Andrew Leigh

TRANSCRIPT – ABC NEWS 24 BREAKFAST
Andrew Leigh MP
Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister
Member for Fraser
24 June 2013

Topics:                                  Leadership, Coalition’s lack of health policy



Michael Rowland:            We’re joined now by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Andrew Leigh, and Opposition for Health and Ageing Spokesman, Peter Dutton. Gentlemen, good morning to you both.

Peter Dutton:                    Good morning

Andrew Leigh: Morning, Michael

Michael Rowland:            Andrew Leigh, picking up on Greg Combet, does that leadership issue have to be resolved this week?

Andrew Leigh: Well Michael, Kevin Rudd has made clear that there are no circumstances that would see him returning to the Prime Ministership and I think the main focus of this week is going to be between the big policy differences between the major parties. I’m sure Peter and I disagree on the substance of many of those issues, but I think we would agree on this point: that the main differences in Australian politics aren’t within parties - they’re between them. From my point of view, that’s differences like the fact that the Coalition a couple of months out from an election doesn’t have an education or a health policy. They have a second-rate broadband policy. That they have a policy on climate change that is not supported by any serious economist. That on superannuation they would raise superannuation taxes on the lowest paid workers in order to be able to give tax cuts to the biggest miners and the biggest polluters. So it’s those big values questions that I think are going to characterise the week rather than these sorts of questions of gossip and say so.

Michael Rowland:            It’s more than gossip and say so, with respect, Andrew Leigh. Greg Combet there saying it’s distracting Labor from pursuing its, as you say, policy agenda. It has to be resolved, in his words, this week. Gary Gray, another key supporter of the Prime Minister, last week, lashing out at Kevin Rudd, accusing him of lacking the ticker, lacking the courage to stand again. This isn’t gossip; this is a party at odds with each other.

Andrew Leigh: Michael, I can’t fault you for being excited about the colour and movement that might be going around Parliament House...

Michael Rowland:            I’m not excited, Andrew Leigh, I’m just putting questions to you that, you know, it is glib to say that this is simply gossip and say so.

Andrew Leigh: Michael, with respect, I think you are missing the big story in Australian politics if three months out from an election you think that the main question that concerns Australians is questions of internal party management. They are in fact the big differences between the parties. Mr Abbott, with his $70 billion costings gap has to either raise taxes on Australians or cut services and at the moment we’re seeing him largely evade scrutiny with his approach of throwing out white papers left, right and centre in an attempt to sort of pretend that he’s thinking big but not in fact be honest with the Australian people about the services that they will lose if he’s elected to office. He said that everything is on the table, and so that means potential cuts to pensions, to services that people rely on. Your Queensland viewers will know the Campbell Newman playbook - this approach of suggesting a Commission of Audit before the election, which after the election delivers swingeing cuts to essential services; cuts to the police force, to education, nurses losing their jobs, these are really important issues and they’re the sorts of things that come back to me. I was out doorknocking in Kaleen on the weekend and that’s what people were more focussed upon.

Michael Rowland:            We’ll get to those policy issues in just a moment. Peter Dutton, over to you. Can we just clarify, we heard Christopher Pyne standing outside Parliament earlier this morning saying there won’t be a no confidence motion put by the Coalition this week. We’re speaking of commitments, people making commitments, backing away from commitments: you put an awful lot of store in threatening to do this, why is the Coalition now seeming to be backing off from that no confidence motion avenue?

Peter Dutton:                    Well Michael, just to sum up where we’re at at the moment - Andrew’s had a lot to say in his opening remarks - this is obviously a divided and dysfunctional government, there’s no question about that. Andrew, it seems to me, has all the credibility of Comical Ali standing up there saying, “there’s nothing to see here”, no leadership issues and yet you’ve got Cabinet ministers threatening to resign, you’ve got people who are fighting within Labor like we haven’t seen in a couple of generations. And Labor at war with itself is bad for the Australian public and it seems to me at the moment that the Labor Party on the third anniversary of the ‘faceless men’ taking to Kevin Rudd are now at war with themselves about whether they’ll stick with Julia Gillard or go with Kevin Rudd, but in the end all of this distils down to this point, Michael: the Labor Party is obsessed with itself and has forgotten about the Australian people. It has no plan for the future and it really, we’re desperate to have these policy discussions because we have a superior offering at the federal election but the Labor Party continues to fight, it continues to brawl within itself and even if this issue is not brought to a head this week it will haunt the Labor Party right through, not just to the federal election, but for years to come, because in opposition I believe the Labor Party will continue to tear themselves apart. And Michael, at the moment, the Labor Party is not saying, “We’re thinking about bringing back Kevin Rudd because we think he’s a good Prime Minister, or because we like him as a person, or because we think that he would be good for the country’s future. They’re saying to the Australian people, “we’re contemplating bringing back Kevin Rudd because in spite of the fact that we loathe him we want to try and save some seats so that Bill Shorten can have a better launching pad as the Leader of the Opposition.” This is not a functional government and it just gets worse every day.

Michael Rowland:            Well let’s talk about policy. The thing is, Peter Dutton, we can’t really do that with you because you told the Financial Review earlier this month, effectively the Coalition doesn’t have, and won’t have a health policy going to the election, because you told that paper there are other more pressing issues. Is that good enough for a health spokesman?

Peter Dutton:                    Well that’s not what was said at all, Michael. What I’ve said is that health has had to take a back seat, if you like, to the issues that the Government has presided over: $300 billion worth of debt, cost of living pressures for families, businesses that don’t have any consumer or business confidence, people who have been sacked or are living under a great threat of being sacked because there’s no confidence in the workplace, the 45,000 people who have come by boats. All of these issues, Labor’s ongoing battles over leadership, all of that means we can’t talk, we can’t get the airtime because, like in this interview, we’ve spent the first five minutes talking about the Labor Party…

Michael Rowland:            Alright, I’m asking you about your policy, or your lack of health policy. Here’s your opportunity, Peter Dutton.

Peter Dutton:                    Well our policy is ready to go, Michael. I mean, I’ve been working on policy with stakeholders in this portfolio behind the scenes every day over the course of the last five years. And we will have a cracker of a policy as we did at the last election. We announced a $1.5 billion mental health policy, we announced new beds, we announced funding for doctors, allied health professionals, more funding in aged care in the primary care space. We’ve got a lot that we will announce at an appropriate time. But I’m not going to be lectured by the Labor Party about when our announcements will be made. If you try and get a front page story at the moment, it’s pretty hard to compete with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in this Days of Our Lives episode that knows no end, and I think the Labor Party needs to get itself sorted out because to be this divided and dysfunctional you cannot lead the Australian people and that’s why people are falling off the Labor Government at the moment. We’ll make our announcements at a time that suits us.

