Andrew Leigh

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

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO SYDNEY, MORNINGS WITH HAMISH MACDONALD
TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: Non-competes, National Climate Risk Assessment Report, Net Zero

HAMISH MACDONALD: Imagine for a moment you've worked your whole life in one particular industry - something you love doing, then one day you receive a redundancy. It feels pretty disheartening, obviously. You take it on the chin, you go back on the job hunt, then you realise that your redundancy came with a non‑compete clause meaning for the next year, maybe even longer, you can't do the work that you love that you've trained for. Surveys are showing that as many as one in five employees in Australia are bound by these non‑compete clauses. Now the government is taking measures to end the practice for low and middle‑income earners. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury. It's a mouthful of a title. Good morning to you Dr Andrew Leigh.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Hamish, great to be with you.

HAMISH MACDONALD: You've encountered a few horror stories of non‑compete clauses. What sort of situation do people end up in?

ANDREW LEIGH: Absolute shockers. There was a laundromat manager in a small regional town who was made redundant and told that she had an implied restraint of trade that stopped her working in the same industry. There was a health worker on $80,000 who had a non‑compete clause that said they couldn't work anywhere in Australia or New Zealand. There was an engineer on $63,000 who was banned from working anywhere in the same state for 12 months. These are clauses that are originally designed for CEOs, but now cropping up in the employment agreements of early childhood workers, security guards and fitness instructors.

HAMISH MACDONALD: Why do employers want to put them in? What's the benefit to the employer?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, the benefit for the employer is they get to get a leg up over their competitors. If you're a stagnant firm, where you might be concerned that your employees could go to work for a fast‑growing competitor. That's of course good for their wages, and it's good for the productivity of the economy, but it's not good for the incumbent. And so, firms have just been chucking these things in because a lot of employment agreements these days are standard forming agreements written by the boss, so why not throw in a clause which is advantageous to the employer?

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH ROSS SOLLY
TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: National Climate Risk Assessment Report, North West Shelf, ANZ

ROSS SOLLY: So, we mentioned this morning to Shane Rattenbury, and you would have heard it in the news yesterday. Georgia Stynes also covered it on the Drive show yesterday. This climate report that came out, the National Climate Risk Assessment, which has now put the government in a tricky position because later this week it will be revealing its own targets, but also how to prepare Australia for what looks like a very, very troubling future climate-wise. Andrew Leigh is the Member for Fenner, of course, also Assistant Minister for many, many portfolios and joins us this morning. Andrew Leigh, good morning to you.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Ross, great to be with you.

ROSS SOLLY: You're a father. Does this report worry you?

ANDREW LEIGH: Yes, it really does. You look at these impacts and realise that the severe weather events that we've had - those awful bushfires in 2019/20, Cyclone Alfred, the significant events of flooding, and so on - things are only going to get worse from here. So, we need to invest in adaptation, and most importantly, we need to make sure that Australia is doing its part. And when I hear senior members of the Coalition out there today saying they want to walk away from even Scott Morrison's minimalist commitment to net zero by 2050, that really scares me for the nation's future.

ROSS SOLLY: Well, also some people are scared because your government has just signed up to the expanded Woodside program, which they're saying just flies in the face of anything we might be doing here in Australia to tackle climate change.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: Non-competes, immigration

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: It’s time to talk federal politics with the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury, and the Member for Fenner, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Stephen, great to be with you.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: And to you too. You’re giving a speech at the Sydney Institute today believe?

ANDREW LEIGH: Yes, my fourth time speaking to the Sydney Institute, and this time talking about non-compete clauses - clauses that shackle one in five workers to their jobs and make it tougher for the people to get a pay rise.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Andrew, you’ve been talking about this since the election. Is there anything being done about it?

ANDREW LEIGH: Yes, there is. So, we’re banning non-competes for people earning under $183,000, which is nine out of 10 workers, and that will…

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Why 183 and not 180 or 190? How do you get to that figure?

ANDREW LEIGH: Yeah, great question. It’s a standard benchmark in the Fair Work Act: the high-income earner threshold. And so that’s already there in legislation and it kicks in for a range of other things. It seemed a straightforward way of drawing the line. We’re looking at how we’d handle non-compete clauses above that range, but certainly below it we think that there’s no place for non-competes. And so, we’ll have that legislation in the Parliament before long. But we’ve just closed consultation. We’ve got some really shocking stories, you know, a graduate engineer on $63,000 that couldn’t work anywhere in the state. A health worker on $80,000 who had a non-compete with no end date at all covering all of Australia and New Zealand. So, you know, there’s some pretty shocking clauses being put on employees.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Okay. What are you doing in this legislation, though, to protect intellectual property? Because, you know, I think about this industry here for instance and, you know, I mean, I guess we’re a little bit different to say, a hairdresser or, you know, somebody working in a retail job or whatever. But there are instances where somebody can be built up by a company only to leave and take that skill and expertise somewhere else. How do you protect businesses in this area?