Andrew Leigh

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

The Politics of Abundance and the Perils of Zero-Sum Thinking

Australian National University

Wednesday, 24 September 2025

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, and pay respects to all First Nations people present today. My thanks to Professor Nicholas Biddle for inviting me back to my old school, the Research School of Social Sciences, to speak to students studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics – a degree that showcases three of the Australian National University’s strongest disciplines.

1. Scarcity or Abundance?

‘It’s not a question of enough, pal. It’s a zero-sum game. Somebody wins and somebody loses’.

That line, delivered by Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, captures the cold logic of a worldview that sees progress as nothing more than a fight over spoils. For some, that is not just a film script but a philosophy of life.

It is the essence of a zero-sum mindset. A conviction that the world is a fixed pie. If you gain, then I must lose. If one group advances, then another must fall behind.

I want to argue that politics at its best is the opposite. Politics is about building abundance. Not excess, but capability. The ability of societies to deliver more homes, more affordable energy, more inclusive growth. Abundance is about enlarging the pie so that everyone can share in it. It is about positive-sum outcomes, where cooperation benefits all.

The politics of abundance asks how we can grow together. The politics of scarcity insists we must fight over shares. And in recent years, the politics of scarcity has been on the rise. Too often, debates are framed in zero-sum terms. Immigration is presented as ‘migrants versus jobs’. Gender debates are cast as ‘women versus men’. Climate debates become ‘jobs versus environment’. When politics is narrated this way, ambition shrinks and cooperation falters.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, WITH LEON DELANEY
TUESDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: Delivering more bulk billing for the ACT, non-compete clauses, formal recognition of the state of Palestine

LEON DELANEY: The federal government has announced measures to hopefully deliver more bulk billing for residents in the ACT. Joining me now, the federal Member for Fenner and Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, Dr Andrew Leigh – good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good afternoon, great to be with you.

LEON DELANEY: Hopefully your role as Assistant Minister for Employment comes into play here, because you can employ more doctors to service the good people of the ACT. Is that the plan?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, I am no longer Assistant Minister for Employment.

LEON DELANEY: They took that one off the list?! When did that happen?!

ANDREW LEIGH: Following the election, but I have a responsibility for productivity which keeps me happy and productive. And I’m really excited about the measures we're taking to get more bulk billing doctors in Canberra.

LEON DELANEY: All right, so what are those measures in detail?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, bulk billing was in free‑fall when we came to office. As you know, the Coalition really didn't care about it, and we saw huge challenges for bulk billing right here in the ACT. So, we've set about tripling the bulk billing incentive and extending it beyond pensioners and concession card holders to everyone who gets bulk billed. So that means that practices that bulk bill are financially much better off under the current arrangements than they would have been under previous arrangements. But then, specifically for the ACT, we've announced that we're going to be opening up a tender for three new purely bulk billing practices. That will mean that there will be three additional practices here in the ACT that are doing that terrific work of providing bulk billing services to everyone who walks in the door, really restoring the promise of Medicare - a great Labor invention, and one that Labor always looks to make stronger.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

The Great Unbinding: Why It’s Time to Scrap Non-Competes

Published in The New Daily

22 September 2025

Imagine being a health worker earning under $80,000, only to find that if you quit, you can’t work in the same occupation for an indefinite period. The geographic scope? Not just your neighbourhood, but the whole of Australia and New Zealand.

Or think of the graduate engineer on $63,000. His contract said that if he moved on, he couldn’t work for a competitor anywhere in Victoria for 12 months. For a young worker just starting out, that felt less like a career ladder, more like a trapdoor.

These aren’t the contracts of CEOs plotting corporate raids. They’re the contracts of ordinary Australians: people trying to pay the bills, build a career, and use the skills they’ve worked hard to earn. Instead, they find themselves shackled by non-compete clauses that say: ‘Don’t even think about moving.’

These aren’t isolated cases. Non-competes now cover around one in five Australian employees: more than three million people. They stifle wages, block mobility, and bottle up ideas. For workers, they punish initiative. For the economy, they act like sand in the gears.