Michael Rowland:            Andrew Leigh, let’s go to a policy issue very dear to the heart of the Prime Minister, of course, the Gonski reforms. The deadline she set expires at the end of next week for the remaining states and territories to sign up. Is there now virtually no hope of those reforms being agreed to?

Andrew Leigh: Well Michael, these are really important reforms for local schools. I spend a lot of time in schools in my electorate as I’m sure Peter does in his. And you really get a sense that our current school funding model is broken. That a model that has these decade old grandfather clauses - and where federal funding is tied to state funding, so when conservative state governments cut back, the federal funding falls. That’s not a model to take us to be one of the best performing school systems in the Asian region. And so I think that we need these schools reforms. I think they’re sensible reforms that provide loadings to Indigenous kids, kids in regional areas and low-SES students and reforms from which all students stand to benefit. I’d also say quickly on Peter’s comments on the health policy, he says it’s a cracker of a policy but every so often crackers go off in your face. I’m sure Australian people are saying, “well Peter, if it’s so good, why won’t you bring it out of witness protection? If your health policy is really that great for Australian people why don’t you be clear about what you’re going to do?”. And all I’ve heard from Peter on his health policy is suggestions that he wants to get rid of the public servants in the Health Department who manage campaigns around reducing obesity and binge drinking, who manage getting drugs listed on the PBS. I mean, if you want new drugs listed on the PBS as Nicola Roxon said last week, then you don’t want your health policy to be firing people in the Department.

Michael Rowland:            Alright. Ok Peter, can you answer some of those claims?

Peter Dutton:                    Well I just think it’s quite amusing to hear Andrew talk about crackers and celebration. I’d be interested to know how he’s celebrating the third year anniversary of Julia Gillard’s ascension today. It hasn’t been spoken about much, but it’s worth noting and I’d be very interested to see, Andrew, what you’re going to do to celebrate today. But look, in  terms of the bureaucratic spend within the health portfolio, no question that the Labor Party has increased the number of bureaucratic numbers in the Department by 27% over the course of the last five years. A few years ago there were three outside agencies: there are now eighteen agencies. The Department did have two Departmental deputy-secretaries, there are now six. And yet at the same time we’re seeing money taken away from front line services and all I’ve said is that we’ll have an absolute priority to get more of the health spend back to front line services, not to take money away, but to give more money to doctors and nurses so that we can get the surgery for elderly Australians, so that we can reduce waiting times in emergency departments, so that we can make it easier to get in to see a doctor. Those are the policies that we’re working on. At the same time, Labor has spent an enormous amount of money on this ever growing bureaucracy, Michael.

Michael Rowland:            We’re out of time, Peter Dutton, Andrew Leigh. Thank you. We’ll just have to wait to see just what sort of crackers do go off.

Andrew Leigh: Thank you Michael, thank you Peter.

I spoke in Parliament today about the weekend's Welcome to Australia walk.

'Welcome to Australia' Walk Together, 24 June 2013

In my first speech in this place I spoke about my maternal grandparents—a boilermaker and a teacher—who lived by the credo that if there was a spare room in the house it should be used by someone who needed the space. As a child, I remember eating dinner at their house with migrants who lived with them and hearing the stories of their having come from Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. That experience informed my lifelong passion for Australian multiculturalism.

Australia's multicultural story is a proud one. We have welcomed over seven million people from more than 200 countries since 1945. It was my pleasure on Saturday to participate in Walk Together in the ACT. The theme of this year's walk was 'If we're all people, we're all equal'. The walk was organised by Bree Willsmore, who took over from Henry Sherrell as the ACT coordinator, and was part of 16 walks around Australia which took place over the weekend. I acknowledge Brad Chilcott, the National Organiser of Welcome to Australia for his work on this.

In the ACT, we were privileged to hear from Ms Mariam 'Maz' Hakim, a radio announcer at 104.7 in Canberra, who arrived in Australia in 1983 after her father fled Kabul with his family during the invasion of the Soviet Union. We heard from Duncan Smith, a Wiradjuri man from central-western New South Wales, whose presence reminded us that except for indigenous Australians, every other Australian is a migrant or the child of a migrant. We heard from Mariam Veiszadeh, also of Afghan heritage, a lawyer who did the walk at five months pregnant and spoke passionately about multiculturalism in Australia. We heard from Sam Wong, the chair of the Canberra Multicultural Community Forum, as well as Simon Sheikh, the former head of GetUp and now ACT Greens Senate candidate.

There were some terrific performances by a local ACT blues band Blue Yvie the ACT Chinese Australian Association and the Italian choir. I acknowledge the organisational efforts of Amnesty International and the LifeCity church as well. There were a variety of views reflected in Walk Together, but we were all united in a single view that refugees and migrants must always be treated with respect.

In closing, let me also acknowledge the hard work of St John's Kippax, who organised an event on Friday for refugee week. I thank Bevil Purnell for inviting me along, and acknowledge Gabriel Yak for telling his extraordinary story as one of the ‘lost boys’ of Sudan. It brought a tear to everyone's eyes.

I MC'ed today a bipartisan event to boost public awareness of the proposed Boer War Memorial, which will hopefully soon be built on ANZAC Parade, in my electorate of Fraser. Here are my opening words.

Boer War Memorial Event
Parliament House
24 June 2013

I acknowledge the Minister for Veterans Affairs, the Hon. Warren Snowdon MP; the Shadow Minister for Veterans Affairs, the Hon. Senator Michael Ronaldson; Gai Brodtmann MP; Nigel Webster, the Chair of the ACT National Boer War Memorial Committee; Ian Ball, also from the ACT National Boer War Memorial Committee; and John Howse, the grandson of Sir Neville Howse, the first Australian to win the Victoria Cross in the Boer War. I recognise too Senator Gary Humphries, who I understand was unable to attend, but is a strong supporter of this memorial.

The Boer War is – for many Australians – a forgotten war. It began before we were even a nation. The rights and wrongs of the war are less clear than in other conflicts. If asked to name one story about the Boer War, many Australians would likely name the movie Breaker Morant.

