Andrew Leigh

I spoke today about the issue of aircraft noise, responding to a private member's motion moved by Judi Moylan.

Air Services (Aircraft Noise) Amendment Bill 2011
18 June 2012

I rise to speak on the Air Services (Aircraft Noise) Amendment Bill 2011 to highlight a range of government initiatives significantly improving aircraft noise management around Australia's airports. I do so as a member with the Canberra airport in my electorate. In rising, I acknowledge the hard work being done by the Canberra airport to minimise the impact of aircraft noise on the surrounding suburbs. As a father of two little boys who enjoy looking up in the sky and seeing aeroplanes flying overhead, I am aware that my views on aircraft are probably different from those of many of my constituents who, while aircraft noise is not as severe in Canberra as in other cities, do note the impact of aircraft. I am in ongoing conversations with Canberra airport to make sure the impact of aircraft noise on Canberrans is minimised.

In the aviation white paper of December 2009, the government set out a path for improving the management of aircraft noise around Australia's airports. As Australia's first ever comprehensive national aviation policy statement it identified solutions, the industry's current challenges, and aimed to guide its growth over the coming two decades. The white paper was the product of more than 18 months of consultations and there were hundreds of submissions made during that process. Prior to the release of the aviation white paper in 2009, the government released an issues paper in April 2008 and a green paper in December 2008.

Federal Labor has a strong record on aircraft noise. One of the important decisions we made since coming to office was to ban the older and noisy jet aircraft such as the hush-kitted Boeing 727s from Australia's major airports because they contributed to unacceptable levels of noise around those airports. The government gave effect for amendments to the aircraft noise regulations in May 2010. From 1 July 2010, no new services using those types of aircraft were allowed in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin, Cairns, Gold Coast, Essendon, Newcastle, Williamstown, Avalon and Canberra airports. From 1 September 2010 all existing services using those hush-kitted Boeing 727s ceased at Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

The white paper also recognised airport operations have a major impact on community. Issues such as aircraft noise, traffic congestion and pressure on public transport all require cooperative management between airport operators, all levels of government and local communities. I am very much aware of that in the ACT where the federal government in the latest budget put $144 million into the Majura Parkway, an arterial road that will link up the Federal Highway to the Canberra airport thereby minimising the impact of the airport on traffic congestion. That will be the largest road building project in the ACT's history. I am pleased that the ACT government has contributed fifty-fifty to that road building project, setting, I think, a good standard for other states and territories.

There has been a positive response to the government's initiatives from the community and the aviation industry. Airservices Australia, our national air traffic services provider, and industry continue to express concerns over this private member's bill even as amended. In response to the aviation white paper, the 19 federally leased airports have established local, independently chaired Community Aviation Consultation Groups to help discuss and examine a range of community related issues, including aircraft noise. These are now underway at all 19 airports.

Local residents are represented by community members on these groups, and Airservices Australia is represented and is actively briefing all of these groups. These local groups are helping to address planning and development issues and a range of other operational matters, such as aircraft noise, allowing parties to exchange information and examine concerns raised by residents. Local residents are represented by community members on these groups, and Airservices Australia is represented on all of these groups.

Coalition members are attending these groups: the member for McPherson has attended the Gold Coast consultative group; and the member for Herbert has attended the Townsville consultative group. Of particular note for the member for Pearce, is the establishment of the Perth Community Aviation Consultation Group and the healthy engagement by a diversity of people on that committee.

Another key white paper initiative was the establishment of an Aircraft Noise Ombudsman to examine and make recommendations about noise complaint and information handling issues. The Aircraft Noise Ombudsman, respected former Deputy Commonwealth Ombudsman, Mr Ron Brent, is already making a difference. For example, the Aircraft Noise Ombudsman's 2011 report on complaints handling made 18 specific recommendations for improvement, all of which Airservices Australia is implementing. Similarly, Airservices Australia has accepted the seven recommendations made from the Aircraft Noise Ombudsman's review on noise information and complaint resolution for Perth completed in November 2011.

This government has strengthened the environmental focus of Airservices Australia. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport has provided a strategic direction to the Airservices board last year under section 17 of the act, which requires that Airservices effectively consult with the community on any significant developments or changes to its services.

The Airservices Australia board has itself responded by setting up a dedicated board environmental subcommittee. There are also sound governance provisions in place for Airservices Australia, including corporate plan provisions requiring the board to consider the government's objectives, which include assisting the implementation of environmental initiatives in relation to aircraft noise management.