Senator The Hon Katy Gallagher
Senator for the ACT

The Hon Mark Butler MP
Minister for Health and Ageing

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Member for Fenner

Alicia Payne MP
Member for Canberra

David Smith MP
Member for Bean

Delivering More Bulk-Billing For The ACT

Monday, 22 September 2025

The Albanese Government is boosting access to bulk billing GPs for Canberrans.

Delivering on the Government’s election commitment, an Expression of Interest (EOI) is now open to find organisations interested in establishing three new bulk billed GP clinics for Canberra. This will deliver more doctors and more bulk billing practices to the ACT.

The three new bulk billed GP practices are part of Labor’s healthcare plan for the ACT under a $24.3 million package.

This investment is on top of Labor’s record investment in Medicare to triple the bulk billing incentive and support practices that bulk billing all of their patients.

The new bulk billing clinics will work alongside a new bulk billed and GP-led Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Woden, adding to the current network of Urgent Care Clinics in Gungahlin, Dickson, Belconnen, Weston Creek and Tuggeranong.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

One extra email: a small change that could revolutionise public policy

Published in The Canberra Times

22 September 2025

Every year, thousands of Australian charities are required to file an Annual Information Statement. These filings keep the public Charity Register accurate, help donors know where their money is going, and underpin trust in the sector. Yet despite regular reminders from the regulator, a persistent number of charities still file late.

In the past, efforts to boost compliance drew on a mix of practical tools and professional judgment. Officials might introduce a new communications strategy, simplify the form, or send out further reminders. Some of these steps worked better than others, but assessing impact was difficult. If compliance rates rose, the change was credited; if not, further adjustments were tried.

This year, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) took a different approach. With the help of the Australian Centre for Evaluation and the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government, it ran a randomised trial. Fifteen thousand charities were split into two groups. Both received the standard reminder email to the organisation’s official address. But half also had an additional reminder sent directly to one of the people legally responsible for running the charity.

The results were clear. Charities that received the extra email were almost six percentage points more likely to file on time, and they filed around three days earlier on average. That small change – sending a second message to the right person – translated into hundreds more charities meeting their obligations, improving transparency, and reducing last-minute scrambles for extensions.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

Community at the Heart of Small Town Renewal

National Small Town Reinvention Conference
Online Address

Monday, 22 September 2025

I’m Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Charities – a portfolio that I regard as Assistant Minister for Community-Building. I’m speaking to you from the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people.

It is a pleasure to join you virtually for the National Small Town Reinvention Conference.

Let me begin by recognising Peter Kenyon. His tireless advocacy has reminded Australians that the future of our small towns will not be written in distant boardrooms or capital cities, but in the energy, imagination and collaboration of local people.

I would also like to acknowledge my state parliamentary colleague, Tony Piccolo, who lobbied for this location, and who shares Peter’s passion for small towns.

In our book Reconnected, Nick Terrell and I discussed both the problem and the solution. We showed how community life has frayed: fewer people volunteering, fewer joining clubs, fewer turning up to local events. But the book was also about renewal. We looked at the ways people are rebuilding community – re-establishing connections, inventing new traditions, and finding practical ways to draw people together again. That rebuilding work is precisely what this conference embodies.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury

 She Who Leads: Launch of the NETRI Report

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
 

Saturday, 20 September 2025

I begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal peoples, the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. I extend that respect to all First Nations people here today.

It’s an honour to be with you this afternoon to launch the NETRI Report. My thanks to Dr Madhumita Iyengar for her leadership of Initiatives for Women in Need (IWiN), and to collaborators Raffy Sgroi from Sage Advice and Hari Iyengar from South Asian Federation ACT (SAFACT). Above all, I want to recognise the NETRI participants – the graduates whose energy, ideas and determination are at the heart of today’s celebration.

NETRI is a beautiful word. In Sanskrit, it means “she who leads”. But NETRI is more than a name. It’s a philosophy. It is about recognising the leadership potential that exists in women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and giving that potential room to grow.