The Boer War was the Banjo Paterson was a Boer War correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, and after the war put his experiences to verse. In his ballad With French to Kimberley he described the young Australian soldiers so:

“And in the front the Lancers rode that New South Wales had sent:
With easy stride across the plain their long, lean Walers went.
Unknown, untried, those squadrons were, but proudly out they drew
Beside the English regiments that fought at Waterloo.”

One such young New South Welshman was Private William Abrahams of Bega. Private Abrahams was excited about taking part in the Boer War. He joined the Bega Mounted Rifles with a number of other young men from the district.

An enthusiastic correspondent, he wrote many letters home to his mother, his brother and sister, describing his journey to South Africa and his impressions on arrival.

In a letter to his brother and sister dated 4 December 1899, he wrote:

"We arrived in Port Elizabeth last night at about 9.30 and anchored there till this morning. (...) It is a very nice looking place, the town is close to the sea it would make a half dozen Begas."

Late in February 1900 he wrote to his mother describing a battle.

“We had a good battle last week called Paardeburg, we captured a laager (as we call a camp) of 3,400 Boers, and killed many more. We have had several small battles but not so large as Paardeburg.”

Sadly, a week after sending this letter Private Abrahams was killed.

One of Abrahams' comrades, Trooper Stewart of Wollongong, writing from Bloemfontein said:

"The young fellow who was killed in our company was named Abrahams and hailed from Bega. His death was due to abominable treachery, for while the enemy were holding up white flags in any number, a shower of bullets landed all round us, and one of them found its mark in the heart of this poor boy.”

The Boer War was a hard-fought conflict, with stories such as this one redolent of many of the wars since, including our involvement in Afghanistan.

An Australian soldier leaving his home for the Boer War in 1899 left behind a collection of colonies, and if he was lucky enough to return home at the end of the war in 1902 it was to a newly federated nation. While many things have changed since 1901, the universal tragedy of young men and women dying before their time remains the same.

Private Abrahams is one of the 102,730 Australians acknowledged on the Roll of Honour at the War Memorial. Hopefully soon his sacrifice will be recognised in this striking memorial.

TRANSCRIPT – DOORS
Andrew Leigh MP
Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister
Member for Fraser
24 June 2013

TOPICS:                                Superannuation for low income workers, leadership, polls



Andrew Leigh: At the next election Australian people are going to face a very clear choice on the issue of superannuation. We know now, thanks to new figures that are on the www.moresuper.gov.au website that a child care worker working on average child care wages, full time, will lose $75,000 in retirement savings if Mr Abbott were to win office. Mr Abbott’s superannuation changes increase superannuation taxes on the lowest paid workers in Australia. That is, I think, fundamentally at odds with basic Australian values that say that if you want to make budget savings you should make them on those who can most afford them, not those who can least afford them. If the superannuation pause takes effect then an average worker stands to lose $30,000. But if, as is more likely, Mr Abbott were to, upon winning office, not continue with increasing superannuation that would cost $127,000 of retirement savings. That’s a deeply short-sighted decision and one that’s damaging to so many workers on average and lower incomes. Happy to take any policy questions you’ve got. [Pause] Silence?

Journalist:                           It’s commendable for you to come out here and try to talk about policy but aren’t you ignoring the big issue of this week, and that is the leadership, do think it’s just media fascination?

Andrew Leigh: I’m happy to take your leadership question, Laura, but the reason I come out and talk about policy every day is because I believe that questions of leadership pale into insignificance alongside the big policy differences between the major parties. Tony Abbott doesn’t have a health policy; he doesn’t have an education policy. He’s got a $70 billion costings crater. And last week he announced a northern Australia plan proposing a commission that already exists.

Journalist:                           How can Australians have confidence in the Government though, to be able to deliver on these promises if you’re not entirely sure who’s going to be leading the Party by the end of the week?

Andrew Leigh: You just look at the track record. 586 Bills passed through the House of Representatives. Big reforms like the price on carbon pollution, DisabilityCare, better schools, and let’s not forget winning a seat on the UN Security Council. I’m very proud of the track record of this Government on policy reform.

Journalist:                           Are you confident that Julia Gillard will still be the Prime Minister by the end of the week?

Andrew Leigh: Yes

Journalist:                           Do the Rudd forces need to ‘put up or shut up’?

Andrew Leigh: My focus here is on policy, not on gossip and flim flam.

Journalist:                           Well it’s not gossip. Like, Rudd supporters are obviously backgrounding and there’s some sort of backgrounding that’s going on at the moment on the leadership, so what to the Rudd forces need to do? Do they need to challenge Julia Gillard for that position or does the Prime Minister need to step aside?

Andrew Leigh: Mr Rudd has said as recently as last week that there’s no circumstances in which he can envisage returning to the leadership. He has said that he sees the major contest in this country as being the contest between the political parties. And he’s right about that. That is the huge policy question here in Australia. This absence of a health policy or an education policy just months out from an election; that’s an extraordinary thing for the Coalition to be attempting to do. To try and skate into power without being honest with the Australian people about what they would do to services, without being clear about which taxes they would increase and which services they would cut to fill that $70 billion black hole.

Journalist:                           Poll after poll shows that Kevin Rudd is vastly more popular than Julia Gillard and today’s poll shows that Labor could lose 30 seats at the election. Why won’t you or your colleagues switch to Kevin Rudd if it means saving some seats?

Andrew Leigh: Julia Gillard is an extraordinarily gutsy woman. She will lead us to the next election and my focus between now and then is talking about policy, not talking about numbers.

Journalist:                           Why should she, though? Why should she given the state of the polls; they’ve been consistent at that level for the best part of six months. Why, what’s the best reason you can give that she should lead?

Andrew Leigh: Prime Minister Gillard has delivered an extraordinary set of reforms over the course of this parliament. In the circumstances with a minority government she has managed to get done a large number of important policy changes. Whether that’s the superannuation changes, the increases in foreign aid: now at the highest level as a share of GDP in 25 years, important improvements in Australian services, the hospital reform efficient pricing…

Journalist:                           But she’s unable to pull Labor out of the dire situation. So, aren’t most of those reforms at risk?

Andrew Leigh: My view is that good policy is good politics. That if you want to have the privilege of being elected and re-elected by the Australian people, which is what it is, then you’ve got to be focused around policy and we as a party need to back a leader who has delivered important Labor reforms across the board.

