Andrew Leigh

LINDA BURNEY MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR FAMILIES AND SOCIAL SERVICES

MEMBER FOR BARTON

MARK DREYFUS MP

SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL

MEMBER FOR ISAACS

ANDREW LEIGH MP

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY

SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CHARITIES

MEMBER FOR FENNER

SHARON CLAYDON MP

DEPUTY CHAIR, JOINT SELECT COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL REDRESS SCHEME

MEMBER FOR NEWCASTLE

LET’S GET REDRESS WORKING FOR SURVIVORS

Labor is proposing to work with the Government to get the National Redress Scheme working for survivors again.

Eight years since the announcement of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, survivors are getting older and many are still waiting for Redress, and some are tragically dying and missing out altogether.

The Royal Commission estimated 60,000 survivors would be eligible for Redress.

OUT OF THE OFFICE 

Inside Story, October 20 20202

“I’m sitting in a building here that was built for 5000 people… and there are probably six in it today,” National Australia Bank CEO Ross McEwan told me recently during a parliamentary committee hearing. But there’s more: according to the bank’s surveys, four-fifths of staff members don’t want to return to regular working when the pandemic is over.

Despite promises of an economic “snapback,” it’s becoming increasingly clear that the world of work is likely to change significantly as a result of coronavirus. One of the likely shifts will be the rise of teleworking. If Covid-19 has taken us back a decade in terms of globalisation, it’s taken us forward a decade technologically. Large swathes of the workforce are working from home and the trend is likely to endure, with one US study projecting the share of working days spent at home to rise from 5 per cent to 20 per cent after the pandemic passes. Having fewer desks than employees may become the norm for white-collar firms.

One of the valuable changes will be a move away from open-plan offices, which were always more about corporate symbolism than productivity. We know from a bevy of studies that workers are more stressed, more dissatisfied and more resentful when they work in an open-plan setting. Compared with regular offices, employees in open offices experience higher levels of noise and more interruptions. They are less motivated, less creative and more likely to take sick leave.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2SM WITH MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

TUESDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Federal ICAC; Air Rorts; Sports Rorts; WaterGate; JamLands; NSW community grants.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: This fellow is also from the Australian Capital Territory, Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh, who's written to more than 200 big companies - Apple, Maccas, Microsoft. He wants to get to the bottom of whether or not they've received JobKeeper subsidies and used the money to pay shareholder dividends or executive bonuses. I mean, that's not what the money was for. Absolutely, that's not what the money was for. And look, again, this is why we need to have a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption. I'm not obviously suggesting any corrupt behaviour by the government here, but certainly all this money needs to be accounted for and I would hate to think big business has received a bit of a leg up during this pandemic to pay, you know, bonuses to those who probably don’t need it. Let's be honest. 20 after 7, Andrew, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Marcus. Happy birthday to your mum. I hope she's out of hospital soon, mate.

PAUL: Oh, very kind, mate. Thank you so much. Yeah, me too. Look, it’s a long haul. What - two fractures in your pelvis and, you know, at least another month. Poor thing. Anyway.

LEIGH: Yeah, falls are just such a serious issue for older people, aren’t they?

PAUL: Absolutely. Absolutely. And Mum, we wish you all the best. And there you go, Andrew does as well. Thank you, it's very kind, mate. Now, under the Morison Government we've had Sports Rorts, WaterGate, JamLands and Paladin. We've had the big stack with over 60 former Liberal staffers, ministers and candidates and donors appointed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I mean, where does it all end, Andrew? There’s so much going on.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 19 OCTOBER 2020

We know that the Prime Minister has a marketing background, and never has this been clearer than when the Treasurer announced the program we're debating tonight. The Treasurer's budget speech stated:

Treasury estimates that this will support around 450,000 jobs for young people.

Support 450,000 jobs: what would most people take that as meaning? I imagine most people listening thought, 'Beauty, 450,000 more jobs!' But, no, that wasn't what the Treasurer meant. The Treasurer meant that the total number of people who could be eligible for this program is 450,000. The maximum possible number of applicants is 450,000.

Putting aside the fact, that, obviously, some of those people would have found a job absent the program, you have another example of the government's marketing spin over policy substance.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 19 OCTOBER 2020

For the sake of our children it's time to set aside childish things. It's time to set aside the coalition's denialism on climate change. Climate change is happening and humans are causing it. Since the industrial era, temperatures have risen one degree on average and 1½ degrees in some parts of the world.

- The Member for Hughes interjecting.