Another white paper commitment is the planning coordination forums which are underway at every major capital city passenger airport. These are the vehicle for constructive, ongoing dialogue on matters such as master plans, proposed on-airport developments, regional planning initiatives and off-airport matters.

Minimising the impact of aircraft noise is a joint responsibility of airports and local planning authorities. It matters for long-term planning in our major cities that developments do not proceed where they will lead to public safety risks or unacceptable levels of aircraft noise. That is why the government has engaged with all states and territories to develop a set of principles for safeguarding airports from inappropriate developments in surrounding areas.

We are not aiming to constrain development but to make sure that airport and government planners work together more constructively than they have in the past and, through the Community Aviation Consultation Groups, there is now an independent ombudsman to direct further difficulties to and Airservices Australia are being proactive in their engagement with communities.

It is in this context that we must question the value of the member for Pearce’s bill. Compared with ongoing government aircraft noise initiatives, the bill offers a ministerially-imposed, taxpayer-funded community adviser scheme with the potential to make community consultation more polarised. It also proposes a reopening of established safe flight paths at Perth and unwieldy and unnecessary additional consultation and reporting arrangements.

Lessons have been learnt on better consultation on complex air traffic issues, since air traffic changes were made to address emerging safety issues in 2008. These air traffic changes were approved by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and since then Airservices Australia has carried out a post-implementation review of the changes to see where improvements can be made to assist in reducing impacts on the community.

This government has established a strong platform for better aircraft noise management and consultation arrangements at our airports.   We have put a white paper together when those opposite had over 10 years to do something. The frustrations around this bill were created a long time before we come to government, and the government's aviation white paper set out the initiatives for better consultation and better information to the community in relation to air traffic and aircraft noise management issues. This is exactly what is being delivered through the work of the Community Aviation Consultative Groups, the Aircraft Noise Ombudsman and the increased engagement of Airservices, airport and airline operators.

With host Lyndal Curtis and Liberal Senator Gary Humphries, I spoke about the Gillard Government's creation of the world's largest network of marine parks and the issue of consistency in politics.

I was delighted to announce with Gai Brodtmann this week the latest round of funding for ACT Black Spots.

One of the black spots funded in this round was nominated by a member of the public, as reported in the Canberra Times.

Don't forget you can email andrew.leigh.mp <@> aph.gov.au by the end of the month to nominate an ACT Black Spot.

Anthony Albanese

Minister for Infrastructure and Transport

Leader of the House

Andrew Leigh

Member for Fraser

Gai Brodtmann

Member for Canberra

More black spots to be upgraded on ACT roads

To help make Canberra roads safer, the Federal Government is investing more than $1 million to fix eight dangerous black spots identified around the ACT.

Federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese, Member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh and Member for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann announced the increased funding today, which will be delivered during the course of the financial year (2012-2013).

The projects approved by a panel of independent road safety experts include:

 Section of Aikman Drive between Emu Bank and Townsend Place at Belconnen: $250,000 to signalise a pedestrian crossing.

 Intersection of Macarthur Avenue, David Street and Wattle Street at Lyneham: $187,000 to improve signals and signage, and upgrade the existing light columns to frangible type.

 Intersection of Kingsford Smith Drive and Spalding Street at Melba: $130,000 to install a lane reduction.

 Section of Challis Street between Cape Street and Morphett Street at Dickson: $96,000 to install painted turn bays, lane definition and reduce speed limit to 50km/h.

 Intersection of Sandford Street and Gungahlin Drive at Mitchell: $16,000 to install signage improvements.

 Section of Monaro Highway between Hindmarsh Drive and Lanyon Drive at Hume: $225,000 to enhance speed limit signage and install new flashing warning signs before Lanyon Drive.

 Intersection of Eggleston Crescent and Melrose Drive at Chifley: $144,000 to construct a partial closure of the median, ensuring no right turn out of Eggleston Crescent.

 Intersection of Athllon Drive and Fincham Crescent at Wanniassa: $40,000 for line of sight improvements.

Since 2007, the Federal Labor Government has allocated more than $6.9 million to fix 51 black spots across the ACT.

“This investment is helping to make our roads safer for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians,” Ms Brodtmann said.

“By identifying issues on our roads and upgrading dangerous areas and intersections we can prevent accidents.”