Journalist:                           So what happens now? We’re now looking down the barrel of perhaps a third leadership showdown. The last two, we’ve been told the matter is resolved. So, what should Kevin Rudd do now? Should he bow out of politics or does he remain a problem for Labor whilst he’s there.

Andrew Leigh: Mr Rudd has made it absolutely clear that there aren’t circumstances in which he believes he would lead the Labor Party.

Journalist:                           Regardless, Andrew, if he remains in the Party, in politics, there’s always going to be this question of leadership.

Andrew Leigh: Laura, I’m not sure why you can say ‘regardless’. Mr Rudd has clearly said that there’s no circumstances in which he sees he will return to the leadership.

Journalist:                           Do you believe him?

Andrew Leigh: Yes, I do. And I’ve clearly told you that I believe that Julia Gillard will lead us to the next election.

Journalist:                           So you don’t believe that there’ll be any sort of leadership challenge this week?

Andrew Leigh: No, I don’t. But I certainly believe that we ought to see more scrutiny of the policy differences here because they are massive. Broadband: Fraudband versus broadband is a far bigger issue than any poll that’s been coming out today.

Journalist:                           So you haven’t you heard any of the talk around Parliament House that Julia Gillard is losing some support; you haven’t heard any of your colleagues talk about this leadership issue?

Andrew Leigh: This building is filled with more petty gossip than any other building I have worked in.

Journalist:                           Do you put it all down to petty gossip, though? Are you seriously saying that this leadership talk is a figment of our imaginations and petty gossip?

Andrew Leigh: I think it pales into insignificance between the policy differences and I’m desperately worried that three months out from an election we’re spending more time, you are more interested in asking me questions about opinion polls and personalities than about the big policy questions. And that’s I guess my challenge to you as an honourable profession is to focus on the policy questions as well as the ones on personalities.

Journalist:                           Fair enough, but Craig Emerson this morning said that it would be naïve to suggest that there isn’t backgrounding going on and he spent the better part of five or six minutes trying to call on caucus to back Julia Gillard, he didn’t speak about policy once. Is he distracting from the issue there?

Andrew Leigh: I suspect Craig Emerson is in the same predicament as me in which he is answering questions rather than giving statements. But, if you get Craig on a topic of policy passion, something like economic reform, something like trade liberalisation, he’s one of the great economic reformers of the place and I suspect would much rather be focussed on policy questions than questions of personality, gossip, flim flam.

Thanks folks.

My op-ed in today's Daily Telegraph talks about why it's vital that the Coalition start to release policies, so we can have a real debate over ideas and values.

The real cost to voters of Abbott in the Lodge, Daily Telegraph, 24 June 2013

Former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said that politicians campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. A corollary is that while politicians campaign in ‘and,’ we govern in ‘or.’ Each decision to invest in one area makes it harder to devote resources in another area.

In this sense, the federal budget is more than a set of numbers, it is a statement of a government’s values. A government can never invest as much, or cut taxes by as much, as it would like to. Governments must decide between worthy causes. In these choices they reveal their values.

Labor’s choices are fully outlined in the budget papers. We are making long-term, smart investments in schools and infrastructure. We are delivering once-in-a-generation reforms to improve care for people with a permanent and severe disability. And we’re paying for these critical policies with $43 billion of responsible savings. The budget papers show that these savings fund our priorities not just over the forward estimates, but well into the future.

Yet in the Opposition Leader’s budget reply speech – and subsequent statements from his economic team, we’ve seen plenty of sloganeering, and precious little policy.

The Coalition has promised to repeal the carbon price but copy Labor’s assistance to households. But he offered no costings – a tactic reminiscent of Mitt Romney’s bogus claim in the last US election that he would pay for tax cuts to the rich by closing unspecified ‘loopholes’.

In fact, Mr Abbott has refused to endorse the government initiatives to close down actual tax loopholes being exploited by multinational companies, instead preferring to attack the superannuation savings of 8.4 million workers and reduce funding for schools.

Recognising the need to choose between competing priorities – making appropriate ‘trade-offs’ – is the starting point of responsible economic management.

If Mr Abbott had nothing to hide, he could have his policies costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office and release them to the community. And indeed, if his policies were as good for Australians as he has claimed, that’s what he would do.

It’s worth remembering the origins of an independent budget office. At the last election, the Coalition claimed that Treasury had become ‘politicised’. They thumbed their noses at the Charter of Budget Honesty (which had been legislated by the Howard Government), and had their costings done by a private accounting firm.

These costings were later found to contain an $11 billion black hole. The firm was fined by the Institute of Chartered Accountants for breaching professional standards.

Despite the creation of the independent Parliamentary Budget Office, little seems to have changed.

The Opposition’s Finance spokesperson, Andrew Robb, has claimed to already have Coalition costings in his drawer. No one knows who has performed these ‘costings’. No one knows why they remain unreleased.

Simple maths dictates that the Opposition cannot raise spending, cut taxes, and pay down debt faster. To circumvent this, Mr Abbott is currently promising that his post-election cuts will be determined through a mysterious ‘Commission of Audit’. This is the same trick Queensland premier Campbell Newman used to justify 14,000 job losses, including savage cuts to health and education.

A costings hole of $70 billion equates to around $3000 for every man, woman and child in Australia. It is reasonable to conclude that if Mr Robb won’t open his desk drawer, it probably contains a secret plan to raise taxes or dramatically cut services.

The belief that the government should radically cut back on services has been advocated by two leading right-wing thinktanks: the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs.

I disagree vehemently with such brutal cuts, but it is a legitimate viewpoint to take to an election. Indeed, democracy is at its best when it is a vigorous contest of ideas. Yet such a contest can only occur if the community is fully informed about the competing visions. As long as Mr Abbott refuses to release his costings, democracy is the poorer for it.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. His website is www.andrewleigh.com.

MEDIA RELEASE

Andrew Leigh
Member for Fraser
Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister

THURSDAY 20^TH JUNE 2013

ANDREW LEIGH INVITES CANBERRANS TO JOIN HIM AT WALK TOGETHER

Dr Andrew Leigh, Member for Fraser has invited all Canberrans to "Walk Together" on Saturday 22 June 2013 to celebrate diversity and call for an end to the politics of fear, division and prejudice.

