Andrew Leigh

‘A victory won by a lost battle’: What Eureka Means to Australians Today

EUREKA LECTURE

3 DECEMBER 2013

Delivered at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Ballarat East

Exactly 159 years ago, in the dirt upon which we are gathered, a man called ‘Happy Jack’ fought and perished. We know little about him – not even his real name. But he was described in one nineteenth century newspaper account as ‘a big black fellow… one of the pluckiest fighters in the Stockade’. Without the Eureka Stockade, Happy Jack might have made his fortune on the goldfields – or, as was more common – scrabbled to eke out a living. But he would likely have had a family. A handful of children. A classroom’s worth of grandchildren. He might have lived to see the dawn of the twentieth century. To be there at the moment of Federation.

Happy Jack was fighting for a cause larger than himself. So too were those who stood alongside him. They came from around the globe. From Canada, Württemberg, England, Nova Scotia, Petersburg, Wales, Scotland, Elberfeldt, Prussia and Rome. Eleven of the dead miners came from Ireland.

The killing was brutal. After perhaps a 15 minute exchange of bullets, the soldiers were within the stockade. Most of the dead were slain after this point. Troopers, hot with victory, killing in cold blood, stormed through the mining encampment, setting fire to occupied tents, cutting at the injured and fleeing or riding them down beneath the hooves of their horses.

Llewellyn Rowlands was hacked to death by troopers over 800m from the stockade. A woman, her name unrecorded, was murdered pleading for the life of her wounded husband. Eyewitness accounts mention Captain Wise bravely leading his men over the wall, ignoring a bullet hole in his leg. The same accounts describe Captain Ross, a Canadian miner, being killed after the action was finished. He died at the foot of a flagpole that held aloft a flag called the Southern Cross.

Some reports suggest 30 miners died within the vicinity of the stockade – their bodies rent by numerous sword wounds – with the final toll as high as 60. Without doubt, wounded crawled into the scrub or down diggings and died of their damage, alone and forgotten. The night after that morning, a Government sentry on a hair-trigger fired into the dark. His bullet killed a woman and her child. We may never know the names of all of those who perished: the Eureka memorial honours those whose names are known ‘as well as the other men and women whose names are unrecorded’.

And yet those who lost the battle of Eureka went on to win the war. Just three months after the confrontation, 13 miners were farcically tried in the Supreme Court for high treason against the State of Victoria. To loud and consistent cheering from the Court’s public galleries, Timothy Hayes - the Chairman of the Ballarat Reform League; James McFie Campbell - a black Jamaican; Raffaello Carboni - self-styled revolutionary; Jacob Sorenson - a Jewish Scot; John Manning - a journalist with the Ballarat Times; John Phelan - the friend and business partner of Peter Lalor; Thomas Dignum - from Sydney; John Joseph - a black American; Jan Vennick - from the Netherlands; and the Irishmen; James Beattie, William Molloy, Michael Tuohy and Henry Reid, were all acquitted by juries that generally deliberated no longer than 30 minutes. Indeed, John Joseph, the black New Yorker who was the only American for whom the US Consul did not intervene, was chaired through Melbourne streets after his exoneration.

On 24 November 1857, Victoria’s Parliament – alert to the democratic spirit of the goldfields - passed a bill granting universal suffrage:

‘All British, male citizens of sound mind and record, 21 years of age or over, could vote for the Legislative Assembly, regardless of their income or property, so long as they could read and write. And they could do so by secret ballot!’ -

One of the truisms of politics is that ideas that sound revolutionary today become conventional wisdom tomorrow.

As historian Geoffrey Blainey put it, Eureka:

‘[B]ecame a legend, a battlecry for nationalists, republicans, liberals, radicals, or communists, each creed finding in the rebellion the lessons they liked to see.’

December 1854 is a long time ago. A child born in Sydney in the early years after 1788 may well have lived to read newspaper reports on 3 December 1854.

And yet, it’s not so far back. My great-great-grandfather might have glanced at the same article. Since his time, Eureka has been reinterpreted by successive generations, the same way each generation feels a need to update Shakespeare, or perform again the great rock ballads.

Was Eureka a youth movement of an 1850s clash of generations? A revolt of free-enterprise against the tyranny of the British Empire? An uprising of the proletariat against the Australian bourgeoisie? The first explicit flowering of republican sentiment in the colonies of the Southern Ocean? Was it small business owners protesting against unfair taxes and red tape? Was it miners demanding more efficient resource rent taxation? Or did it go deeper: a protest against burdensome taxation without representation - a bona fide Boston Tea Party on Australian shores?

Whatever the interpretation, Eureka had a more powerful hold on the Australia of my great-grandfather and my grandfather than it does on today’s Australia. As Mark Twain wrote of Eureka in 1895:

‘I think it may be called the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution – small in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression....It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honourable page to history; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument.’

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Australian political leaders have gone on the record to agree with Twain about the unique resonance of Eureka in Australian history. Ben Chifley, monument of the Australian Labor Party, wrote that, ‘Eureka was the first real affirmation of our determination to become masters of our own political destiny’. Chifley’s successor as Federal Labor’s leader, H.V. Evatt, averred bluntly ‘Australian democracy was born at Eureka’; while conservative luminary Robert Menzies constantly wove the Eureka story into his speeches and declared that the uprising was, ‘an earnest attempt at democratic government.’

Even John Howard – no apparent lover of Eureka’s ongoing symbolism – noted, ‘[Eureka was] central to the development of Australia as an independent democratic country,’ while Steve Bracks doubts that Australian Democracy, ‘would have come as quickly – and I suspect our democracy would not be as egalitarian - without Eureka.’ Gough Whitlam hoped that ‘an event like Eureka, with all its associations, with all its potent symbolism, will [come to] acquire an aura of excitement and romance, and stir the imagination of the Australian people.’

The history, this past ­– our past – isn’t dead. As William Faulkner – and Clare Wright – have said - it isn’t even past. The tidal wave of accounts written after Australia’s Federation is evidence enough that, unlike these names, the history of the Eureka Stockade is not set in stone. Nor, I think, will it ever be. The Battle of the Eureka Stockade has become a Battle for the Eureka Stockade, a battle for its history, meaning and legacy. Geoffrey Blainey has compared Eureka to a, ‘great neon sign with messages that flick on and off with different messages for different people on different occasions.’ This is fair because history has always only ever been an attempted consensus of speculations about what was done beneath the morning mist and gun smoke; but what is done isn’t what’s seen, and what is seen isn’t what gets written.