Dr Leigh said local drivers are best placed to identify dangerous spots on ACT roads.

“The good thing about our Black Spot program is that anyone can suggest an intersection or section of road they believe should be considered for a safety upgrade.

“To qualify for inclusion under the program, a location must have suffered at least one traffic accident,” said Dr Leigh.

Mr Albanese said an independent evaluation of the Black Spot program found it prevented at least 32 fatalities and more than 1,500 serious injuries in its first three years, underscoring its effectiveness at reducing fatal car accidents.

“That’s why nationally we’ve doubled the program’s funding to half a billion dollars – more than honouring all our election commitments,” said Mr Albanese.

This year’s Federal Budget allocated $300 million to extend the Program for a further five years until 2019, building on the record $500 million Labor had previously allocated to it. This new funding can be expected to prevent more than 2,000 accidents and the loss of 14 lives a year.

To nominate a black spot, contact your local MP. Alternatively, downloaded a nomination form at www.nationbuildingprogram.gov.au

For consideration in the 2013-14 Black Spots funding round, nominations must be sent by the end of June. Work is only funded under the program if the benefits (in reduced deaths, injuries and property damage) are at least twice as large as the costs of doing the work.

Yesterday my Federal Labor colleagues and I were pleased to announce funding to assist ACT community services to improve energy efficiency.

The Commonwealth funding of $3.205m will be matched by the ACT Government, resulting in over $6.4m in total. The funding will be used to deliver energy efficient lighting, lighting control systems, mechanical upgrades and smart energy management systems for 12 community facilities.

Senator Kate Lundy

ACT Senator

Gai Brodtmann MP

Member for Canberra

Andrew Leigh MP

Member for Fraser

Wednesday 13 June 2012

ACT TO SHARE IN $42 MILLION FOR SMARTER ENERGY USE

Community services across the ACT are set to benefit from new lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation systems as part of a $3.2 million Federal Government grant aimed at improving energy efficiency in community buildings and facilities.

ACT Senator Kate Lundy, Member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh and Member for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann said the ACT Government would receive $3.2 million as a round one recipient of the Government’s Community Energy Efficiency Program (CEEP).

A total of $42 million will be invested in 63 organisations across the country during round one to help demonstrate and encourage the adoption of improved energy management practices in local communities.

“Improving energy efficiency is a central part of the Gillard Government’s Clean Energy Future plan,” said Senator Lundy.

“This grant will help boost productivity in our economy and move Australia, and the ACT, towards a low-carbon future.”

Ms Brodtmann said the grant would help the ACT contribute to the national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“By improving energy efficiency in community buildings, our environment here in Canberra benefits,” said Ms Brodtmann.

Dr Leigh said the Community Energy Efficiency Program will enable the ACT Government to inform the community about the benefits of smart energy use.

“This $3.2 million grant will help the ACT Government provide the community with improved services and amenities, buildings and community facilities. It will also help to lower energy use and support local industries,” said Dr Leigh.

Applications were assessed by an independent committee on the potential to improve energy efficiency, encourage and demonstrate energy management, value for money, project management and design.

The $200 million Community Energy Efficiency Program has multiple rounds. An announcement on round two will be made later this year.

In the SMH News Review section today, I've done 'The Essay' - a shorter version of my McKell Institute speech.

Dumb Luck - Smart Future, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 2012

In the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of South America, sit the Galapagos Islands. Although they straddle the equator, the pattern of ocean currents has a cooling effect, making them an ideal breeding ground.

The islands are volcanic – so all animal life on the Galapagos Islands came originally by flying or floating nearly 1000 kilometres from Ecuador. And yet for the species that survived, life on the Galapagos Islands was perfect. Migrating birds lucky enough to be blown off course found an environment with few natural predators. Tortoises that floated here found beaches perfectly suited to their breeding environments. Life flourished.

Looking back across Australian economic history, I am often struck by the extent to which luck has similarly played a part in our success. Politicians are sometimes reluctant to talk about luck – preferring to focus on the things we can control than those we can’t. But I think it’s still worth talking about the role that fortune has played, if only to help understand what preparations we should be making. If we don’t do that, we’re like the Galapagos tortoise, which must have thought itself the luckiest species on earth, until British sailors discovered the islands in the late-eighteenth century, and ate them in their thousands.

Over the 2¼ centuries since European settlement, there have been half a dozen strokes of luck, each of which has tangibly boosted average living standards.