When you read the report, you see how NETRI created a space where women could bring their whole selves. It wasn’t about leaving culture at the door, it was about weaving culture into leadership. It was about saying: your heritage, your stories, your experiences are not barriers to leadership; they are the very qualities that make your leadership distinctive.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

From Wi-Fi to what if?: Andrew Leigh on Australia’s innovation gap

Published in SmartCompany

17 September 2025

When Australian scientists at CSIRO developed the technologies behind modern Wi-Fi, it was a breakthrough that reshaped how people connect and communicate. The organisation secured some royalties, but the technology never became the foundation for a home-grown industry. That experience captures a familiar Australian pattern: we are good at creating knowledge, but less effective at turning it into lasting economic capability.

For decades, Australia’s economic model has relied heavily on adoption. We pride ourselves on being quick to pick up technologies developed elsewhere, and adoption will always matter. But adoption alone is no longer enough. One of Australia’s productivity challenges arises from the fact that only 1-2 percent of our businesses engage in innovation that is new to the world. As the Productivity Commission has observed, many businesses may not realise how far they sit from the global frontier. It’s like a track athlete running alongside the race leader, unaware that they’re being lapped.

As the Strategic Examination of Research and Development has noted, the weak point is often experimental development: the messy, unglamorous work of moving from prototype to product. In the most successful economies, firms invest heavily in this stage, working side by side with customers. In Australia, the investment is lighter. Our universities are strong in basic research and have grown stronger in applied research. But too often ideas do not get pulled through to the market. The result is a conveyor belt of discoveries that stop short of the customer.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

Startups for Growth

Ecosystem Startup Leaders Lunch
UTS Startups, Sydney

Wednesday, 17 September 2025

I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

UTS Startups

Murray [Hurps], thank you for convening us and for what you are building here at UTS. The scale and ambition of UTS Startups is remarkable. It reaches students, alumni and schools, offers free access to desks and support, and has grown student interest in entrepreneurship from about one third to over one half in recent years. It is producing jobs, internships and real-world capability that spills over into the broader economy.

It is a treat to be in a room of builders: from Stone and Chalk and Fishburners to Cicada, EnergyLab and The Melt; from UNSW Founders and I2N to Spark Festival. Most people are very good at explaining why something can’t be done. Founders specialise in proving them wrong. And support organisations like yours provide the scaffolding that lets those efforts stand tall.

The case for startup support organisations

Startup support organisations are the connective tissue of an innovation economy. You lower search costs between ideas, talent, customers and capital. You coach founders through the messy middle. You convert research assets into commercial capability.

That role becomes critical when an economy has strong research outputs but an uneven mechanism for translation. Australia does well on publications and citations. Yet too often Australia celebrates the paper and outsources the product. That pattern carries a hidden cost: Australia pays more, waits longer, and imports capability that could have been built domestically. As the Strategic Examination of R&D’s discussion paper noted in February of this year, the real prize is not simply producing knowledge, but embedding it in firms and industries.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP 
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury 

The Great Unbinding: Non-Competes, Freedom and the Future of Competition

Sydney Institute

Tuesday, 16 September 2025

1. Unbinding the Debate

I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people here today.

Anne and Gerard Henderson, thank you for having me back for a fourth time to speak at the Sydney Institute – an institution with an abiding belief in the competition of ideas.

Let me start with three stories.

A laundromat manager in a small regional town was made redundant. Instead of just receiving a thank-you and a payout, she was given a letter claiming she had an ‘implied’ restraint. For a year, she was told, she couldn’t work in the same industry. She had never agreed to such a clause. Yet the threat hung over her: take another laundry job in town, and you could end up in court

A health worker on less than $80,000 read his contract and saw a restraint with no end date at all. ‘Indefinite’, it said. And the scope? Not just his neighbourhood, but all of Australia and New Zealand. His employer might as well have written: ‘You can work anywhere in the world, as long as it’s not here.’

Then there was the graduate engineer, starting out on $63,000. His contract barred him from working for any competitor, anywhere in Victoria, for twelve months. For a young worker at the beginning of his career, it felt less like a career ladder, more like a trapdoor