Organisations of the left and the far right both see Eureka as a militant struggle of protest against the entrenched powers of the status quo, a radical tradition to which only they are the rightful heirs. The beauty and utility of Eureka exists in the fact that these groups, on opposite fringes of our society, can find vindication in their appropriation of the event’s symbolism.

But so can we.

As John Moloney has written, Eureka was a:

‘bloodied drama of the human spirit...their deaths and the symbol under which they died, the Southern Cross, now belong to the consciousness of our nation.’

Our perception and embrace of Eureka is about how we see ourselves, our national fabric, our Australian essence.

What we feel about who we are.

Because history cannot be defined, let alone owned, by any individual or group – particularly self-aggrandising extremists. Well, stuff them. They own Eureka as much as we, they can relate to it as much as we. But no more than we. We can elevate the Eureka Stockade to the central legend of the Australian patriotic identity – where it will embody the first Australian claim to the global ideals of democracy, freedom, republicanism and multiculturalism, enhanced by our national values of egalitarianism, mateship and above all, the “fair go.” Every one of us can identify all or some of those ideals within ourselves, no one would unearth a philosophical dispute with the core values that became the basis of the struggle. It can be all things to all our people.

The Eureka Stockade is Australia’s greatest story. It deserves to be acclaimed as a founding story, perhaps the founding story, of this nation.

For tens of thousands of years, Australians have been constantly updating our dreamtime – our national legends – to reflect new information, new speculations, new interpretations. As the commemoration of World War I takes place over the next four years, we will see much of this discussion take place in the middle of the public arena.

But I defy the pages of our history to uncover a moment of similar transcendence as the Eureka Stockade. Of similar power and suitability. 26 January is Australia Day but also, in the words of Paul Keating, the point from which ‘We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?’

ANZAC day, Australia’s dominant founding legend, lacks both the purity of motivation and moral authority of the Great War’s conclusion, or even the balm of ultimate military success that characterises every other nation’s heroic military moments.

The world went mad in 1914 because a Serbian killed an Austrian and the major European powers could not – or did not – prevent the conflagration that eventually took 10 million lives. Australia went to war without question and without hesitation. It wasn’t our fight, but we fought alright. Our soldiers described their experience on the cliffs, amongst the sand-dunes or in the trenches as fighting for their mates and not to let them down.

Almost exclusively of those nations that fought World War I, Australia’s major commemoration of that conflict is not Armistice Day, 11 November, the day the catastrophe ended, but ANZAC Day, 25 April, the day Australia’s war started. Unusually, we commemorate Reveille more than the Last Post. There’s a message in that, perhaps.

It’s telling too that we focus so strongly on Gallipoli, an invasion that took nine months to invade three miles at a cost of 8700 Australian lives. An invasion described by a journalist in the trenches, Rupert Murdoch’s father Keith, as a, ‘series of disastrous underestimations,’ that was, ‘one of the most terrible chapters in our history.’

Unlike Pericles at the funeral of the Athenian Heroes or Lincoln at Gettysburg, there were no speeches from Australian leaders in 1914 that told us why we were fighting. No speeches that framed the coming cataclysm as a battle between right and wrong, a defence of inalienable rights owned by a free people, a fight for freedom. At best, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher’s strident, shrill declaration that Australia would, ‘stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling.’

Not enough. Never enough.

However, the absence of a defining speech or an oath for the ages highlights more starkly the gap in our national story.  And if you’re looking for stirring prose, I’m afraid you won’t find it in our Constitution. As one of its greatest fans, Greg Craven, puts it: ‘Saying the Australian Constitution does not have a strong hold on our popular imagination is like saying fish survive better in water than on land: a statement so obvious as to be remarkable only because someone could be bothered making it.’

Unlike most any other country, Australia references only a military action as its day of national maturity. We do not turn to, we do not celebrate, we do not rely, upon inscribed Australian words that establish our democratic soul.

This is unlike the United Kingdom, which may look to the signing of the Magna Carta Libertatum by King John on Runnymede meadow in 1215 – that nation’s finest democratic hour.

This is unlike the United States, which can draw upon the 1776 Declaration of Independence (‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’), the United States Constitution of 1787 (‘in Order to form a more perfect Union’), and the 1789 Bill of Rights (‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech’).

This is unlike New Zealand, whose national day commemorates the Treaty of Waitangi between the British settlers and the Maori nations.

And this is unlike France, which celebrates its nationhood on July 14, Bastille Day, when the citizens of Paris overwhelmed the Bastille Fortress and inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (‘Men are born and remain free and equal in rights’).

By contrast, we Australians have no such documents. No statement of freedoms, no democratic demands, no organic recognition of universal rights, and no common principles of liberty defined, transcribed, acclaimed and proclaimed.

Except one.

It was written here, in Ballarat, in the late spring of 1854. Its expectations were as clear, its motives as pure, the privileges it identified as universal, its language as authentic and as beautiful in its transformation of moral rights into political demands, as any of those I have just mentioned. It was the democratic sum of all establishment fears, and it lit the touchpaper of the fuse that exploded on these hills in the waking minutes of December 3rd.

We have words. They are our words.

They were written in Australia, in response to Australian experience, and they were read in the Australian morning sun on Saturday the 11th of November to a crowd of 10 000 men and women gathered on Bakery Hill. According to Canadian miner Alpheus Boynton, the words were declaimed by men who, ‘took their stand upon the platform, not to fire the people with a rebellious spirit but a spirit of resistance to oppression, to claim their rights as men.’ They are words that have been inscribed on the Memory of the World Australia Register of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

They were words inspired by a growing and, by that morning, irrepressible collective sense of injustice amongst the mining community. The community was beginning to realise that pickings on the goldfields were no longer as easy as advertised, and profit, if any, would be slogged out over the long term. There was labour for willing hands but the chances of a liberal reward for that labour was vanishing into the mud. Clare Wright suggested recently that,

‘Those who [had] immigrated in their thousands to the Victorian goldfields aspired to something different from what they knew, and particularly from the hierarchies of Home. Yet they also expected that the substructure – the traditional values and social assurance of law, order and justice – would stay the same.’

