Andrew Leigh

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.

EMPOWERING CONSUMERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES THROUGH A DESIGNATED COMPLAINTS FUNCTION

As part of the Albanese Government’s Better Competition election commitment, consumer and small business advocates will be empowered to raise systemic complaints within the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) from July 2024. 

Currently there is no formal mechanism for consumer or small business advocacy groups to lodge complaints, to which the ACCC is obligated to respond. 

The Designated Complaints function will enable consumer and small business advocacy groups to submit a complaint to the ACCC where they have strong evidence of systemic market issues under the consumer law.

Condolence Motion Allan Gyngell
House of Representatives, 11 May 2023

Allan Gyngell was one of Australia's greatest public servants. He was happy to be a member of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's famous class of 1969, alongside Sandy Holloway, Rick Smith and John Dauth.

I first met Allan 30 years after that, in 1999. I was the Labor Party's trade adviser, reaching out to experts on behalf of my boss, Senator Peter Cook. As a 27-year-old staffer I was just the conduit for the shadow trade minister, but Allan took an interest in me and helped mentor me in my career. I'm not sure I ever knew anyone so influential yet so modest.

Condolence Motion John Kerin
House of Representatives, 11 May 2023

The last public event that I did with John Kerin was to introduce him as the guest of honour at ACT Labor's dinner celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Whitlam government at the Canberra Labor Club in December 2022.

John was physically frail but intellectually lively, and he told the stories of serving with Gough. And what better person to regale the dinner than a man whose first stint in federal parliament had coincided exactly with the Whitlam government? Elected in 1972 as member for Macarthur and unelected in 1975. At least his dismissal was by the voters. When John returned to parliament in 1978 it was as Gough Whitlam's successor as member for Werriwa. John won a three-way preselection contest and served the people of Werriwa until 1993.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AFTERNOON AGENDA WITH KIERAN GILBERT
THURSDAY, 11 MAY 2023

SUBJECTS: Federal budget, inflation, migration, Opposition Budget reply.

KIERAN GILBERT (HOST): Now the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, Dr. Andrew Leigh is an economist by trade. I spoke to him earlier and I asked him whether he thinks this week's Budget would make the inflation challenge worse.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Can you imagine, Kieran, as a Labor Government if we hadn't dealt with some of these cost of living pressures right now? You know there's people doing it really tough and I think it would -

Joint Press Conference with
Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher
Minister for Finance
Minister for Women
Minister for Public Service

Alicia Payne MP
Member for Canberra

David Smith MP
Member for Bean

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
ACT LABOR PRESS CONFERENCE
PARLIAMENT HOUSE
WEDNESDAY, 10 MAY 2023

SUBJECTS: 2023/24 Budget; Investments in Canberra; Income support; Housing affordability; Bulk billing; APS jobs

SENATOR THE HON KATY GLLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE:  Okay, well thanks for coming everyone. This is a really strong Budget for Canberra. Obviously a lot of the key measures in the Budget will flow through to Canberrans, so support around energy relief, the investments in Medicare, the cost of living package will flow through. Importantly, there's a couple of other areas that are really strong for Canberra which is the announcement around our National Cultural Institutions, over $600 million flowing into the ACT to deal with a decade of delay and of neglect and under resourcing and underinvestment in those important institutions. That was one of the key things that all of us as federal members in the ACT wanted to see. And indeed, it was one of the top issues that the Chief Minister had raised with me around areas he wanted to see further investment from the Commonwealth. The other area is in the public service. It's our big employer in town. So what happens to the public service matters to this city because a lot of the small businesses and other industry that's located in Canberra is linked to the strength of the public service. So in the last couple of Budgets we have addressed again, a decade of neglect from the former government, of under-resourcing, of underinvestment and that significantly impacted on services, not just to people in the ACT, but around the country. So in these two Budgets in October, and in May, you'll see that we've fixed up some of those issues around lack of staffing. We're addressing some of the conversion issues from contractors and labour hire back into permanent workers in the APS. And we're making sure that key service delivery agencies, many of them located here, actually have the money to do the work that the people of Australia need them to do. Whether it's processing passports, visas, looking after veterans, or supporting pensioners with their engagement with Services Australia and Centrelink. And so this matters to Canberra, it matters to Australia, but we've taken a really responsible approach to the APS and that will have significant impact on Canberra's economy. I might hand to my colleagues now and they'll make a few statements and then happy to take questions.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC 1206 AM CANBERRA WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
WEDNESDAY, 10 MAY 2023

SUBJECTS: Structural deficit in the budget, funding for cultural institutions, changes to prescription fees, raising JobSeeker, increasing wages for aged care workers.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO (HOST): Morning. As we've been discussing all morning, last night Jim Chalmers handed down his -  well, he's calling it his second Budget, but let's be honest, it's the first real Budget for this Labor Government. To talk to us about it is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, and the Member for Fenner, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning, Stephen. Great to be with you and your listeners.

CENATIEMPO: The first surplus in 15 years. On the face of it, sounds like a good thing, but it doesn't really address the structural deficit. We go back into deficit next year and for the foreseeable future.

LEIGH: That's right, Stephen. So, there's a significant structural issue to be dealt with, and clearly, in one or two Budgets, we're not able to deal with the problems that have built up over nine years of Coalition misrule. But it is a welcome sign to be back in surplus, or the projected surplus that we've got. And that's largely off the back of better employment figures and better wage figures than we'd been anticipating. More Australians are in work and Australian's wages starting to rise. So, that's a really welcome story for the economy as a whole flowing through to the Budget.

Choosing Openness – Key to Future Prosperity

Munhwa Ilbo – 2 May 2023

None of us make our own running shoes, fix our own teeth, or build our own cars. We gain from living in societies where people specialise in what they do best, and work together to produce complex goods and services. So too it makes sense for the relations between countries that the free flow of goods and services has made people around the world healthier, wealthier, and wiser. From 2 May, in Incheon, the Board of Governors at the Asian Development Bank’s 56^th Annual Meeting are discussing these issues around “economic openness”. This year’s theme is ‘Rebounding Asia’, and member countries will be looking for the best way forward to rebound from the global economic downturn.

Choosing openness in the international economy

The Lowy Institute, 2 May 2023

The Covid pandemic was good for isolationists and xenophobes, and bad for globalisers and internationalists. Yet since the agricultural revolution, one of the keys to prosperity has been specialisation. None of us make our own running shoes, fix our own teeth, or build our own cars. We gain from living in societies where people specialise in what they do best, and work together to produce complex goods and services.

So too it makes sense for countries to specialise and encourage global commerce. The free flow of goods and services has the potential to make people around the world healthier, wealthier and wiser.

For medium-sized economies the benefits of specialisation are all around us. Hospitals are packed with imported products, from machines to vaccines. Much of what is sold in modern supermarkets comes from overseas. Trade brings new ideas and challenges local firms to serve their customers well.