The Low-Hanging Fruit

The first was plentiful land. By stealing land from Indigenous Australians, white settlers were able to be generous in handing out land to convicts and settlers alike. To them, land was so abundant that it was virtually free. Abundant land became particularly productive with Macarthur’s introduction of Merino wool: a high-value product that could be shipped back to Britain. While Europe was land-scarce in the early-1800s, Australia was labour-scarce. That meant wages were comparatively high, and created huge economic opportunities. Samuel Terry, who was transported to Australia for stealing stockings, ended his life as the richest man in Australia.

Second came plentiful gold. When Edward Hargraves announced in 1851 that he had found gold in Bathurst, it started an avalanche. Over the next decade, the population nearly tripled and our national income almost quadrupled. The Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, opened in 1880, was modelled on the Duomo in Florence. By the end of the nineteenth century, Australians enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world.

Third came plentiful inventions. As US economist Tyler Cowen has argued, the first half of the twentieth century saw a massive upsurge in inventions. This era saw powerful motors and mass production, cars and airplanes, telephones and radios, fridges and washing machines, typewriters and tape recorders. The combine harvester, invented in the late-nineteenth century and widely used in the early-twentieth century, caused Australian grain production to soar.

Fourth came plentiful migrants. Prior to World War II, Australia took too few migrants. But after the war ended, the floodgates opened. At its peak, in 1949, Australia accepted 185,000 migrants into a population of 7.9 million. On today’s population, that would be equivalent to a migrant inflow of more than half a million people. Well over half of these migrants were from non-English speaking countries, and many were sent to work on the Snowy Mountains scheme, which employed 10,000 men at its peak.

The fifth form of low-hanging fruit that Australia plucked was education. Even in 1946, less than 1 in 15 young Australians completed secondary school. Today, around 80 percent of young people complete secondary school, and 35 percent get a university degree. Rising education represents low-hanging fruit because education has such a large payoff. On average, another year of education boosts earnings by 10 percent.

The sixth form of low-hanging fruit is the twenty-first century mining boom. For reasons outside the control of our miners, world commodity prices have tripled over the past decade. Urbanising China and India need steel to make their skyscrapers, and Australia happens to be the world’s biggest producer of iron ore, and a major producer of coking coal. At present, we export iron ore at the rate of 4 tonnes a second.

The New Productivity Agenda

So Australia picked six pieces of low-hanging fruit: plentiful land, the Gold Rush, abundant inventions, post-war migration, mass education, and the current mining boom. These weren’t all dumb luck; we also made some good policy decisions along the way. In the post-war era, Australia benefited from far-sighted economic reforms such as the scrapping of White Australia, the HECS-funded expansion of universities, floating the dollar, tearing down the tariff wall, enterprise bargaining, and replacing a patchwork of sales taxes with a GST.

To raise living standards in the future, we need to boost productivity. When I say this to my non-economist friends, many feel the hackles rise on the back of their necks. Perhaps this is because they’ve been scarred by a bad boss who said ‘you should work smarter’ when he meant ‘you should work harder’. Yet productivity simply means being able to do tasks more effectively. In this sense, we’ve all become more productive over our lives. If you’ve worked for some time, I’ll bet you make fewer mistakes now than you did in your first year.

Today, two major productivity challenges for Australia are to keep our economy open to the world, and to boost the quality of our education system.

Australia must pursue openness because our future lies in economic engagement with the world. Australia benefits when new migrants bring their ideas; and when people born in Australia spend time overseas and then return. In terms of trade, Australia needs to continue to pursue open markets internationally. Just as we benefited by taking the rocks out of our harbours, we need to encourage others to do likewise. We also need to be honest with Australians about foreign investment. Between 1984 and 2010, the area of farmland that is foreign-owned rose from 5.9 percent to 6 percent. Rural Australians enjoy more jobs and better pay as a result of foreign investment – just as they have done since CSR helped establish our sugar industry in 1855.

The other challenge is to boost the performance of Australia’s educational institutions, particularly our schools. Chris Ryan and I found that Australian numeracy scores had failed to improve from 1964 to 2003. Since then, Australia’s scores on the international PISA test have fallen. At the same time, the academic aptitude of new teachers – relative to their classmates – has declined. One possible reason for this is that Australia chose to focus on reducing class sizes rather than attracting the best teachers. Over the past quarter-century, class sizes have been cut by about 10 percent, while teacher salaries relative to other professional salaries have also fallen by about 10 percent.

