Andrew Leigh

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RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC NEWS RADIO
FRIDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2019

Subjects: Scott Morrison’s Lowy address.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: I think it's deeply dangerous for Australia to start flirting with protectionism and isolationism. That might be a bad idea for a country like the United States with over 300 million people, but it's a terrible idea for a medium sized economy like Australia with 25 million people. Our prosperity depends on engaging with the world. We've benefited massively from migration, trade and foreign investment. Sure we can do all of those things better and we should be better engaged with international organisations, but the idea that a retreat into narrow tribal nationalism is a success story for Australia is a crazy one.

MANDY PRESLAND, HOST: Mr Morrison says he's putting Australia first. What's wrong with that?

TIME TO AXE THE COSY DEALS AND FIX THE LABOUR MARKET

The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 2019

When the Reserve Bank Governor is saying he’d like to see stronger wage growth, you know the problem has become dire. Over the past six years, real wages have grown at just 0.7 percent a year. In the six years before that – a period spanning the Global Financial Crisis – real wages grew at 1.8 percent annually. Among the likely culprits for the wages slowdown are poor productivity, declining union membership rates, wage theft scandals, penalty rate cuts, and public sector wage caps.

But another factor may also be to blame: constraints on job mobility. Standard economics tells us that wages increase when employees are in demand. If you have a dozen job offers, you’re likely to earn more than if you’re stuck with a single option. That’s part of the reason that people earn more in big cities, and less in one-company towns. Employees who switch firms tend to get a bigger pay bump than those who stay put.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN DRIVE
MONDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2019

Subjects: Australian economy floundering under the Liberals; Interest Rate Decision; Retirement Income Review.

TOM TILLEY: The Reserve Bank is widely expected to cut its official cash rate to the new historic low of 0.75 per cent. So is that actually going to solve our economic problems, or is it just going to push up house prices? We'll get to interest rates in just a moment. First, let's go to the Government's review of the retirement income system. This hasn't been done since superannuation was first made compulsory back in 1992. Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. Andrew, welcome to the show. The government started out by-

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Thanks, Tom. Great to be with you.

CANBERRA'S CANNABIS CRITICS NEED TO FIND BIGGER PROBLEMS TO WORRY ABOUT

Ten Daily, 30 September 2019

This week, the ACT became the first jurisdiction in Australia to legalise small amounts of marijuana for personal use. The change is a modest one - Chief Minister Andrew Barr describes it as ‘evolution rather than revolution’. But you wouldn’t know it to listen to Scott Morrison and his Coalition colleagues, who have described the changes as ‘dangerous’, ‘madness’ and ‘unconscionable’. So let’s bust four myths about cannabis in Canberra.

Myth 1: Cannabis is currently criminalised in Canberra. Since 1992, people possessing small amounts of cannabis are not charged with a crime. Instead, they are issued with a ‘Simple Cannabis Offence Notice’, which typically involves a $100 fine. The same system applies in some other parts of Australia, including South Australia and the Northern Territory. The aim is to ensure that police can focus on violent crime, rather than having ACT law enforcement tied up prosecuting people caught in possession of a single joint.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO CANBERRA

THURSDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2019

Subjects: ACT cannabis legislation.

ANNA VIDOT: On the line with me is the Member for Fenner, the federal Member for Fenner, Andrew Leigh. Andrew Leigh, what do you make first of all of the passage of this legislation through the Assembly yesterday?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: G’day, Anna. Good to be with you. I think this is a modest change - as Andrew Barr has put it, evolution rather than revolution. It's been nearly a generation since the ACT first introduced Simple CannabisOffence Notices, which decriminalised possession of small amounts of marijuana. That's something that other jurisdictions in Australia have since followed, with South Australia and the Northern Territory among them. All they're doing is now saying in the ACT that those $100 fines will no longer be levied. There’s about 100 people a year, as I understand, who pay a $100 fine for having a small amount of marijuana and no longer will they have those fines. This means that the police can focus on frying bigger fish, focus on the offences that are of considerably more concern to the community.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC RADIO SYDNEY

MONDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2019

Subjects: The Morrison Government's inaction costing Australian drivers big bucks. 

WENDY HARMER: Who we’ve got on to have a chat about this ‘Your car, Your choice’ is Andrew Leigh. He’s the Federal Labor MP for Fenner in the ACT and he's also Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury. He has been on this case for a couple of years now. He says that really we should be looking at this issue really carefully. The ACCC, as Robbie mentioned, has been arguing that dealers should have to hand over this information to independent mechanic, they’ve been saying this for two years now but nothing has happened. Why not? We would like you to share your own experiences in dealing with this - 1300 222 702 is our number. Andrew Leigh joins us now. Hello, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR TREASURY AND CHARITIES: Good morning, Wendy. How are you?

HARMER: Good, good. Why have you taken this up as a cause?

LEIGH: It seems a basic issue of fairness to me, that if you're an independent mechanic you should have the data you need to fix modern cars. They’re extraordinarily complicated. The typical modern car has 10 million lines of software code. To put that into perspective, a Boeing 787 has only 6 million lines of software code. So if you don't have the software, it's pretty hard to fix a lot of problems.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 18 SEPTEMBER 2019

The sad history that brings this bill to the House is necessary to recount at the outset. On 30 July 2013, former agriculture minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced that Labor would establish the post of an inspector-general of animal welfare and live animal exports. Our position was to build on Australia's regulatory framework, to recognise that while the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System had improved conditions of animal welfare it was necessary to have independent oversight.

That inspector-general would have added an additional layer of assurance that the regulatory system was delivering appropriate animal welfare. It would have placed no additional regulatory burdens on exports, nor on trading partners. However, just a few short months later, on 31 October 2013, the member for New England, then the agriculture minister, abolished the Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS – AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY

PHILANTHROPY MEETS PARLIAMENT SUMMIT 2019

PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA

WEDNESDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2019

[Acknowledgements omitted]

The obituary was blunt: ‘Sir Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people than ever before, died yesterday’. There was just one problem - Alfred Nobel was very much alive. It was his brother Ludwig who had died. So Alfred Nobel had a rare opportunity to see how the world thought of his life. He had no wife, no children - just an obituary sitting in front of him, which read ‘The Merchant of Death is dead’. Nobel had made his fortune by inventing dynamite, which revolutionized not just the mining and construction industries, but also the armaments sector. When he read his premature obituary, he was 54 years old.

In his remaining years, Nobel focused on philanthropy. His will set aside 94 per cent of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes. Today that gift is worth more than half a billion Australian dollars. The Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, Medicine and Economics are considered the most prestigious prizes in their fields.

COALITION DELAY COSTING AUSSIE DRIVERS BIG BUCKS

The cost of the Coalition’s inaction on data sharing among mechanics is costing Australian drivers over a billion dollars a year.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chair, Rod Sims, today confirmed the issue was becoming “progressively worse” during a hearing with the House Economics Committee:

Leigh: The estimate from the US Auto Care Association was that those commensurate changes in the US saved customers in the order of US $26 billion a year*. If that figure is correct in the US, that would suggest that the cost to Australians is over a billion a year, would it not?

Sims: I can’t fault the arithmetic on that.