Andrew Leigh

Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, 29 March 2022

The first time I met Bob Hawke in person, he shook my hand and looked directly into my eyes. It felt like the two of us were in a bubble, cordoned off from the rest of the world. Hawke was 70 years old, and eight years out of the prime ministership, but he still had his famous animal magnetism. The only other time I’ve experienced this magic trick was when I shook hands with Bill Clinton.

Troy Bramston’s new biography of Bob Hawke captures the energy and achievements of Australia’s longest-serving Labor prime minister. Raised by parents who often told friends that their son would be prime minister, Hawke made his reputation by winning substantial wage rises for workers. It earned him the admiration of the union movement and the epithet “Mr Inflation” from the conservatives.

PRO-GROWTH AND BUSINESS

The Australian, 1 April 2022

Labor’s credentials on social justice are well known. Ours is, after all, the party that was founded by workers in 1891, and whose achievements include the pension, Medicare and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

But Labor’s economic credentials are also an important part of our story. Trade liberalisation, floating the dollar, and competition reform are enduring achievements of my side of politics. We know that you can’t have a strong labour market without strong companies. Unlike left-wing extremists who criticise economic growth, we’re passionate pro-growth progressives.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 30 MARCH 2022

The Whitlam government changed Australia and it encapsulated the spirit of the 1960s. And no-one did that better than Moss Cass. Long haired, bearded and described by the Sydney Jewish News as 'with it', he was happy to invite colleagues to smoke pot in his office when they critiqued Australia's drug policy. He was somebody who didn't always get on with the Prime Minister. He carried with him the same drive and passion as his parents, who'd fled the anti-Jewish pogroms in tsarist Russia.

He was a trailblazer in the area of the environment. He was frustrated at the timidity of the Australian Conservation Foundation, which was then chaired by Sir Garfield Barwick and whose patron was Prince Philip. He was an activist in the environmental area, effectively managing to stop sand mining on Fraser Island—an outrage that, when you go to Fraser Island today, you cannot believe ever occurred—and curtailing the Ranger Uranium Mine in Kakadu. He began that process of turning the Labor Party into Australia's leading environmental party, which it remains today.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 30 MARCH 2022

Fifty-five years ago, in 1967, Edward Gough Whitlam gave the budget reply speech. In that speech he said, 'One of the problems in discussing health policy in Australia is the lack of reliable official information.' Fifty-five years on, not as much has changed as we might have liked. As my co-author Philip Clarke, the director of the Health Economics Research Centre at Nuffield's Department of Population Health at Oxford University, notes, 'There is still great potential to learn more from using administrative data on improving health efficiency.' In Philip's paper—co-authored with Xinyang Hua, Guido Erreygers, John Chalmers and Tracey-Lea Laba, in Health Policy—when they used linked Medicare data, in the first year of life Medicare spending was actually regressive. Their paper notes that analysis of out-of-pocket expenditure could be much more detailed if there was better access to linked administrative data and suggests a number of important ways forward.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 30 MARCH 2022

Last Friday I did a street stall at the Charnwood shops, and a bloke came up to me to tell me his story. He's a bricklayer, a single dad with two kids. He said it doesn't matter how much overtime he does, he still finds himself struggling to make ends meet at the end of the week.

Then I turned around and spoke immediately to a single mum whose kids have left home and who is a public servant working from one short-term contract to the next. She told me that that very day she'd finished one short-term contract, and on Monday morning she'd be turning up to the Centrelink office to sign up. She hoped she'd be able to get another short-term contract, because if she didn't she didn’t know how she'd be able to continue to pay her mortgage.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 30 MARCH 2022

A muesli bar, a can of chicken, a jar of Vegemite: what do they have in common? All of these products have longer use-by dates than the promises of last night's budget, which had a one-off cash handout in April, a one-off tax payment in July and petrol price relief that ends in September.

The cost-of-living problem might be new to this government, but it's not new to the Australian people.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 30 MARCH 2022

In her first speech to parliament, on 9 November 2016, Kimberley Kitching described herself as a swimmer thrown in the deep end. She was somebody who brought a powerful voice to the Labor caucus. It has to be said that she was from quite a different part of the Labor Party than me. She came from the crucible of Victorian factional politics; I'm an independent from the ACT. She named her dogs after Ronald Reagan and his wife, she was a member of the Wolverines, and she was an unabashed defender of Israel. Yet I greatly admired her and enjoyed her company.

I shared her passion for the Labor Party, for workers' rights, and for ridding the world of prejudice. I loved the way she expressed what it is to be a trade union leader in her very first speech.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
6PR MORNINGS
WEDNESDAY, 30 MARCH 2022

SUBJECT: Federal Budget.

LIAM BARTLETT, HOST: To discuss the federal budget today, the ramifications and the fallout from the government and the opposition, we welcome the federal Liberal Senator for WA and Attorney-General Michaelia Cash. Michaelia, good morning. How are you?

MICHAELIA CASH, ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Good morning, Liam. I think more appropriately, I hope you're doing all right.

BARTLETT: I'm in splendid isolation. I can't complain.

CASH: I do apologise. You can actually hear the bells in the background. So I'm calling in from Canberra where the Senate is sitting.

BARTLETT: Absolutely. We understand that. We appreciate your time this morning, Minister. And from the opposition in our Canberra studio, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning to you.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 30 MARCH 2022

This budget has all of the credibility of those 'back in black' mugs that had to be smashed by the dozen after the Treasurer broke his pledge to have the budget back in surplus. This is of course the coalition that came to office in 2013 pledging to have the budget back in surplus in its first year and in every year after that. It is now, in this latest budget, forecasting deficits as far as the eye can see, with gross debt set to top $1 trillion, a figure which is so large that it's probably more helpful to say that, in per person terms, that's around $40,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia.

But it isn't just the scale of the debt that concerns Labor; it's the low quality of the spend.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2CC BREAKFAST

WEDNESDAY, 30 MARCH 2022

SUBJECT: Federal Budget.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST: There's a certain predictability, post budget, to radio programs because the government will always tell you, the government of the day will always tell you that the budget has been absolutely spectacular. The opposition will tell you why it's a failure. We've heard from the government - Simon Birmingham, the Finance Minister, joined us to tell us why it's good. To tell us why it's bad, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury, Andrew Leigh, is with us. Andrew, good morning.

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

CENATIEMPO: Why is this a bad budget?

LEIGH: A trillion dollars of debt and so little to show for it. I mean, you look at the real wages going backwards. Canberra households would be feeling the pinch and knowing that in the time that the coalition has been in office, wages in real terms have grown only 1.4 per cent-