The Member for Fraser, Dr Andrew Leigh MP, said that it was important to ensure that the language around the refugee issue is always respectful and that we recognise the vast contribution refugees and migrants have made to this country

“There’s a local story that still brings a lump to my throat about an art competition run as part of Refugee Week, where the first prize went to a Karen Burmese woman who had woven a traditional crimson tunic,” said Dr Leigh,

“She was missing her homeland so much that she made a loom by taking the mattress of the wooden bed base and using the slats as a loom to weave a traditional Karen tunic.

“That story for me sums up the extraordinary courage and ability of Australia’s refugees,” he said.

From 1pm at Reconciliation Place on Saturday, 1000 people are expected to walk down to the lake, across Commonwealth Avenue Bridge and finish at a celebratory concert at Stage 88 in Commonwealth Park from 2pm.

Walk Together events are taking place in 16 cities and regional centres around Australia this weekend.

Walk Together, hosted by multicultural organisation Welcome to Australia and Amnesty International, closes out Refugee Week with tens of thousands of people expected to come together nation-wide.

The celebratory concert will be kicked of 104.7’s Maz Hakim as MC, and include Welcome to Australia Ambassadors Ms Mariam Veiszadeh and Dr Andrew Leigh, as well as Minister Kate Lundy, Mr Simon Sheikh and local multicultural affairs leader, Mr Sam Wong AM.

In addition to speakers, there will be performances by Blue Yvie, the ACT Chinese Australian Association, Wiradjuri Echoes and Dente Musica Viva.

Speech to the CHASS National Forum

'Civility in Australia'

20 June 2013

Check Against Delivery

Thank you Steven [Schwartz] for that most civil of introductions. Can I, like Aunty Agnes Shea, acknowledge we’re meeting today on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people and pay my respects to their elders, past and present.

I want to thank CHASS for inviting me back to this very vibrant forum. It’s something I look forward to a great deal and this particular talk is one that has been rattling around my head ever since I was invited to deliver it, which I think reflects on the importance of the topic.

So since we’re talking about ‘civility’, I reached into my bookshelves and I pulled out what I think must be the essential tome that one begins such a discussion with; it is Paul Keating’s Book of Insults.

I shall now proceed by reading you a few of them.

On John Hewson, “his performance is like being flogged with a warm lettuce”.

On Andrew Peacock, “I suppose that the honourable gentleman’s hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness”.

On John Howard, “he is the greatest job and investment destroyer since the bubonic plague” (this is 1984).

And on Nick Greiner, “Look at Greiner, he’s only two years old, but already he’s terminal”.

And I start with Keating to illustrate the basic point that defining civility is tricky.

We know the extremes; absolute rudeness and genteel politeness, as Steven has just demonstrated in his most genteel of introductions.

But in the middle there’s a grey area where one person’s incivitlity is another person’s witticism.

I could spend ten minutes on that alone so I’m simply going to use the elephant definition: that most of us know incivility when we see it.

And so I want to ask two questions today. The first is, is politics becoming less civil? And the second is, what can we do to improve it?

And note that these two questions don’t depend on one another. Even if politics isn’t becoming less civil, one might well want it to become more civil.

So the starting point is that Australian voters have never had a particularly high view of their politicians.

This is a quote on federal parliament, “the standard of debate and discussion is appallingly low. The intelligence and purpose fullness of those taking part: less than evident. No country deserves politicians as bad as these.”

That’s Craig McGregor writing in 1966.

And since the 1960s we have empirical evidence on the point.

Australian election studies in successive years have asked the question of respondents, “In general do you feel the people in Government are too often interested in looking after themselves or do you feel they can be trusted to do the right thing nearly all the time?”

In the late 1960s about half of Australian respondents said that politicians could be trusted to do the right thing nearly all the time, and by the 2000s that figure was down to around forty per cent; a slight drop but not off a particularly high base.

Only around half of Australians for the last forty years have thought that politicians could be trusted.

Roy Morgan is another source of data. Their Image of Professions survey asks Australians to rate professions for ethics and honesty.

The profession that I used to be in and which most of you are in, that of university lecturers, about sixty per cent of Australians rate university lecturers ‘high’ or ‘very high’ for ethics or honesty.

By contrast, my current profession of federal politics, about ten to twenty per cent of Australians rate federal politicians ‘high’ or ‘very high’ for ethics or honesty.

In most recent survey, it was 14 per cent, which means we are down around the level of journalists. That’s how serious the problem is.

Looking across countries we also have evidence that Australians hold their politicians in fairly low regard.

A survey in the 1990s asked people in 16 countries whether they had confidence in their national parliament.

Forty three per cent of respondents in a typical country said they had confidence in their national parliament.

Thirty one per cent of Australian respondents had confidence in their national parliament.

And the problem is so bad that when I, in 2002, co-edited a book with David Burchell titled The Prince’s New Clothes: Why Do Australians Dislike Their Politicians?. The problem was regarded as so bad by my editor that they placed as a cover image a picture of one dog sniffing another dog’s backside.

An unfortunate effect of this was that the parliamentary bookshop decided that it couldn’t stock it. (At least somebody in this building has a sense of decorum.)

Another way of looking at how things have changed over time is to look at parliamentary behaviour.

To test this, I went back through Hansard and in every year counted the number of times that two measures of incivility are mentioned: first, the number of times the words ‘liar’ or ‘liars’ are used, and second the number of times the word ‘unparliamentary’, a typical response when people are behaving in an uncivilised way.

And I’ve normalised that by the number of words spoken in parliament over the year. What I saw surprised me.

The periods of greatest incivility are the early 1950s, the late 1970s and the early 1990s. On this fairly narrow measure of incivility, incivility is down in the federal parliament.

But on other measures I think there are issues with civility.

I had two of my interns, Ellen and Eleanor, this week walk around all of the federal parliamentary offices.

I asked them to look at a simple thing; I asked them to look at the posters in each window.

For parliamentarians who had a political poster up, I asked them to write down whether that was a positive poster (spruiking the good things member’s or senator’s party was doing) or a negative poster (attacking the other party).

Of the 99 offices in Parliament House that depict a political poster in the window, 42 of them are negative posters.

So, forty two per cent of the federal parliament on this measure self-define to their colleagues through a negative lens rather than a positive lens.

In other areas too, I think we’ve seen a greater rise in nastiness.

One driver of that, I believe, is anonymity.

In my 2010 book, Disconnected, I talked about some of the evidence on how anonymous technologies can make interactions nastier.

I quoted an experiment run at the University of Texas Austin, of which students were placed in separate booths and asked to communicate with one another only by email.