But the substructure they endured was partisan and corrupted. For some time, the unfairness of the mining license fee had been decried – a monthly charge levied by the Colonial Government on anyone who resided on the diggings, regardless of whether they dug, regardless of whether they found. 30 shillings a month when the average wage was 34 shillings a week and a loaf of bread cost four shillings. The infrastructure that the license apparently paid for did not exist. Although there was a baby boom in Ballarat, those children were dying like, ‘spring flowers,’ for want of doctors and hygiene. The Police were underpaid, dishonest and abusive. The licence, as Wright has identified, made poverty a crime and the penalty of poverty was prison. The memories of oppressive and brutal hunts carried out by authorities anytime they chose for unfortunates too poor, too unlucky or too foreign to buy a license agitated the mining community.

The fact that miners, indeed anyone without property or serious wealth, were also disenfranchised - not allowed to vote or buy land - was the deep-set offence. It was a wrong requiring an entire social realignment to right, but it was a realignment many considered fundamental and overdue.

A series of recent events had fired up the miners, gathering dark clouds of strife above Ballarat. One month previous the miner James Scobie been murdered outside the Eureka Hotel, owned by nouveau-establishment entrepreneurs James and Catherine Bentley. When, at the next days’ inquest, James Bentley, the mining community’s first and only suspect was acquitted of any involvement by a magistrate not celebrated for his moral virtue, the looming discontent blackened like a summer storm. The fix was in.

A week later, some thousands gathered outside the Eureka Hotel to vent their spleen. Heated by a hot, dry sun, fanned by gritty and menacing winds, fuelled by alcohol and pack mentalities, dissatisfaction became anger, threats became violence, the crowd became a mob and the mob became a riot. Flames were set to the Hotel and it burned, quickly and completely. Over the next fortnight, the arrests of nine men in connection with the fire provoked two more mass meetings. These meetings agreed to the need for a league to protect miners’ rights. Everyone who wanted to be a part of that organisation was invited to Bakery Hill on the 11th of November.

At that meeting, men spoke, the crowd listened and, convinced, voted the ‘Ballarat Reform League’ into existence. The Charter that the League then immediately adopted noted ‘That it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey – that taxation without representation is tyranny.’ It committed the League to manhood suffrage, the abolition of property qualifications for the Legislative Council, and payment of members of parliament.

The Charter is the outstanding flare in our democratic consciousness. We have never been the same. Until that summer day no Australian political movement had demanded or defended the freedoms that we recognise today as the bedrock of our society. The call by the miners to have their dignity recognised and valued is echoed in egalitarian principles we still espouse. The League’s formation and political ambition electrified these golden plains.

Its impact was acknowledged by this editorial in The Ballarat Times:

‘This League is nothing more or less than the germ of independence. The die is cast, and fate has stamped upon the movement its indelible signature. No power on earth can now restrain the united might and headlong strides for freedom of the people of this country, and we are lost in amazement while contemplating the dazzling panorama of the Australian future. We salute the League, and tender our hopes and prayers for its prosperity. The League have undertaken a mighty task, fit only for a great people—that of changing the dynasty of the country.’

Australians who, like myself, fondly hope for a day sooner rather than later when Australians will come together to agree that Australia’s Head of State should be an Australian of merit-earned rather than a Germanic-Briton to title born, happily read in these words the first conscious step in the direction of Australian republicanism and Australian independence.

A critical aspect of the Eureka uprising is the strong strain of republicanism prevalent amongst the miners. The desire to create an Australian republic and to gain independence from the United Kingdom owed itself to the presence on the goldfields of large numbers of Irish, Americans and Europeans. The Irish were republican because of their hereditary hatred of the English; the Americans were republican because of their own history of struggle against the British; and many of the Europeans bore republican sympathies having lived through the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe.

Nonetheless, any Australian, republican or no, can read the words of the Charter, or listen to their fearless clarity, and understand immediately their relevance to any Australian, of any era, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, political affiliation, state, city or suburb.

On 29 November another Reform League mass meeting swore to defend from arrest any member of the League who was unlicensed, with weapons if it came to that. The uncommonly collectivist, us-against-them, team mentality of the Australian goldfields was made concrete.

And then, on 1 December, in a moment of pure theatre and matchless symbolism, all the League members became unauthorised diggers as the disdained and disputed gold licenses were consigned to the flames of a bonfire set in view of the Government Camp, while a handsewn flag was raised to the top of a handcut flagstaff.

A white constellation on a blue field, ‘all exceedingly chaste and natural,’ the Southern Cross was also described as the Eureka Flag or the Australian Flag. It had been sewn by Anastasia Hayes. The Age described it as waving triumphantly, ‘in the sunshine of its own blue and peerless sky, over thousands of Australia’s adopted sons.’ Raffaello Carboni, one of the leaders of the League, called on all miners, ‘irrespective of nationality, religion or colour to salute the Southern Cross as a refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on earth.’

Beneath the Southern Cross knelt Peter Lalor and swore on behalf of all those who stood around him;

‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties!’*

They are as bold and brave a set of words as has been sworn on this continent. They are not a glorification of Australia’s first invasion in defence of Empire, nor are they self-congratulatory couplets from the founding of a prison-nation. They are words galvanised by expressions of the universal human right to political participation and freedom from undemocratic oppression taking place across the globe. They are words that complement the continuing struggles for those rights today. Any citizen, of any country, could identify with these words, but citizens of this country should be inspired by them.

That these ideals were a branch of a global democratic project is underscored by the polyglot menagerie that was Ballarat’s mining community. Chinese miners were mistrusted and not invited, but otherwise Black and White Americans, Jamaicans, Canadians, Italians, Swedes, Scots, Jews, the Dutch, French, Germans and, of course, Irish immigrants attended and voted in support of these words. And they all voted as equals.

So the crucial elements of the Australian experience were crystallised in the Eureka Stockade moment – Australian multiculturalism, Australian democracy, Australian egalitarianism, and Australian republicanism – values many of us feel cannot be separated from what it means to be Australian. Eureka speaks to us positively about all of them.

