Andrew Leigh

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP PRESS CONFERENCE
HOLT, ACT
THURSDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2026

SUBJECTS: Faster NBN arrives for thousands of Canberrans

ANDREW LEIGH, ASSISTANT MINISTER AND MEMBER FOR FENNER: My name is Andrew Leigh, the federal Member for Fenner, and I would like to acknowledge we are meeting on traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people. Canberrans use a lot of broadband. The typical Canberra household is using over 500 gigabytes a month and has 25 connected devices. That's forecast to rise to 44 connected devices by 2030. And what Labor is doing is ensuring that we get the full-fibre to the home broadband roll-out that we promised when it was first announced by the Rudd and Gillard Governments. That roll-out was delayed under the Coalition, but it's now roaring back. 

We are anticipating 94 per cent of Canberra premises to be connected to full-fibre broadband by the end of 2030 – around double the current share. That will mean more Canberra households able to access telehealth, online education and working from home. It will mean less time buffering and more time spent productively. These gigabit speeds are crucially important in a modern economy, and Labor is committed to ensuring that this roll-out works at speed. I'll hand over now to Greg Thornton from NBN Co, and then to Jim Thornton to talk a little bit about how this is working in practice. 

JIM THORNTON, NBN CUSTOMER AND ACT RESIDENT: We’re not related!

GREG THORNTON, NBN CO EXECUTIVE GENERAL MANAGER INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING AND DELIVERY: Yeah fantastic. Thank you Andrew, it is great to be here. We have spent a lot of time getting to this point. What I would say is we are also here with Ventia – one of our major partners. We have been working in the background building ever since the announcement back in February that construction has commenced. 

We are in Holt. It's great to see that we've now achieved that milestone of the first 2,000 premises have now been released. Customers can now place orders and get that fibre experience and we can start to make our transition off copper, which obviously, it's a difficult delivery of giving a customer a connection on copper. We're now seeing that fibre gives you so much more. The connected devices that Andrew spoke about, that's only going up. The need for additional speed as well as resilience is just paramount. And so that first 2,000, we're going to see another 2,000 by the time we get to Christmas. And we're going to keep releasing footprint all the way along until we get to the end of this program. We are on-track, we are slightly ahead of the program and we are looking very comfortable about this program.

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

National e-bike rules necessary to prevent disasters

Published in The Daily Telegraph

12 November 2026

Three-year-old Biel was walking along a suburban Sydney footpath with his mother when an electric bike came hurtling towards him. His mother, Clara Ferrer-Paxtot, had stopped to put something in the pram. Biel tried to get back to her as the bike approached. The teenage rider tried to dodge, but struck the little boy, dragging him about a metre along the footpath.

Biel was left with a broken leg. The teenage rider was in tears, repeatedly apologising.

How did we reach the point where families walking along suburban footpaths have to dodge machines with the speed and weight of small motorbikes?

E-bikes have plenty of benefits. But as e-bikes and e-scooters have proliferated on our roads, they've also left plenty of people worried about safety.

At Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, emergency trauma presentations involving e-bike crashes have soared. There were 45 in 2023, rising to 103 in 2024 and more than 200 in 2025.

The Hon Dr Daniel Mulino MP
Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

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

World-leading tax transparency puts multinational profits in the spotlight

Thursday, 12 November 2026           

The Albanese Labor Government is delivering world-leading tax transparency reform, with the first 382 public country-by-country tax reports released today.

For the first time, Australians can see where hundreds of major multinationals operating in Australia make their profits, employ their workers and pay their taxes around the world.

Under Australia's new public country-by-country reporting regime, large multinational groups with annual global income of at least $1 billion and a sufficient Australian presence must publicly disclose detailed information about their international operations.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has today published reports covering 201 Australian-headquartered businesses and 181 foreign-headquartered businesses.

The reports reveal revenues, profits, income taxes, employee numbers and tangible assets across Australia and 40 specified jurisdictions, with information about other jurisdictions reported in aggregate.

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

Faster NBN arrives for thousands of Canberrans

Thursday, 12 November 2026           

Thousands of Canberra homes and businesses can now access faster, more reliable broadband as the Albanese Labor Government's latest major National Broadband Network (NBN) upgrade gathers pace.

Construction activity has begun for more than 38,000 ACT premises serviced by fibre-to-the-node technology with more than 2,000 ACT premises now eligible for full-fibre NBN upgrades, and another 2,000 expected to become eligible by the end of 2026.

This is the first wave of a major investment to replace ageing Fibre to the Node copper connections with full fibre for around 97,000 homes and businesses across the ACT by 2030.

The upgrade will deliver faster speeds and fewer interruptions, making it easier for Canberrans to work from home and run businesses online.

The demand for better broadband keeps growing. ACT households now download an average of 503 gigabytes of data each month, a 28 per cent increase over the past three years.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO SYDNEY, AFTERNOONS WITH JAMES O'LOGHLIN
FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2026

SUBJECTS: Labor protecting Australians from unsafe e-bikes

JAMES O'LOGHLIN: So meanwhile, the ACCC is now undertaking consultation on supply of safe e bikes. So not looking at the drivers, looking at the machines and they will be proposing a safety standard under Australian Consumer Law to reduce, they say, injuries and deaths. 

To tell us more, Dr Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury joins us. Hi Assistant Minister, thank you for your time. 

ANDREW LEIGH: G'day James, great to be with you. 

JAMES O'LOGHLIN: It must be good in an intro to hear a different government getting bagged, not your own. I mean it is a state based issue, the licensing of drivers but what is the ACCC looking at? 