Thank you, Mr Hydroxychloroquine. I appreciate the interjections.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 19 OCTOBER 2020

Under the Morrison government we've had sports rorts, 'Watergate', Jam Land and Paladin. We've had the 'big stack' with over 60 former Liberal staffers, ministers, candidates and donors appointed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

The Federal Police want to know why taxpayers paid a Liberal donor 10 times as much as the land was worth, and all Australians want to know why Stuart Robert and Angus Taylor are still ministers.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
5AA MORNINGS

MONDAY, 19 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECT: Misuse of JobKeeper.

LEON BYNER, HOST: You've heard of JobKeeper. You know what it is, don't you? Right. Well, there are some in the community who say no, for many companies paying very generous salaries and dividends to their shareholders, we'd rather call it DividendKeeper. This is where companies use the subsidy, which was designed to keep workers hit by the coronavirus recession connected to their jobs, to prop up payments to shareholders. So if that money is being used for this purpose - and it certainly isn't what was legitimately put out by the government, they wanted to do the right thing by the workers. But unfortunately, it's been abused. So let's talk to Labor frontbencher, Andrew Leigh, who's written to more than 200 companies - including Apple, McDonald's, Microsoft - asking them to reveal whether they receive JobKeeper subsidies and use the money to pay shareholder dividends. Dr Andrew Leigh, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Leon. Great to be with you.

BYNER: Do you think you're gonna get an honest answer?

LEIGH: I've certainly gotten some responses rolling in so far, mostly those who are saying that they haven't received it. But I'd like to think that if a firm is receiving significant taxpayer subsidies, that they would respond when a federal Member of Parliament wrote to them to ask them about it.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC MELBOURNE DRIVE
THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Global Handwashing Day; Randomistas.

RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: Someone has written about this in his book Randomistas, is known to you in another guise - his day job. Andrew Leigh's day job is being part of the Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s finance team. He is of course an MP from Canberra as well. Andrew Leigh, thanks for joining us.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Pleasure, Raf. Happy Global Handwashing Day.

EPSTEIN: Thank you. No one's ever said that to me before. Who is Mr Semmelweis? What did he do?

LEIGH: Ignaz Semmelweis was a doctor who worked at Vienna General Hospital in the mid-19th century, and he noticed this really interesting pattern Raf. They admitted patients on alternate days into the maternity ward where babies were delivered by midwives and the maternity ward where babies were delivered by doctors. And he noticed that mothers admitted into the clinic run by midwives had a death rate less than one in 20, while those admitted to the hospital run by doctors had a death rate of more than one in 10. The mothers actually knew this - some of them would actually deliver in the streets rather than be admitted into the ward run by doctors. So he went through various theories. Was it that the doctors were delivering when women lay on their sides? Was something to do with the bell that the priest rang? Eventually he figured out that it had to do with dirty hands. And so he began insisting that doctors wash their hands with chlorine wash and the death rate in the doctors’ ward plummeted. And that was the start of the hand washing movement.

MORRISON’S BRANCH SOLICITS FUNDS FROM CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

Scott Morrison’s NSW branch of the Liberal Party has reportedly been caught out taking donations from children’s charities.

In the latest example of the Coalition’s culture of dodgy deals, the Liberal party have been hosting events to harvest campaign funds from money that was donated to charities for the support of vulnerable children and the disabled.

This is not the first time the branch has gone down this path in pursuit of campaigning funds. In 2017, the NSW Liberals courted RSL Lifecare for thousands of dollars of support, through attendance at events involving Gladys Berejiklian and her colleagues.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2SM WITH MARCUS PAUL IN THE MORNING

THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2020

SUBJECTS: Parliamentary Friends of Cycling; Anti-Poverty Week; social housing; the Morrison Government’s cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker; food insecurity.

MARCUS PAUL, HOST: Andrew Leigh, Shadow Assistant Minister for Charities, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. Hello, mate. How are you?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G’day, Marcus. Great to be with you. 

PAUL: Yeah, nice to talk to you as well. Now you have just launched the Parliamentary Friends of Cycling. Tell me all about this, mate. It’s a great idea. 

LEIGH: Absolutely. We're on the bike. Helen Haines, Dave Sharma and I decided that it was important to have a group that represented cyclists, as so many cyclists around Australia do it to stay fit, to commute, to just hang out with the kids. So Steven Hodge, who is one of Australia's great cyclists, got us all together and set up this group, which will campaign to get more people cycling more often.