And the experimenters were surprised to see how quickly the conversations turned lewd or rude.

As the researchers noted at the end of their article:

‘[T]he male experimenter who conducted the sessions debriefed the participants immediately after the interactions without reading the actual transcripts. He noted that the students were always low-keyed, unassuming, and moderately interested in the study. No participants appeared embarrassed, shocked, or in the slightest way, upset or angry. At the conclusion of the project, when he was given the opportunity to read the transcripts, he was astounded—even overwhelmed—to learn what these polite students had been saying to one another.’

And if you’ve ever said anything nastier over email than you’d say person, you know how it can happen.

In The Australian Moment, George Megalogenis discusses the text messages that in part prompted the Cronulla Riots, and some of the nastiness in certain corners of the blogosphere. He argues, ‘The commonsense filters that were used to keep the letters-to-the-editor page civil, and to prevent the cranks from getting on air, don’t apply in cyberspace because the medium rewards those who generate the most outrage.’

I find this too as a federal member of parliament; people will occasionally say quite harsh things to your face.

But on any given day my inbox and my Twitter feed include nastier comments than anything that anyone will say to my face over a matter of months.

Here’s an example. I apologise for the purple prose but we’re discussing civility and so its flip side, incivility is, I think, worth mentioning.

[Email on slide] ‘I am prepared to spend my last dollar and effort of energy to avoid having you purporting to represent my views in parliament. And that is quite apart from the fact that you are a crap statistician. … You are a fucking disgrace – the more so because your electorate has a higher standard than you – and I will not lose a moment saying so, in any audience, in any place, and to everyone who asks my opinion.’

The email came from a senior journalist.

I turn to the question, what is to be done?

The challenges that I’ve spoken about pose a particular challenge to progressives.

If we look around the world I don’t think it’s an accident that social democratic governments are a little thin on the ground at exactly the time when the media landscape is fragmenting.

Technological changes like 24 hour news, blogs, twitter and email aren’t ideological neutral. They are particularly beneficial for populists and libertarians, and confronting for long-game reformers.

But for those of us who believe in progressive reform, it’s vital that we continue to talk about big ideas.

Critical reforms like Medicare and universal superannuation, expanding university places and dropping the tariff barriers didn’t happen by themselves.

They were the product of passionate and painstaking advocacy.

Progressives also need to get better at linking the reforms of today with the events of the past.

Too much reliance on talking points and ‘lines’ can win the battle, but lose the war.

Humans are fundamentally storytelling creatures, and stories are a powerful way of persuading people about the importance of change.

Reform isn’t about uprooting our history – it’s about allowing our values to endure in a changing world. It is about identifying the golden threads that run through our history.

But for politicians of all stripes, there are good reasons to improve civility.

First, we know from the medical literature that there’s a strong link between hostility and coronary heart disease.

Is that nasty jibe really worth going to an early grave for?

Second, politeness is simply more interesting. I have a semi-regular chance to discuss politics and economics on ABC Radio National with Senator Arthur Sinodinos.

We have a healthy respect for one another, and frequently go out of our way to praise one another.

We’re both passionate about our own parties, but I’m told by the producer that ABC listeners enjoy the segment because there’s a clear demarcation between our policy differences and our personal respect.

As a viewer, I certainly find that I much prefer viewing political debates of this kind.

So maybe civility is good politics too.

Thank you.

MEDIA RELEASE

Young people on Canberr'a northside urged to apply to help them be creative young stars

Andrew Leigh, Member for Fraser, today urged students and young people in Fraser to apply to share in $23,500 to help them develop their talents and chase their dreams by taking part in creative, cultural, academic and community activities.

Dr Leigh previously announced applications under the Australian Government’s $8 million Creative Young Stars program which is a feature of Creative Australia, the Australian Government national cultural policy.

The program will invest $23,500 per financial year in Fraser, and the first funding round will open on 1 June and close this Friday, 21 June 2013. The program will deliver grants of $500 for individuals and $3000 for groups of six or more in Fraser. The program will provide funding for successful applicants aged 25 and under.

“Canberra’s northside is full of young people who have many great talents and who will use those to make a fantastic contribution to our community once they get the chance to develop those talents further,” Dr Leigh

“But in some cases their families find it difficult to meet the extra costs associated with participating in activities, events and training.

“The Australian Government is determined to help young Australians reach their potential in all walks of life, be that at school, be that at finding a job, or be that in areas such as the arts, community service and leadership, or academia,” Dr Leigh said.

“That’s why we are complementing our record investments and improvements in areas such as school education with a $23,500 investment each financial year to help young people on the northside develop their potential in areas that go beyond the classroom.

“These grants will help young people further develop their creative talents by helping them take part in competitions, eisteddfods, public speaking tournaments and other cultural, artistic or academic events.

“I am proud that the Australian Government is able to make this practical investment to ensure that more young people in Canberra’s north get the chance to reach their potential and make an even greater contribution to our community in the creative fields.

“I strongly encourage students and young people, their parents and carers on the northside to apply for a Creative Young Stars grant to help them chase their dreams,” Dr Leigh said.

In Round 1, the program will deliver grants to 12 individuals and two groups in each of the 150 Federal Electorates across Australia.

For more information on the Creative Young Stars program visit www.youth.gov.au/sites/youth/news/pages/creative-young-stars

On 18 June, I appeared on Sky PM agenda with host David Speers and Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos. We discussed assistance to manufacturing, carbon pricing and leadership.

TRANSCRIPT – SKY PM AGENDA WITH DAVID SPEERS
Andrew Leigh MP
Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister
Member for Fraser
18 June 2013

TOPICS:                                Holden, local government referendum, carbon pricing, leadership

David Speers:                    Now we’re going to move on and bring in our political panel this hour. We’re joined by Parliamentary Secretary Andrew Leigh, and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Arthur Sinodinos. Thank you both very much for joining us. Now look, I just want to pick up on that quickly if we can; Holden are now in talks on how to cut production costs. It’s likely to mean lower wages and fewer conditions if the workforce agree to it. But Mike Devereux saying there, they’re making it pretty clear there that they want the level of industry support to continue. Arthur Sinodinas, is the Coalition sticking by its plan to cut this $500 million?