But not comprehensively so. There was much about the Battle of Eureka that was not iconic, much that we must be wary of over-inflating. The words – the Charter of Liberties and the Oath of the Southern Cross – are outstanding, but while it was in some respects multicultural, the attitude of the European miners to their Chinese brethren is indicative of the deep and easy nature of Australian racism still walking in the shadows of our society.

So too for women. Australia’s suffrage movement was driven in large part by women whose formative experiences were on the goldfields, but Lalor was not in arms to extend the franchise across the gaping gender gap. Adult men were within the ambit of Eureka’s democracy, but not adult women. In a ‘conversation with the author’ that I did with Clare Wright in Canberra recently, I asked her how she thought Peter Lalor would have felt if he’d known that Australia’s first female Prime Minister would be the Member for Lalor. Wright replied: ‘I don’t think that he would have been very happy about it’.

Sadly, Lalor’s legacy as a democratic firebrand is also besmirched by his actions after he was elected to Parliament following the great political reforms catalysed by the Eureka Stockade. In Parliament he voted against a bill to introduce universal (white male) suffrage in Victoria, voted for a land bill that explicitly protected the rights of the rich over the requirements of the underclass and used low-paid Chinese workers as strike-breakers at a mine where he was a director.

Eureka is a great symbol, but not a perfect one. In my first speech, I talked about how the Australian Labor Party was the rightful heir to Alfred Deakin’s model of social liberalism. Yet there’s not much that’s liberal in Deakin’s defence of White Australia and protectionism.

Eureka too has its limits. So goes the human condition.

Although the Battle of the Eureka Stockade was not a major armed rebellion, at different times by different people it has been compared to the Civil War of the English, the Revolution of the French or the United States War of Independence. It is important to accept that, much as we seem drawn to victorious deeds in glorious combat, the brief struggle within the Eureka Stockade and the following unheroic massacre was not our Marston Moor, our Bunker Hill, our Bastille moment. The accusing memories of Pemulwuy and Yagan bear witness that this was not the first time in Australia’s colonial history that a rebellion was led in defence of a people’s right to self-determination. The smug orchestrators of the Rum Rebellion preceded and succeeded in their coup d’etat, while the dead Irish convicts at Castle Hill can attest to the first revolt of white men against the wickedness of Colonial Authorities.

To quote Wright:

‘The miners were not disloyal to their sovereign, but rather had lost any shred of respect for the minions who served her. They did not want to change the system of government; they wanted to be included in it. … Those rights, they considered, were nothing more or less than their entitlement as free-born Britons to be treated like men. Not animals, serfs or slaves: men. They sewed a flag and built a fence.’

And, I could add, they were thumped into next week by the Government. That’s all.

The core ideals expressed in the Charter and the Oath stand comparison to anything similar, but the fight to defend them cannot, even though some of us might wish our founding principles baptised in gouts of gold-flecked blood. Tragically, and terribly, blood was spilt on the Ballarat dirt, but it was the Oath sworn to the Southern Stars that should ignite our imagination.

Indeed, the events around the Eureka Stockade, and the reaction to it, now and then, bespeak of a curiously Australian style of political revolt. It knits together instantly recognisable themes of the Australian national character in a way like no other event in our history.

For instance, our little acknowledged but overriding respect for the security offered by the State. As the Eureka kettle began to boil, the majority of Victorian citizenry expected the authorities to take control of the situation, and despite the violence applauded them when they did. The State was safe.

But when it was clear the revolt had been defeated and the status quo restored, the people embraced the opportunity to demonstrate what has become compulsive Australian support for the underdog.

And then, when the State was safe but the underdogs triumphant, thoughts turned on the question raised by the losers of this civil brawl; namely whether a civil society was required to recognise democratic rights and needed relatively inclusive, representative government. Society answered those questions quickly. In legislative terms, breathtakingly so – considering it was not the establishment who were set to benefit most from political reform. But that Australian characteristic – today absolute – our commitment to democracy, for everyone, eventually, was born in the mass public support which brooked no obstruction. By 1857 a series of laws had been passed in Westminster and Melbourne that provided every white male with a vote in elections in the Victorian Legislative Assembly - the second male democracy in Australia after South Australia, and the first with convict heritage. And the license fee became a mining right. 30 shillings a month became 20 shillings, one pound, a year.

Compare that to England, the United States, France and New Zealand, where goodwill and peace to all humankind of was not the immediate, manifest consequence the people of those countries had desired when they identified and wrote down common rights of humanity. France consumed itself during the Reign of Terror within five years of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the same span that it took the New Zealand Wars to erupt after Waitangi, England was riven by a civil war in the 1640s and 50s that took toll of a greater proportion of its population than did the First World War and did not consider its female population mature enough to vote until 1928, while four score and seven years after the fathers of the United States brought forth on the North American continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, the citizens of that nation were engaged in a great civil war, testing whether it, or any nation so conceived, could long endure. But it was not until 1920, 55 years after that conflagration’s conclusion, that women took the vote in the USA.

Since the 1903 federal election, Australian women have had the right to vote and stand for office. On this measure, Australia is the world’s first democracy.

Australia in contrast, sparked by the beautiful ideals expressed at Eureka, but not riven by the scale or nature of their proving, very quickly became the very model of a modern democracy. As a result of the political reforms ushered in by Eureka, notes Peter FitzSimons:

‘Australia became nothing less than one of the key ‘lights on the hill’ for democratic movements around the world, most particularly when it came to secret ballots, known as the ‘Australian ballot’...the country would remain at the forefront of those reforms for decades to come.’

There’s hard work in this. The same hard work done by the men and women on the Eureka diggings. Unrelenting, unforgiving. Hard work undertaken with no guarantee of ultimate success, but with every hope of improving the future for themselves, their families, their communities and their society. Hard work that continues.

But there’s some luck too. Economic historian Ian McLean points out that - perhaps for reasons of administrative simplicity - the colonial authorities initially chose to prescribe an extremely small claim size for goldminers: eight feet by eight feet. This spread the ‘lottery’ of gold mining across a large group of self-employed miners, who then helped spur the transition towards democracy. The alternative would have been much larger claim sizes, with mining carried out by wage labour. Our history might have looked like that of a dozen ‘resource curse’ autocracies around the globe.

