 26 May | 10.30 am - 11.30 am (AEST) | Register HERE

Joint media release with
The Hon Amanda Rishworth
Minister for Social Services

GETTING MORE YOUNG PEOPLE BACK INTO VOLUNTEERING

The Albanese Labor Government is investing in the future of the volunteering sector with a funding boost designed to connect 5000 young people with volunteering organisations across the country.

This National Volunteering Week, a total of $1 million in additional funding will be given to Communiteer this financial year with the task of building the number of youth in volunteering roles.

Research shows that young people who engage in volunteering prior to entering the workforce are more likely to have a lifelong connection to volunteering.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC CANBERRA WITH ADAM SHIRLEY  
MONDAY, 15 MAY 2023

SUBJECTS: Diversity in the public service

ADAM SHIRLEY (HOST): Dr Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister federally for Competition, Charities and Treasury. Dr Leigh, sounds like you’re going to lose someone – at least one person – who’s texted in this morning because they’ve had it with the culture. How much does that concern you?

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: It certainly concerns me, Adam. We need to make sure that the public service is a model employer that attracts and retains great people. It’s one of the principles of the APS reform agenda that we’ve got in place. We want an APS that embodies integrity in everything that it does. And just as when the Commonwealth walks into a court room it aims to be a model litigant, so, too, when it’s dealing with employees it needs to be a model employer.

Discrimination must be eliminated from the public service

Canberra Times, 15 May 2023

Every day, Centrelink staff help people who are down on their luck, CSIRO staff research cutting-edge science, and cyber security experts assess potential threats. Anyone who's worked closely with Australian public servants know how dedicated, hardworking and thoughtful they are.

Yet despite the many strengths of the public service, it can still do better, and one area that it can improve is diversity.

In a recent analysis, economists Robert Breunig, David Hansell and Nu Nu Win studied promotion prospects across the Australian public service. Their data source is extraordinarily detailed, comprising essentially every public servant over a twenty-year period, from 2001 to 2020. With more than 100,000 public servants in each year, the dataset runs into millions of observations.