ANDREW LEIGH: Well first of all, I defend what the New South Wales Government has done. I mean they've been quite clear in putting standards around power output: 500 watts, which will be half that in 2029, the motor can't assist you above 25 kilometres an hour and the throttle only mode cuts out at 6 kilometres an hour. So what we're doing now is putting in place a standard in terms of what can be sold. States and territories regulate what can be ridden, federal government has a role in getting a national safety standard in terms of what can be sold and ensuring that you're not buying a bike that isn't legal to ride on the road. 

E bikes are terrific for older people who are extending their cycling careers but I share your view James, that youngsters ought to be pedalling themselves around - as you and I did when we were little tackers - and having young people on what are effectively motorbikes with pedals is a danger to themselves and also to the community. 

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO CANBERRA, AFTERNOONS WITH EMMA BICKLEY
FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2026

SUBJECTS: Labor protecting Australians from unsafe e-bikes

EMMA BICKLEY: Now, you may be concerned about the safety of the riders of e-bikes, your own safety as a motorist or a pedestrian. But what about the bikes themselves? Buying an e-bike is something you might have done to get around a little bit easier. How do you know the one you're buying is safe? The consumer watchdog is seeking feedback on proposed national safety standards – covering everything from speed to batteries and charges. So what could change for riders and the businesses selling these e-bikes? Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition and the Member for Fenner. He joins me on the line. Welcome to Afternoons!

ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks Emma, lovely to be with you.

EMMA BICKLEY: Nice to have you on now, I'm sure. First of all, do you have an e-bike? Do you ride one?

ANDREW LEIGH: I don't. I'm a keen cyclist. My favourite uses of e-bikes is really where people have had a terrific cycling career and then, as they're finding their legs are getting a bit more tired and in their 70s or 80s, they move to an e-bike and extend that cycling career out for another decade. But we are increasingly seeing them picked up by folks who I reckon could do fine just turning the pedals by themselves…

EMMA BICKLEY: Well, that might be a controversial opinion among some of our listeners. I would love it if anyone had any thoughts on that if they send it through. But Assistant Minister, go on.

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, e-bikes are a great way of extending the mobility networks, but what we're seeing on the roads increasingly are things that look more like motorbikes with pedals. They're overpowered and they're a risk to pedestrians and of course, to the riders themselves. The ACT already has strict rules about what can be ridden on the roads but there's not the same standards around what can be sold. So we've given extra funding to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to do a consultation on a national e-bike standard which will regulate what can be sold.

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

AI Lets Novices Catch Up While the Biggest Gains Flow to Capital

Published in Social Europe

5 November 2026

Artificial intelligence could make society more productive and narrow wage gaps between workers. Yet it might still end up making society more unequal.

Take the example of a customer support officer, two months into the job, who has to help a small business owner with a technical problem. The officer needs to diagnose what has gone wrong, understand the software, and explain the solution clearly.

In front of the customer support officer sits an AI assistant that has learned from millions of previous conversations, including the responses of the firm’s best workers. It suggests questions to ask and ways to explain the answer.

Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson and his co-authors studied what happened when more than 5,000 customer-support agents were given access to such a tool. Across the workforce, productivity rose by 15 per cent. Among less-skilled and less-experienced workers, the number of problems resolved per hour rose by around 30 per cent.

With AI assistance, an agent who had been in the job for two months performed about as well as an unassisted agent with more than six months’ experience.

This compression of productivity differences is something economists have rarely seen before. In the past, a pretty solid economic rule of thumb held that new technologies tended to favour people who already had more education or expertise.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
NEWS24, AM AGENDA WITH JULIA BRADLEY
FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2026

SUBJECTS: Productivity; Tax; Inflation; Albanese Government’s responsible economic management; AI data centres

JULIA BRADLEY: Well joining me live now is Assistant Minister for Productivity, Andrew Leigh. Thank you so much for your time.

ANDREW LEIGH: Pleasure.

JULIA BRADLEY: I want to get you on this story today. I mean, why was the Productivity Commission stopped from looking at the impact of your government's tax changes and workplace laws when reviewing how to fix productivity?

ANDREW LEIGH: We've had a wide number of variety of reports looking at industrial relations and tax over recent years. The Productivity Commission looked at labour arrangements back in 2022. There's been independent reports into the Secure Job, Better Pay and Closing Loopholes reforms…

JULIA BRADLEY: Is that fresh enough? I mean, we're talking about 2026 so why make the restriction in the first place?

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP PRESS CONFERENCE
MURAL HALL, PARLIAMENT HOUSE
FRIDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2026

SUBJECTS: Labor protecting Australians from unsafe e-bikes, productivity, tax, housing, US midterm elections, EVs, Reserve Bank, alcohol tax, AI data centres, Russia

ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks everyone for coming along today. My name is Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury.

Labor believes that e‑bikes have an important role to play in ensuring that people can get around safely and affordably. A good quality e‑bike is an extension to our transport network, and many Australians are taking advantage of e‑bikes. But we’re also seeing vehicles on our roads that are effectively motorbikes with a battery, which are dangerous and are causing accidents on Australian roads.

The number of accidents being reported to hospitals is significant. We’re seeing this in every state and territory across Australia. Recent reports suggest that the cost to the Australian economy of these injuries and fatalities could be at least $28 million dollars a year.

That’s why the Albanese government has acted, calling on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to do important work in putting in place an e‑bike safety standard. This is work that we have funded the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to do, to the tune of $4.3 million dollars.

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

Protecting Australians from unsafe e-bikes

Friday, 6 November 2026      

The Albanese Government is supporting action by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on improving e‑bike safety.

E‑bikes are helping more Australians get around affordably and more easily, but we need to make sure people get to enjoy those benefits safely.

That’s why the Government is cracking down on the sale of unsafe e‑bikes to protect consumers and communities.