Arthur Sinodinos:             What we’re talking about there, David, is cutting some of the extra assistance that was provided by Labor since it’s been in office. We’re also committed to a review by the Productivity Commission about the whole assistance arrangements around the automotive sector and I think that’s our rigorous way to go and get some evidence-based policy-making around this. The challenge the automotive sector have today is even as Labor has put more money in in order to preserve or even expand jobs, the sector’s actually been shedding jobs. And so this is creating that sort of question in the minds of the public: well ok, are we really in a sense throwing good money after bad, if you like, and what are we getting in return? That’s not an argument for closing the sector down, that’s an important sector and we’re committed to the sector, but we want a rigorous approach as part of considering assistance for the sector going forward, and we were always committed from when we were in government to having a Productivity Commission review before any further assistance was provided.

David Speers:                    Andrew Leigh, as an economist, can you really say that this level of industry support is in the best interests of the economy as a whole?

Andrew Leigh: Well David, the reason we’re providing industry assistance to the car industry is because of the spill-overs to other sectors, because of the benefits that you get to the rest of manufacturing, and the benefits to research and development. I certainly appreciate Arthur’s commitment to evidence-based policy-making, it’s a commitment that I share as well. But the challenge is, as Mike Devereux highlighted, that when there’s uncertainty, it makes it very difficult for his firm to plan for the future. And so the Coalition’s policy has an admirable level of scrutiny, but the practical effect of that is to cause real difficulties for someone like Mike Devereux, making investment decisions into the future, not knowing whether there’s $500 million stripped out or maybe even more as a result of the review the Coalition is committed to.

David Speers:                    Mike Devereux is not a politician, but I tell you what, he’s pretty clever on the diplomacy here because he was careful not to tread on Coalition toes too much. And Similarly on the carbon tax as well. But I think he’s making it pretty clear that it’s one factor at least that does add to the cost of production in Australia. It hard to deny that, isn’t it?

Andrew Leigh: We’ve always been clear, David, that a carbon price would add to CPI. It adds about 0.7 per cent to CPI, about a third of the impact of introducing the GST. But the reason you have a carbon price, and the reason that the Howard Government wanted a carbon price before the 2007 election is it’s just the most efficient way of dealing with carbon pollution. That’s why today you’ve seen Shenzen, a province of China with ten million people setting up its own emissions trading scheme.

David Speers:                    But not the sort of carbon price, it’s about to go up over the next couple of weeks to over $24/tonne here in Australia. It’s one of the reasons car makers like Holden are doing it tough.

Andrew Leigh: The net effect of the carbon price, David, on total costs in the economy has actually ended up being less than we had projected beforehand. We’ve provided considerable household assistance, which for most households has more than offset the price effect. Were you to strip it away now, effectively you would be putting Australia in a much worse position because the alternative to a carbon price is the sort of command-and-control approach which Mr Abbott has pioneered: much more expensive, much less efficient.

David Speers:                    Alright, I know Arthur Sinodinos will want to jump in on that but we do need to take a quick break. Stick with us though and there’s a few other issues I want to cover as well. For New Zealand viewers New Zealand news next for you but stay with us as this continues on PM Agenda

[Commercial Break]

David Speers:                    Let’s back to our panel. We’re talking to Labor’s Andrew Leigh and the Coalition’s Arthur Sinodinos. Now, I do want to move on and we’ll get to the ongoing, never ending, leadership issues that are dogging the Labor Party all week it seems. But initially the Coalition Party room today, Arthur Sinodinas, on the referendum that’s coming up at this election as well on whether to recognise local government in the Constitution. Just firstly, are you in favour of this?

Arthur Sinodinos:             In terms of recognising local government in the Constitution?

David Speers:                    Yeah

Arthur Sinodinos:             I think we’ve got to fix up the anomaly that the High Court has identified. The problem we’ve had, and this is more the front bench, because we discussed this as a shadow ministry some time back, was the concern that this has been rushed a bit and that maybe with a bit more time it would be possible to build more of a consensus around this. I think if we’re coming up to what’s going to be a pretty frenetic election, I don’t think the referendum necessarily gets the attention it deserves. Now, it may be there are some Labor strategists who think it’s a bit of a distraction but our view in the shadow ministry was if they want to as a government put this up, ok, there should be equal funding, and that was, I think, the understanding on which…

David Speers:                    And this is the thing, there’s not. It’s ten and a half million for the ‘Yes’ case and half a million for the ‘No’ case.

Arthur Sinodinos:             And us poor senators don’t get counted, this was done on the basis that there were only two in the House who voted for the ‘No’ case.

David Speers:                    Yeah so given all of that and the disparity in the funding, do you still support the ‘Yes’ case?

Arthur Sinodinos:             Look, we will support it being put forward but I think you’ll find within the Liberal Party there are some very strong views, both for and against, there are for example people who argue that, you know, if you entrench local government in the Constitution, what impact does that have on the states and the powers of the states? So, if you’re a West Australian Liberal, for example, now you’d be quite concerned about the impact on state rights. A lot of this comes down to the view about, you know, what is the appropriate sort of balance within the Constitution on these issues. But where I think Abbott in particular has been coming from was a concern that unlike, say, the agreement that was stuck on the indigenous referendum which is essentially, let’s do it in a way that maximises the chances of it getting up, this has been a bit rushed and a bit sort of bowdlerised on the way  through.

David Speers:                    I’m intrigued to, Andrew Leigh, see what position you take on this and what you expect Canberrans to do on this because, of course, we don’t have local government in the ACT.

Andrew Leigh: That’s right, David. So we’re one jurisdiction that isn’t affected by this - but certainly for most Australians what this would do is to regularise a system that’s already in place. So, if your local council is expecting Commonwealth funding - for a local organisation, or to fix the local bridge - then you ought to be supporting this referendum because it allows that Commonwealth funding to flow with a constitutional guarantee. If it doesn’t go through, the only way your local council is going to be able to fix that bridge is by raising rates.

David Speers:                    Now, let me move on, because we’ve only got a couple of minutes left, to the leadership issue. Where are you at on this, Andrew Leigh, what’s your view on what’s going on and what do you think should happen?

Andrew Leigh: My view, David, is I’m finding so many of these questions being raised, I’ve had lots of conversations about this all week - and they’ve all been with journalists. So this is a huge issue for the Parliamentary Press Gallery who are utterly engulfed on this topic. But I represent Canberra, what the Americans would call an ‘inside the beltway seat’, and I can tell you that when I was out doorknocking Nicholls on the weekend, no one was talking about this.

David Speers:                    So, just to be clear, are you saying, because we hear this every time, that it’s a media creation?