I noted earlier that increasing the quantity of education was low-hanging fruit. By contrast, increasing the quality of education is fruit that’s on a higher branch. But it’s a particularly attractive goal, since raising the quality of schooling means packing more learning into every year.

If we’re learned anything from the economics of education over the past few decades, it’s that the relationship between spending and outcomes is extremely weak. More money creates the potential for improvement, but the relationship is far from automatic. Among the reforms that the Australian Government has been pursuing are principal autonomy, Trade Training Centres to teach new skills and boost retention rates, and performance pay to reward the best teachers. I have a particular interest in performance pay, having given a keynote address at an economics of education conference in Munich, in which I summarised what we know about the economics and politics of merit pay. From that, I concluded that anyone who says that merit pay ‘always works’ or ‘never works’ hasn’t spent enough time engaging with the literature. There are clearly merit pay models that are successful, and those that are unsuccessful. The challenge is to build the evidence base to the point where we can confidently tell the difference.

Conclusion

Writer George Megalogenis describes populist politicians who oppose economic reform as ‘playing with the kryptonite’. Both sides of Australian politics must take our share of blame for populist policies. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were those who opposed the float of the dollar. And yet without a floating dollar acting as a shock absorber to international events, it’s easy to imagine that the Asian Financial Crisis, the US tech wreck or the mining boom could have had a disastrous impact on the domestic economy.

The same can be said of Labor’s flirtation with populism in the 1990s. In the 1998 election campaign, we promised to abolish the Productivity Commission – the very same body that has now done the essential groundwork for a National Disability Insurance Scheme. In 1999, we also opposed the Goods and Services Tax, a reform that Paul Keating had supported the previous decade. I can’t imagine Labor now promising to go to an election to untax services and reinstate the patchwork of sales taxes that existed in that era.

We can also see more than a hint of populism in Tony Abbott’s campaign against market-based mechanisms such as water buybacks in the Murray-Darling Basin and a price on carbon pollution. And yet we shouldn’t be surprised that these campaigns are finding some receptive ears. In public life, it has always been easier to scare people than honestly inform them. Most of us simply choose not to walk the fear road.

Today, animal life on the Galapagos Islands is thriving again. Three decades after receiving World Heritage Listing, the World Heritage Committee has removed the Galapagos Islands from its list of precious sites endangered by environmental threats or overuse. After a lucky start, nature on the Galapagos Islands now thrives because of good management, and planning with an eye to the future. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that for the Lucky Country too.

Andrew Leigh is the Federal Member for Fraser, and his website is www.andrewleigh.com. This is an edited extract of a speech delivered to the McKell Institute.

My SMH op-ed today is on the economic phobophobics.

Nothing to fear but merchants of gloom, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 2012

In the 1970s, psychologists uncovered an unusual phobia: patients who were scared of the possibility of having a panic attack. They called the condition phobophobia – a phobia of having a panic attack. It could be debilitating. One sufferer quit his job, and refused to leave his home.

Opening the business pages of the Australian press some days, it feels like some of the noisier voices in the land are suffering from phobophobia. This is despite the fact that unemployment, inflation and the RBA cash rate are below 5 percent (a rare thing in the post-war era). The prices of what we sell to the rest of the world – relative to the prices of what they buy from us – are at once-in-a-century highs. For the first time, Australia has a AAA rating from the three major credit agencies.

Internationally, the OECD and IMF have lavished praise on Australia’s economic policy settings. Like Paul Keating, Robert Rubin and Manmohan Singh before him, Wayne Swan won Euromoney magazine’s prize for the Finance Minister of the Year. In a hearing of the House Economics Committee, I asked RBA Governor Glenn Stevens to put our economic performance into a global context. He replied ‘I sit around the table with my counterparts from 40 to 50 countries a number of times a year, and I have not yet found one whom I would want to swap places with.’

But you wouldn’t know it from listening to a few of Australia’s more vocal business leaders. Retailer Gerry Harvey claims that the government has created a climate where people have ‘no faith’. Lender John Symond says ‘Business confidence is at its lowest and what sort of commitment can business have based on promises by this government and Wayne Swan? There’s no confidence whatsoever.’