No story, myth or legend is static. Least of all our history at the Eureka Stockade. To see the ideas of Eureka thrive, we need to be open to all interpretations of those events, old and new, to be open to the idea – to encourage the idea – that principles of freedom, of fairness, of democracy, written down and sworn to beneath the timeless Southern Cross sparkling atop Bakery Hill, that these principles can and do mean different things to different people.

* * * * *

GK Chesterton once said ‘Tradition is the democracy of the dead’, that it is about ‘giving votes to our ancestors’. Quoting these words, British Labour MP Jon Cruddas rebukes progressives for too easily scorning tradition. We must, Cruddas argued, respect the struggles and sacrifices of those who have gone before us.

There’s nothing ‘conservative’ or ‘nostalgic’ about a love of history and tradition. I take it as read that the Eureka principles will always mean something to all us. To any of us. Beneath the turbulence, anger and fear, in the stark commitment gone beyond class, race and gender, as the first gunshots burn the dawn stillness, we can each of us, all of us, stand there in the morning fog and we can know what we stood for. What we stand for.

For an idea that continues to epitomize Australia’s success, safety and ambition in a world often beset by a sea of troubles. An idea born in Ballarat that our nation lives and defends. An idea – the idea – undeniable, reliable and precious – that, beneath our radiant Southern Cross we can, and will, advance.

* My speech originally omitted the words 'and fight' from the Eureka oath. The oath (as read out by Lalor) was: 'We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.' I am grateful to those who got in touch to point out this error.

I spoke in parliament yesterday in honour of two great Australian economists - Steve Dowrick and Paul Miller - who I worked with, and who died much too young this year.

Steve Dowrick and Paul Miller, 2 December 2013

I rise this evening to speak about the passing of two great Australian economists, Steve Dowrick and Paul Miller. Steve Dowrick was born on 7 May 1953 in Dublin, Ireland, and passed away in August of this year. His life and his contributions to the economic profession have been beautifully laid out in an obituary for the Canberra Times by Bruce Chapman and Maria Racionero. I will draw on that obituary in some of my comments today.

Steve and his brothers, Christopher and Nicholas, attended a Quaker school in York that had a strong emphasis on practical social action, which reinforced his commitment to collective action. When he finished high school Steve was offered a place at Cambridge in theoretical physics but spent a year undertaking volunteer work at Blackfriars Settlement, Southwark in London, driving a van for a project named Workshop for the Disabled. It was perhaps that year that he spent working for disabled communities that meant that, when he started at Cambridge, he chose quickly to move out of physics and into areas in the social sciences. He continued to be active on social issues, representing disadvantaged residents at public inquiries on town planning. Steve Clarke has written that Steve Dowrick's contact with the people of Newport, and in the workhouse in London, gave him some really important insights into the lives and the stress that the poor encounter dealing with the poverty not only in their own lives but also with bureaucracies. Those issues of equality continued to pervade Steve's work throughout his career.

Steve returned to Cambridge in 1982 to study economics and had the great fortune to meet Deborah Mitchell, another Australian social scientist. They married in York in 1984 and then moved to Canberra. Deborah is now a professor at the Australian National University in the Australian Democratic and Social Research Institute. Their two children, Helen and Lydia, were born in 1986 and 1987. Steve immersed himself in the life of his daughters. Deborah said he was the kind of dad who would rather spend time with Helen and Lydia at night and set the alarm for 4.30 the next morning to attend to unfinished academic business.

In 1996 Steve became the professor of economics and head of department in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce. He was at the peak of his academic leadership career but also his research career. He had worked with John Quiggin to develop a multilateral welfare index, to shed light on global income inequality, and was published in the American Economic Review—no more prestigious journal is there in the profession of economics. Steve also continued to champion and to work with women in the department and was recognised in March this year with a Gender Champion Award on International Women's Day.

There is a story which perhaps I should not tell but which is too good to hold back from this place. In the last few months of Steve's life, due to his neurological condition the nursing staff would often ask questions to check on his alertness. The usual question was: 'Who is the Prime Minister?' Apparently asked this in June 2013 Steve responded, 'It's Julia Gillard at the moment, but ask me again tomorrow and I will probably have a different answer—it will still be correct.'

I greatly enjoyed my interactions with Steve, who was always an insightful presence in academic seminars, coming forth with ideas and suggestions to improve work. He had that great spirit of the best economists of identifying flaws but also helping you to fix them. He was insightful but never cruel in the comments that he delivered. It was a privilege to work alongside him at the Australian National University.

Australian economics has also lost another great scholar in Paul Miller, who passed away in November this year. Deborah Cobb-Clarke and Chris Ryan, two of my colleagues when I was at ANU, and I have been reminiscing on what an extraordinary contribution Paul made to fields in Australian economics that are not overpopulated with scholars. The economics of education and the economics of immigration are fields that have probably lost a tenth of their productive research capacity as a result of Paul's passing. His 21-page CV attests to his huge intellectual contribution to these vital fields, with research published in the best journals including the American Economic Review.

Paul was also the editor of the Economic Record from 2006 and over-invested in that role. Economics does not always repay the time people give to collective works such as this, and with the devotion that Paul gave to papers, his comments were often more valuable than those of the referees—and I can certainly say this as somebody who had a number of papers published in the Economic Record under Paul's editorship. He was elected a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 1997 and inducted into the ANU College of Business and Economics Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame, and in 2011 he was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Economics Society of Australia. His work at the University of Western Australia and at Curtin University was first rate.

I want to acknowledge particularly his wife Tram Le and their two young children: Erin, aged 12, and Andrew, aged 11. I feel particularly for the family, with such young children, for having the loss of such an extraordinary man as Paul. Elisa Birch from the University of Western Australia recounts to me the story that Paul started dating Tram when she was his PhD. student. She says that while it may seem a little taboo, Paul did everything above board. And in fact Tram has said that the vice-chancellor at UWA at the time, Alan Robson, knew more about Paul's feelings towards her and their relationship than she did at the time.

He was a member of the Fremantle Dockers football club, and probably one of his most happy times in recent years was when he watched Fremantle win the preliminary final to make the grand final. He was able to cheer the Dockers on from the patients' TV room and even had a glass of wine and a pizza with him, along with his family.