Andrew Leigh: I’m not saying it’s a media creation, I’m simply saying that it is not the main concern of my electors who are focused on DisabilityCare, the National Broadband Network, health and education. These, I think, are the most important issues for people in Australia’s capital city.

David Speers:                    Nobody is saying to you, you need to do something about the leadership?

Andrew Leigh: No. I mean, it’s not the feedback I get when I’m out doorknocking.

David Speers:                    Ok, but just to be clear though do you support a change or not?

Andrew Leigh: No. Prime Minister Gillard will lead us to the next election.

David Speers:                    And Arthur Sinodinos, you’ve seen some of this stuff before on the…

Arthur Sinodinos:             I’m not agitating for leadership change anywhere!

David Speers:                    I’ve seen you issuing press releases pointing out various Labor MPs that standing by Julia Gillard. You clearly think she’s lead in the saddlebags for Labor candidates.

Arthur Sinodinos:             I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that when we were out doorknocking, particularly in NSW places like Western Sydney, the Prime Minister is an issue in terms of her capacity to cut through.

David Speers:                    But do you really think Kevin Rudd would fix everything for Labor?

Arthur Sinodinos:             I don’t believe that. The reason I don’t believe that, even though the polls suggest he could do a little bit better, is at the end of the day it seems to be a debate over the personality as opposed to the policy issues and I think that’s, from the public’s point of view, that’s one of the reasons they see this as a bit of a soap opera now, that it’s too much about two camps as opposed to policy issues. I mean, for example, we don’t know what Kevin Rudd would do about the boat people situation, whether he would improve on that. On Gonski, I’m a bit sort of puzzled as to where he actually stands for example. So, what we’re being offered is the idea that he’s somehow a celebrity and cult figure who could attract people back. I think the Australian public have gotten to the stage where they just want the election, they just want a majority government, and they just want to get on with things.

Andrew Leigh: By contrast, the leadership issue within the Coalition is actually a very big policy difference.

David Speers:                    Well I don’t know that it’s quite the leadership issue that we’re seeing in Labor at the moment. But look, we will have to leave it there; we’re out of time. Andrew Leigh, Arthur Sinodinas, good to talk with you.

Andrew Leigh: Thanks David, thanks Arthur.

Arthur Sinodinos:             Thanks.

My op-ed in the Canberra Times points out that since Tony Abbott was Health Minister, the federal Health Department has grown more slowly than the Australian population. Yet he now claims not to know what it does, and is threatening savage cuts.

Liberals' unhealthy dose of purging threatens, Canberra Times, 19 June 2013

Recently, I was chatting to a public servant who works at the federal Department of Health and Ageing – working on ways of reducing smoking, encouraging better nutrition, and decreasing obesity rates.

The conversation turned to this year’s election, and what it meant for our jobs. As a politician, I know that every three years I’m up for a job interview with a 130,000 person panel. But it turned out that this person felt much the same. They’re concerned that their job turns on the election result.

Having done countless mobile offices and community forums, I know that many Canberra public servants feel just the same. They’ve heard Joe Hockey say “the public service here in Canberra has to be reduced by 12,000 over the first two years as a starting point”. When Chris Uhlmann on 7.30 asked Mr Hockey whether he in fact intends to cut 20,000 public servants, Mr Hockey confirmed “we’ve already said that.” Some of his colleagues are more contemptuous still, with Western Australian MP Don Randall describing public servants as those who ‘feed on others’.

But public servants who work for the Health Department have a special reason to be worried, because the Liberals have made the department a special target. In his budget reply speech this year, Tony Abbott said “The objective will be to reduce and end, as far as possible, the waste, duplication and second guessing between different levels of government that has resulted, for instance, in the Commonwealth employing 6,000 health bureaucrats even though it doesn’t run a single hospital.”

This statement is daft on so many levels. First, according to the December 2012 APS employment snapshot, the Health Department had 5040 employees. Second, the Department’s staffing numbers have barely increased since the Coalition was last in office. The same data source shows that the department had 4802 employees in June 2007. From June 2007 to December 2012, the Australian population grew by 9 percent, and the number of staff in the Health Department grew by 5 percent.

It gets worse. The Minister for Health from 2003 to 2007 was none other than Tony Abbott. When it suits him, Mr Abbott is happy to boast of the expertise that this period as minister gave him, calling it a “solid record of achievement.” Yet when it suits him, Mr Abbott is happy to feign complete ignorance of what the Health Department does.

At a personal level, I find this willingness to use public servants as political playthings pretty shocking. In the four years that Tony Abbott spent as their minister, Health Department officials worked late nights and weekends, spent time away from their families, and did their darndest to implement his policies. Yet when it suits his political purposes, Mr Abbott is happy to pretend that none of this ever happened.

Politics is a rough game, but public servants should not be pawns in it. In case the Liberals need reminding, federal public servants in the Health Department have achieved a lot over recent years. They have designed a Dental Reform Package that will make it as easy for 3.4 million young Australians to see a dentist as it is to see a GP. They have crafted a mental health package delivering additional services and a greater focus on prevention and early intervention. They have worked to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. And they have written Australia’s world-first plain tobacco packaging rules, which will help reduce smoking rates.

The Liberals’ treatment of the Health Department is of a piece with a larger pattern of behaviour towards public servants. Still smarting from Treasury finding an $11 billion hole in their costings at the 2010 election, Shadow Finance Minister Andrew Robb has said of budget numbers: “My assumption is that Finance and Treasury will not engage in what are clearly the sorts of fiddles that we have seen take place in this budget to create the prospect of future surpluses.” This is a none-too-veiled threat: give us the numbers we want, or heads will roll if we win office.

The impact of public service job cuts on the Canberra economy would extend beyond the 1 in 4 workers who work for the federal public service. As the experience of 1997-98 shows, swingeing job cuts would drive up unemployment and bankruptcy rates, and drive down house prices. Acknowledging this, Mr Hockey recently quipped “There is a golden rule for real estate in Canberra – you buy Liberal and you sell Labor.” Is there any other context where a federal politician would be content to joke about how their job-shedding policies will bring down house prices?

Federal public servants have faithfully served both sides of federal politics. Going back to Menzies, there is a strong tradition in the Liberal Party of respecting the role of an apolitical public service, and encouraging critical advice. It’s a pity that Menzies’ heirs today seem to wish that the public service was flaccid and fearful rather than frank and fearless.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.