Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC MELBOURNE DRIVE

THURSDAY, 23 JULY 2020 

SUBJECTS: Budget deficit; Morrison Government failing charities; HomeBuilder failing to address economic inequalities. 

RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: Andrew Leigh joins us. He is one of the MPs in Canberra. He's a Labor MP, he is part of the parliamentary committee called the Standing Committee on Economics. More importantly for this conversation, he is part of Anthony Albanese's finance team - he’s the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. Andrew Leigh, good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good afternoon, Raf, and thoughts from Canberra to you and your listeners. I know many Canberrans have been thinking of Victorian friends at the moment and all that you're going through there in Melbourne.

EPSTEIN: What number stood out for you today?

LEIGH: I think the real thing that stood out for me Raf was the lack of the long term plan. I mean, certainly we've got a lot of numbers around - we’ve got the figures on the the impact of the budget, the unprecedented - since the Great Depression - hit on the economy. But it was the lack of a long term vision for how we build back better, how we create those jobs that ensure we get to a full employment economy-

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC CANBERRA DRIVE
THURSDAY, 23 JULY 2020

SUBJECTS: Budget deficit; deferred Parliamentary sitting.

LEON DELANEY, HOST: Joining me now the Shadow Assistant Minister for the Treasury, Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good afternoon, Leon.

DELANEY: Thanks for joining me once again. We're making a habit of this, but of course this is the biggest story of the day, isn't it? So we really do need to look at this in some detail. As I said, it could have been worse, couldn’t it?

LEIGH: It certainly could have been more comprehensive, and what we've got from the Government is barely a plan. It's just really a press release. We don't have the usual forecasts that you would expect to be getting, this year and the three following years. We've just got next year's figures being reported by the Government. And I don't get a sense from reading through this document as to what the Government plans to do to bring unemployment down, which has got to be the top policy priority in Australia right now. There's a lot of talk about where the figures are, both in economic terms and in fiscal terms, but there's very little in the way of a road map to get us out.

THE UGLY TRUTH IS THAT THE NUMBERS MATTER — AND WE ARE NOT GETTING THEM RIGHT

Crikey, 22 July 2020

Numbers, said mathematician Paul Erdős, are beautiful. But when it comes to coronavirus, they’ve also been downright ugly. That’s true whether we’re talking about the rate of infection of the virus, or the size of the economic slump, which has literally required economists to redraw their graphs to accommodate the drop. Getting the right numbers to the right people at the right time is critical. Yet amidst the first recession in a generation, Australia is fighting blindfolded, because we’re not measuring and publishing the things that matter most.

Let’s start with JobKeeper. When it was first announced in March, the federal government anticipated that the wage subsidy program would cost $130 billion and support 6 million jobs. In May, they continued to say that the program was on track in terms of both cost and jobs. Then the $60 billion penny dropped. Suddenly the Treasurer admitted that the program would in fact cost just $70 billion and support only 3.5 million jobs.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC CANBERRA DRIVE
TUESDAY, 21 JULY 2020

SUBJECTS: Changes to JobKeeper and JobSeeker; arts and charities sectors left behind.

LEON DELANEY, HOST: Joining me now the Shadow Assistant Minister for the Treasury, Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

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

DELANEY: Thanks for joining us today. Well, what's your take on the JobKeeper announcement today?

LEIGH: It's clear that JobKeeper couldn't continue forever, and I think many people will be glad to finally know what's going to happen after September. The Prime Minister should have announced this well in advance the Eden-Monaro by-election but decided to hold off until now, which I know has created a lot of angst among firms and employees in my electorate. So we'll go through the details. It seems to make sense - we've always said that there was something strange about providing $750 a week to a long term casual who'd only been working a day a week but providing nothing to a short term casual who was working full time. So there's a little bit more targeting going on here. I frankly would have liked to see the government do even more to make sure the money goes exactly where it's most needed.

SENATOR KATY GALLAGHER
SHADOW MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE
SENATOR FOR THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY
 
ANDREW LEIGH MP
MEMBER FOR FENNER 
 
DAVID SMITH MP
MEMBER FOR BEAN
 
ALICIA PAYNE MP
MEMBER FOR CANBERRA

JOB CUTS AT DFAT – A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME?

Today’s announcement that 60 DFAT jobs will be cut, up to 50 of them based in Canberra, will send another shockwave through the Australian Public Service (APS) in the lead up to the October budget.