Many scholars have told their stories about Paul Miller, and Elisa has been kind enough to pass some of those on to me. Charles Mulvey tells the story of when Paul and he submitted an article to the American Economic Review. After some suggestion that it might be accepted, Charles suggested that, if it was, they would drink a bottle of 1984 Henschke Hill of Grace. He said one of his most glorious pleasures was sitting on the top-floor balcony of the old economics and commerce building savouring the glorious wine and basking in the glow of the academic coup. Tim Villa, the IT and facilities manager at UWA Business School, talks about Paul as being a 'friendly chap clad in stubbies and a T-shirt, stalking the corridor barefoot while wearing an expression projecting something between severe purpose and utter bewilderment'. Daniel Kiely speaks about the quality of Paul's lecturing and quotes one student evaluation in which the student said that Paul was 'the best lecturer I've ever had; the way he did the lectures was amazing; the fact he wrote on each slide explaining everything was extremely helpful.' And Daniel says that this sort of review was the norm for Paul.

Michael McLure writes to Paul's children: 'My main memory of your father, Paul, is that he was a great juggler, not of balls or blades or things like that but of the many things he managed to get done at the same time. It was a wonder to me that any one person could do so much in so little time.' Mike Dockery speaks about their shared passion for the Freo Dockers and the family holidays in Dunsborough, leading to 'a valued but far-too-brief friendship'. Michael Kidd remembers Paul as being 'a bit gruff, but inherently a no-nonsense kind of guy; he was always very helpful, willing to provide comments on drafts and provide references and the like.' And Ingebjorg Kristoffersen writes about emails sent at 1.30 in the morning and replied to at 1.35, asking: 'Was that man ever off duty?'

In my own dealings with Paul as another scholar on the economics of education, he was always generous with his time. I enjoyed the opportunities to exchange ideas and I would have greatly appreciated the chance to collaborate with him. I expected that he would continue to enhance our knowledge, as Australians, of these vital issues. It is a loss to Australia's intellectual community that he has passed, but of course a great loss to his family as well. Rest in peace Steve Dowrick and Paul Miller.

On Sky AM Agenda, I spoke with host Kieran Gilbert and Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg about the Coalition's broken promise on school funding, protectionist decision on foreign investment, and problematic calls in foreign policy.

THE HON ANDREW LEIGH

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER

THE HON BERNIE RIPOLL MP

SHADOW MINISTER ASSISTING THE LEADER FOR SMALL BUSINESS



MEDIA RELEASE



Abbott’s axe to hurt small business at the worst possible time



Business is unhappy with the Abbott Government’s plans to cut the loss carry-back scheme and the instant asset write-off.

This week the Abbott Government will vote to axe tax breaks for Australian small businesses introduced by Labor.

“Mr Abbott is taking an axe to a tax break for small business,” said Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Dr Andrew Leigh.

“By reducing the thresholds available under the small business asset write-off regime from $6500 to $1000, Mr Abbott is adding complexity and compliance costs for small businesses.”

Under Labor’s plan companies can carry a tax loss back and receive a refund by claiming a tax offset against the tax they had previously paid – known as a loss carry-back tax offset.

“The Government needs to explain why it is increasing costs and red-tape for small business,” said Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business, Bernie Ripoll.

”How can they promise to reduce $1billion of red tape, then makes cuts that increase red tape and compliance costs for small business?”

“This is just another example of the Government’s rhetoric not matching up with its actions.”

“Australians running small businesses are quickly learning that they did not get the government that they were promised.”

The Australian Industry Group (AiGroup) and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) told a Senate Inquiry that scrapping nearly $4 billion in tax concessions will increase compliance costs and reduce investment returns at a time when small business needs all the help it can get.

“We do not support the repeal of the loss carry-back provisions and we do not support the proposal to reduce the small business asset write-off threshold."



“The proposal to remove the instant write-off facility for small business will have a material impact on them and will decrease investment at the time it is needed most.” - Dr Peter Burn, AiGroup



And support retaining the Instant Asset Write-Off by saying:

“It relieves business of all the paperwork, it reduces the costs they have to pay their accountants and gives them more time in their  businesses-less money to the accountants and more money for reinvestment” -  Dr Burn



“We do support the retention of the instant asset write-off provisions and the provisions relating to carry-back of losses, which are measures that support small business.”  - Mr Peter Anderson, ACCI



The Senate Economics Committee is due to release its report on the MRRT repeal bills on Monday.



Sunday, 1 December 2013

MEDIA RELEASE



RESIDENTS URGED TO THROW A STREET PARTY THIS SUMMER

With summer now officially here, Federal Member for Fraser Andrew Leigh called on Canberrans to get out and party this season by having their neighbours around for a street party.

“Street parties are a great way to reconnect with neighbours and get to know one another,” said Andrew Leigh.

“The festive season provides a perfect excuse to have the street around one weekend afternoon for drinks and a bit of fun.

“It’s easier than you think and a great way to build community spirit. Simply pick a date, print a short invite and walk them around to the neighbours. And thanks to the magic acronym BYO all you have to do is provide the venue.

Street parties can also be held at a local park or in the street itself provided its safe.

“To make it even easier I’ve put a template invitation on my website (see below) to use or adapt.”

“Knowing your neighbours makes life easier when you decide to replace the fence, host a noisy party, or hit a cricket ball into their yards. You’re also less likely to get burgled if your neighbours know you.”

Over the past two decades there’s been a noticeable drop in the number of neighbours Australians feel able to ask favours from or neighbours they can simply drop in on.

“Street parties are a bit of fun and good way to build social capital in our suburbs.”

Sunday, 1 December 2013

--

INVITATION

We’re holding a summer street party to celebrate the season and get to know the neighbourhood.

Our address is: _______________________________

Time: _______________________________

Date: _______________________________

RSVP by phoning: _______________________________

Please bring something to eat or something to drink.

We look forward to seeing you there.

MEDIA RELEASE



ABBOTT GOVERNMENT PUTS LOCAL PROJECTS AT RISK

Local organisations are at risk of losing thousands of dollars in Commonwealth funding because of the Abbott Government cuts to the Building Multicultural Communities Program.

These grants were awarded under proper procedures and were fully funded in the 2013-14 Budget.  All successful recipients were notified of their successful application for funding and were expecting that funding to be released.

“Funding to community organisations in my electorate of Fraser is being cut by the Abbott Government,” said Andrew Leigh.