Even among miners, the cry ‘we’ll all be rooned’ is sometimes heard. After making a record $23 billion profit last year, BHP’s Jac Nasser suggests that the Australian taxation system is neither competitive nor stable. Rio’s David Peever says ‘We are at the mercy of the global economy’. Clive Palmer claims that the federal government is ‘destroying the wealth of this country’. Fortunately, half a trillion dollars of planned investment proves that these views are in the minority, but a provocative sound-bites have a way of finding their way into the media.

And yet most of the economic policies of Federal Labor have been straight out of the textbook. When Tony Abbott said in 2009 ‘If you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax?’, he was reflecting the basic insight that carbon is a negative externality, and the best way to have less pollution is to put a price on it. A profits-based mining tax was a central recommendation of the Henry Tax Review – indeed it was the Minerals Council of Australia who proposed it. Taking on some debt to save jobs in 2008-09, and then paying it back after the crisis, is straightforward Keynesian macroeconomics.

Business confidence isn’t like a cake that the federal government bakes in the oven, slices up, and hands out. It is the product of responsible governments, responsible oppositions, and responsible business leaders. The minority of corporate leaders who choose to score points rather than present a balanced argument may find that they’re kicking own goals.

As for the federal opposition, they seem to be doing less scrutineering and more scaremongering. Virtually all of their policies are secret, they asked few questions at the latest Senate Estimates hearings, and they have reneged on the promise to put their costings through the Parliamentary Budget Office. Whipping up fear about Australia’s economic fundamentals isn’t hard to do - it’s just that most politicians choose not to play the fear card. Scaremongering may play well in the short-term, but in the long-run all of us have to live with the consequences of diminished business confidence.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions about government policy; what they are not entitled to is their own set of facts. In Australia’s case, those facts must include our low debt, unemployment and inflation, the fact that we have cut real government spending (something the Howard Government never did), and the fact that our economic reforms sit squarely in the economically liberal agenda of Hawke and Keating.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance’.  It’s time the phobophobics took a few deep breaths.

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

My Chronicle column this week is about the late Nicole Osuch-Helsham.

A Life That is a Lesson for All of Us, The Chronicle, 5 June 2012

During the 2010 election campaign, one of the suburbs I doorknocked was Harrison. Before going door-to-door, I sent out a letter letting residents know I’d be in the area, and inviting people to contact me if they had any issues.

Nicole Osuch-Helsham phoned me up to say that after I’d finished doorknocking, her daughter Paige would like to interview me about politics. Nicole promised to provide coffee and cake.

When I arrived after an afternoon of doorknocking, a delicious cake had just come out of the oven, and 8 year-old Paige had a battery of questions. They were deeper questions than most professional journalists had been asking on the campaign trail: things like ‘So why are you in the Labor Party rather than the Liberal Party?’. (The following week, Paige also interviewed Liberal candidate James Milligan.)

After the interview was over, I told Nicole how impressed I was with Paige, but was also curious as to why she had invited me to pop by. It was then that Nicole told me that she had been diagnosed with secondary cancer – ‘not the Kylie Minogue kind of breast cancer, but the Jane McGrath kind’. The cancer had come back, and Nicole knew that she wouldn’t be around to share the teenage years with Paige and her younger sister Sierra. So she had quit her job, and was ‘packing all the parenting she could’ into the time remaining.

After I won the election, Nicole and her husband Gavin brought the girls along to my first speech. A few months later, she arranged for me to go to Harrison School with my friend Andrew Laming – a Liberal MP from Queensland. The ‘two Andrews talk politics’ event was a hoot. It showed me that anyone who thinks primary school kids are apathetic about politics needs to spend more time in the classroom.

Shortly afterwards, I launched my ‘Big Ideas Competition’ at Harrison School. When the WIN TV crew turned up, I introduced Paige to the journalist as my ‘Youth Adviser’. That night, I smiled as the title appeared beneath her name on the television screen.

Cancer finally claimed Nicole on 7 May 2012, aged 43. The funeral service was held the day after Mother’s Day, so Paige and Sierra drew cards for her, and placed them on the coffin.

In one eulogy, Nicole was described as a goddess. She had established a support group for people with secondary cancers. Nicole had spent time with friends, and had devoted herself to her daughters. Her closest friends and fellow goddesses, Louise Talbot and Catherine Gladman said that Nicole managed to ‘lick the plate of life clean’. On the funeral program were the words ‘You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head. But you can prevent them from making nests in your hair’.