Since this Liberal-National Government took office they have slashed $622 million from DFAT and cut over 500 staff

POLICY MAKING NEEDS TO CHANGE POST-COVID

The Canberra Times, 15 July 2020

If a policymaker doesn’t think differently after coronavirus, they’re probably not thinking at all. Would any conservative now dare to quote Ronald Reagan’s claim that ‘government is the problem’, or Margaret Thatcher’s suggestion that ‘there is no such thing as society’? Imagine the outcry if Scott Morrison was to present the budget proposals he supported in 2014, including a Medicare co-payment, reduced CSIRO funding, cutting pension indexation, and abolishing unemployment benefits for under-25s.

The same is true for progressives. After World War II, Labor didn’t yearn for a return to the 1930s. Instead, Curtin and Chifley made the case for full employment, and democratising home ownership.

What’s the equivalent today? In health care, we’ve seen the benefits of a universal system over that of the United States, which spends nearly twice as large a share of GDP on health, yet provides patchier care. Coming out of the crisis, there will be a strong demand for telehealth, particularly in regional Australia. Preventive health will become a greater priority. The vulnerability of nursing homes has given new urgency to calls for serious reform in the way we manage aged care.

LINDA BURNEY MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR FAMILIES AND SOCIAL SERVICES
SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS
MEMBER FOR BARTON

MARK DREYFUS
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
MEMBER FOR ISAACS

ANDREW LEIGH MP
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CHARITIES
MEMBER FOR FENNER

DEADLINE FOR INSTITUTIONS TO SIGN UP TO REDRESS TODAY

The deadline for recalcitrant institutions named by the Royal Commission to commit to signing up to the National Redress Scheme is today.

It has been almost five years since Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse handed down its interim report recommending the establishment of a National Redress Scheme.

Survivors of institutional child sexual abuse have waited long enough for redress. Many have passed away without receiving redress because many institutions have failed to sign up to the scheme.

THE RISKS AND REWARDS OF BEING A HIGH COURT ASSOCIATE

The Canberra Times, 29 June 2020

There’s no job quite like being a High Court associate. One moment you’re sitting your last law exams. The next you’re working at the most powerful court in Australia, getting to see how the nation’s most brilliant minds argue and decide the toughest cases.

While being a High Court associate is exhilarating, it’s also unusual. Never in my life have I done a job that’s so intensely personal. Technically, you’re employed by the court. But practically, your employment rests on the judge who chose you. Associateships last a year, during which your role includes anything from writing a legal memorandum to fetching the judge’s lunch. You’re a valet, an apprentice, a researcher, a sounding board, an attendant, and a fact-checker. The job of a judge’s associate dates back centuries, and it has an old-world feel about it.

From mid-1996 to mid-1997, I was fortunate enough to work as a High Court associate to Michael Kirby. Kirby was, and is, an extraordinary human being, who treated me with kindness and respect, and taught me more about law than anyone else in the world.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2CC CANBERRA DRIVE

TUESDAY, 23 JUNE 2020

SUBJECTS: Federal Labor’s calls for a Royal Commission into Robodebt; Liberals Undermining Superannuation (Again)

LEON DELANEY, HOST: Joining me now Member for Fenner and Shadow Assistant Minister for Charities and Treasury Dr Andrew Leigh. Good afternoon.

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

DELANEY: Well thanks for joining us once again. First of all, why do we need a royal commission on this issue? Don't we already know what went wrong?

LEIGH: I think we need to get to the absolute bottom of what's happened with this significant scheme. I mean, this is a scheme designed to extract one and a half billion dollars of unlawful debts from the Australian people. Hundreds of thousands of people are having their debts repaid, and indeed pretty much everybody who came to my office has had their debts repaid. A whole lot of Canberrans have been affected by this. I've had constituents who had the debt collectors sicced onto them as a result of a process in which the Morrison Government took the humans out of Human Services and just allowed computer algorithms to run amok, ruining people's lives.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 17 JUNE 2020

In The Mikado, the Lord High Executioner sings, 'I've got a little list,' and the coalition have a little list as well. Their little list is of their mates that they would like to avoid public scrutiny. That's what they're doing with this vote that we are about to have in this place. Yet again, for the third time in as many days, they are going to come into this place and defend the indefensible.

Why do I say it's indefensible? It's because none of them are standing up to defend it.