“These are organisations that empower communities to embrace the benefits of multiculturalism and maintain cohesive and socially inclusive neighbourhoods.”

“This is about supporting multiculturalism and organisations that are the backbone of local communities. Supporting racial equality should be above politics,” Dr Leigh said.

Local organisations that are at risk of losing funding include the Gungahlin Jets (planning a facility upgrade), Spielwelt German Parents Association (scout hall and preschool upgrade in in Belconnen) and the ACT Migrant and Refugee Settlement Service.

Dr Leigh said that Departmental officials are informing local organisations that their funding is now under review, despite the fact that the Government tabled the list of approved grants in the Parliament this month.

“There is no reason to cut these grants. They were awarded under proper procedures and were fully funded in the 2013-14 Budget.”

“Kevin Andrews is the Minister with responsibility; he should immediately release these funds without delay to these deserving organisations and let them get on with the job of serving our community.”

Saturday, 30 NOVEMBER 2013

[caption id="attachment_5311" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Bill Shorten with Ainslie Primary students in Canberra yesterday (image - Fairfax Media)"][/caption]

This morning, ahead of what will be a heated meeting between the Federal Education Minister and his state and territory counterparts, I issued this media release urging the Government to think again about its school funding broken pomise:

MEDIA RELEASE

ANDREW LEIGH CALLS ON ABBOTT TO GUARANTEE NO SCHOOL IN FRASER WILL BE WORSE OFF

Tony Abbott has this week broken his promise to match Labor when it comes to school funding.

“This is an outrageous breach of the trust of the Australian people,” Member for Fraser Andrew Leigh said.

“This move shows that this government is not the government they said they’d be.”

My AFR op-ed today looks at proposals to raise the pension age to 70.

Not everyone can work till they’re 70, Australian Financial Review, 27 November 2013

In 2009, the federal government raised the maximum rate of the single age pension by $1600 a year. The next year, Australia’s poverty rate fell by one-fifth.

Few social policies are as tightly targeted as the pension. The decisions to means-test it in the 1930s, and asset-test it in the 1980s were vigorously contested. But they have ensured that this vital part of the social safety net goes where it is needed the most.

Over the past week, there have been calls to increase the pension eligibility age from 67 to 70. Yet those advocating this change seem to have forgotten that low-income workers are more likely to do jobs – like childcare, construction and hairdressing – that involve tough manual labour.

It’s quite a different thing to expect an accountant to carry on their desk job until age 70 than to demand a bricklayer do the same. Sure, there will always be some manual workers who will enjoy working into their seventies. But not everyone in a physical job will want to work until 70.

Not only do low-wage jobs tend to wear out your body faster, but the people who do them tend not to live as long. In a study that Sydney University researcher Philip Clarke and I published in the journal Economic Papers in 2011, we found that the richest 20 percent of the population live on average six years longer than the poorest 20 percent.

Full-rate pensioners tend to be poorer than other retirees. So setting the safety net based on average life expectancy misses the fact that someone who relies on the age pension will not live as long as the typical Australian.

As Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote of a proposal to increase the US social security age: ‘So you're going to tell janitors to work until they're 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.’ Given that Australians can access tax-free super payouts from age 60, is it really fair to make the poor wait until 70 to get the pension?

Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com.

This afternoon I welcomed locals with NBN Defenders as part of  a National Broadband Network Day of Action. They presented me with a copy of the largest online petition this country has ever seen.

It urges the Abbott Government to abandon its broadband policy that uses fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) technology in favour of the superior fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) option championed by Labor. The quarter of a million people who've signed the petition feel strongly, as I do, that the FTTP NBN will serve Australia’s long-term interests much better and deliver a more reliable network with faster speeds.

Latham resident and accountant Nikki Douglass handed me a box with the 270,000 signature petition collected through the website change.org.

“This is the most critical infrastructure project facing Australia right now and the public wants to see an increase in the amount of fibre-to-the-premises being rolled out,” Ms Douglass said.

"We’re sending a strong message to Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull that he needs to start listening to the Australian people.”

Today’s delivery is just one of dozens taking place with MPs in their electorates around the country.

In my regular discussion on Breaking Politics with Tim Lester about issues shaping the news, I spoke about potential GST reform for online purchases and the Abbott Government's adoption of a new position on Israel at the UN. I also caution against a Grattan Institute plan to delay access to aged pensions.

TRANSCRIPT - ONLINE INTERVIEW

BREAKING POLITICS – FAIRFAX VIDEO

MONDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2013

CANBERRA

SUBJECT/S: Israeli settlements, Age/Nielsen Poll, GST and online purchases, carbon pricing, pension age.

TIM LESTER: The Abbott government appears to have made a contentious, but largely unreported change in a critical foreign policy stance in recent days. Has it reduced Australia's opposition to some of the most contentious of Israeli activities in the West Bank, including the construction of settlements? Every Monday Breaking Politics is joined by Labor MP from Canberra, Andrew Leigh. Welcome in Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks Tim.

LESTER: Tell me, what worries you about Australia's foreign policy approach to Israel and the Palestinians at the moment?

LEIGH: As a good friend of Israel's, I believe Australia should be committed to a two-state solution. That means that we need to ensure that Israel maintains the adherence to international norms which are so vital in bringing about a two state solution. There's a thing called the Geneva Convention, we've had it for more than 60 years, that says that if you're an occupying power, you shouldn't deport people out of the territories you occupy or transfer new people into it. But we've seen occupied settlements going up 70 percent in the first half of this year, compared to the first half of last year. That was deplored under Labor, sitting with the vast consensus in the international community as being illegal against international law. But now the Coalition has back-flipped on that and voted with just eleven countries against 160 countries that believe that Israel should adhere to international law.

LESTER: Now we know the Jewish lobby in Australia has a deal of political influence. It works for that influence. What does this tell you about what pressure they may or may not be putting on the new Government?

LEIGH: I think this is very much about adhering to Israel's long-term interests as Ben Gurion put it, Israel can be a Jewish state, it can be a democratic state or it can be a state covering all of greater Israel, but it cannot be all three. For a two-state solution to work, Israel needs to adhere to international norms. I think Australia's position in international arenas should always be encouraging Israel to abide by international norms and looking at that two-state solution down the track.