Cancer reminds us of how awfully unfair life can be. But the way that Nicole lived her final years – devoted to friends and family, engaged with her community, and telling jokes until the end – has a lesson for all of us. Rest in peace, Nicole Osuch-Helsham.

Andrew Leigh is the Federal Member for Fraser.

Ever since I was a kid, I've enjoyed ABC Radio National's science program Ockham's Razor. This week, host Robyn Williams was kind enough to ask me to reprise my Sydney University talk on Five Science Breakthroughs That Could Change Politics. You can podcast it here.

I spoke in parliament about my latest community conversation on disadvantage, which focused on intergenerational poverty.

Fraser Community Summit, 31 May 2012

Every six months or so I hold a conversation to talk about disadvantage in the Fraser electorate. On Tuesday, 29 May I was pleased to welcome 10 representatives from local community sector groups up to Parliament House for an early breakfast conversation. I call it a community summit, but really it is more of an informal conversation with people I regard as my brains trust on poverty.

The focus of this conversation was on intergenerational disadvantage and how to stop the cycle of poverty from replicating itself across generations. One of the attendees at the summit made the point that disadvantage itself is now more complex than it was in the past and is often interrelated with issues such as mental illness, poor health, substance abuse, domestic violence and addiction. Another attendee told the story of a child whose parents were addicted to hard drugs and who was never given anything by his parents; all he had were the things that he had found or stolen. Another spoke about families who eat McDonald's every meal because it is simpler to get takeaway than to prepare a meal. Attendees were concerned about the impact of imprisonment on the children of those who are behind bars.

A central focus of many of the attendees was education. One community sector leader gave the example of students who say to her: 'I'm the first in my family to finish year 10. My parents won't come to my graduation. Will you?' Encouraging more young Canberrans to finish school is vital in reducing disadvantage. This may involve intensive work with students such as one-on-one reading support, even for high schoolers. Within schools it is important to set high expectations for young people. Australian universities need to attract more students who are the first in their family to obtain a degree. This requires working closely with students as early as year 8 to encourage them to consider higher education. While there are many active parents involved in low-SES school communities, it is generally the case that P&Cs in high-income schools tend to be more engaged. Attendees mentioned the importance of involving parents in low-SES schools and of encouraging high-SES schools to form partnerships to help the more disadvantaged members of the community.

Mentoring programs also have promise. Attendees spoke about the FaHCSIA funded SuperGrands, who work with parents to develop skills around budgeting, preparing a nutritious meal or developing regular bedtime routines. Another mentoring program, which is run by UnitingCare Kippax, connects youth in years 10 to 12 with adult mentors who range in age from 22 to 64. In the Alexander Maconochie Centre, there are several mentoring programs to help prisoners. The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience is a mentoring program for Indigenous high schoolers, which attendees commended.

One attendee reminded us of the valuable role that grandparents can play in cases where the parents have complex needs. Another made the important observation that social capital matters. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once noted, 'It takes a village to raise a child.' Sporting programs targeted at disadvantaged youth, such as the sailing program Buoyed Up, which is run in collaboration with Canberra Yacht Club, can help improve fitness and self-esteem. But attendees argued that there are not enough of these kinds of programs. My own observation with the federally funded Local Sporting Champions grants is that students from affluent backgrounds are often more likely to hear about the program than are students from poor backgrounds.

Attendees referred to a range of other programs that they felt had been successful in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty. These include: the Home Insulation Program for Parents and Youngsters, HIPPY, a parenting and early childhood program targeting families with young children; programs in schools to encourage respectful relationships; anger management courses to help young people; classes run by Nutrition Australia to teach people to prepare meals that include more fruit and vegetables; and the the Jobs, Education and Training Program JET, program, which provides childcare at 10c an hour and which several attendees argued should be available for a longer duration. We also briefly discussed the 2012 ACT targeted assistance strategy which was chaired by Gordon Ramsay and which looked at what the ACT government can do to better deal with hard-core disadvantage in our city.

I thank the 10 attendees: Fiona MacGregor, Carmel Franklin, Gordon Ramsay, Jenny Kitchin, John Goss, Simon Rosenberg, Camilla Rowland, Kiki Korpinen, Jess Aulich and Lynne Harwood. I also thank members of my staff Claire Daley and Damien Hickman for helping to organise the event. As one attendee put it, breaking the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage is about 'instilling a sense of hope'. I thank the attendees for another valuable conversation about tackling poverty in Canberra.

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