LESTER: The state and federal treasurers meet this Wednesday and on their agenda, among other things, will be a lowering of the GST threshold well down below the $1000 for things we purchase online and whether they should attract the Goods and Services Tax. What position do you take on whether we need a far greater application of GST to what we buy online?

LEIGH: Labor's always up for a sensible conversation about tax reform, but the threshold was set at $1000 because the cost of collection for low value parcels tends to be pretty high. I think it's also vital that we don't just think about the cost of collection on the public servants collecting the tax, but also as individuals forced to inconvenience of phoning up and giving credit card details, or having to personally go in an collect a package that would otherwise have been delivered to them. If we don't put any value on that, we can end up raising taxes which are smaller than the inconvenience to which we're putting citizens. That's not good economics.

LESTER: And is that a real danger here?

LEIGH: The estimates I've seen suggest, for example, that if you lower the threshold from $1000 dollars to $500 you might increase total revenue by something in the order of $20 million. There's debates around this, but that's an estimate that doesn't even take into account the cost to the additional time wastage of you and me having to go and pick up a parcel that we might have otherwise had delivered to our home.

LESTER: What about the position of the retailers who want us to still go out and visit the shops and buy in the traditional way and are disadvantaged they feel in this regard?

LEIGH: I think the threshold is simply a function of the fact that the cost of collection to customs officials and individuals isn't zero. If there was no hassle in collecting it, well you wouldn't have a low value threshold. But the situation retailers find themselves in isn't just driven by the low value threshold, it's also driven by the high Australian dollar and by new retailers setting up online selling things, for example, like shoes which 10 years ago we would have said were the kind of thing that could never be effectively sold over the Internet.

LESTER: Okay, the post-election time is never a completely happy time for the party that lost, but today's opinion poll is surely a bit of a boost for Labor's morale?

LEIGH: I've got to say Tim, there's days when I'm tempted to breach my regular rule of saying that opinion polls don't have much predictive power, but I should hold fast to what I believe which is that good parliamentarians spend their time talking about issues, not about polls. A bit like a first Ashes win in a five game series, this is a bit of a fillip to the team, but it's a long series we're playing and certainly we will need to maintain that sense of discipline that we've had over the last few weeks. It's entirely possible the government will get its act together, will manage to repair the problems in the relationship with Indonesia, will find somebody better suited to run the immigration portfolio, will begin to lift the veil of secrecy. They've had, let's be honest, a lot of stumbles over these last few weeks, but Tony Abbott's a formidable parliamentarian and could easily right his ship.

LESTER: Okay, what does this say for Bill Shorten and the early indications on how the public are going to take him as a leader and a potential prime minister?

LEIGH: I think Mr Shorten is engaging very effectively with Australians, talking about the issues that matter not just in the here and now, but for the long term. The debate we have around carbon pricing for example saw Bill talking in the House of Representatives about getting this issue right for our children. I think that's the sort of leader he is. I think he's somebody who thinks long-term, who wants to engage with people effectively and somebody who I think enjoys a lot of respect, not just from Labor people, but in the broader community.

LESTER: The poll tells us that the public believes Labor ought to get out of the way in terms of the carbon tax, and allow the government to rescind it.

LEIGH: But as you, yourself pointed out, talking on NewsRadio this morning Tim, there are swings and roundabouts in that poll. There's certainly a recognition among Australians that we need to take serious action on climate change and acceptance that Mr Abbott's soil magic scheme just won't cut it, that what we need is the most effective and efficient way of dealing with climate change and that's an Emissions Trading Scheme. That's why you've got the Australian Industry Group backing an Emissions Trading Scheme, thirty countries around the world, California moving to emissions trading. Even the Chinese, a nominally Communist country, are more in favour of using the market to tackle climate change than the nominally free-market Liberal and National parties.

LESTER: And you remain quite firm, quite convinced that Labor will hold to its line of a price on carbon and not back the scrapping of the scheme in total?

LEIGH: It just wouldn't make any sense to do that Tim. It wouldn't be in the interests of this generation, and certainly not the interests of future generations who'll pay a higher cost if Australia doesn't do anything now on emissions. It' s pretty embarrassing to me to see our negotiators playing a blocking role in the international debates, where previously they played a positive, constructive role. It's a ‘little Australia’ vision that I think the Abbott government is projecting to the world with cuts to the refugee intakes, the cuts to foreign aid, the boat turn back policy and the shutting down of climate change talks. I don't think it's in accord with the big heart of Australia that Mr Abbott should represent.

LESTER: Andrew Leigh, this possibility of shifting the retirement and superannuation eligibility ages out to maybe 70 or even beyond, do we really need to work till we're 70 plus?

LEIGH: One of the things that surprised me Tim about the Productivity Commission report on the pension age was how little attention it gave to the fact that the poor live for fewer years than the rich. Some of the work when I was an academic economist I did with Philip Clarke estimated that the richest fifth of the population lives six years longer than the poorest fifth. So that means if you push out the pension age to 70, effectively you're telling poor people that they can get the pension later, knowing full well that they're going to die earlier. As Paul Krugman put this in the context of the US social security debate, it's a bit like telling janitors they have to wait till 70 to get the pension because lawyers are living longer. We have to recognize the equity issues inherent in this, and I'm frankly surprised that a high calibre institution like the Productivity Commission hasn't focused on that aspect.

LESTER: They've botched this, in a sense, if they didn't factor in that difference have they?

LEIGH: That's too hard a critique. Our Productivity Commission is a high calibre outfit, and I've got great respect for the lead author on this project. But I do think that if you miss the equity dimension on this, then fundamentally you're not doing your constituents a good service. If there is a six year difference in life expectancy between the rich and the poor then taking the safety net and moving it up three years just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, particularly in a world in which the superannuation preservation age is stuck at 60.

LESTER: So does the retirement age need to stay put? Stay where it is?

LEIGH: I think that would be the sensible proposal Tim. I think 67 for the social safety net makes a lot of sense. You know, if you're a lawyer and you're going to live a long life, then your job isn't particularly physically demanding, maybe you might retire at 70 but if you've been working as a cleaner doing back-breaking work, then telling you that you have to continue to do that job until 70, knowing that on average you'll die at a younger age, doesn't seem good policy to me.

LESTER: Andrew Leigh, thank you for coming into Breaking Politics today.

LEIGH: Thank you Tim.