Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC STATEWIDE DRIVE

WEDNESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2018
 
SUBJECT: Launch of the Parliamentary Friends of Gun Control.

FIONA WYLLIE: Labor MP Dr Andrew Leigh is a member of the group and believes we shouldn't let our gun laws be eroded and joins us now on Statewide Drive. Good afternoon.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Thanks. Great to be with you. 
WYLLIE: Your commitment to gun control stems from a very personal connection to the Port Arthur tragedy. Can you tell us what happened?
 
LEIGH: In 1996-97 I was working as a summer clerk at Minter Ellison, a Sydney law firm and each of us were assigned a mentor. Mine was a woman by the name of Zoe Hall, a young lawyer who was wonderfully energetic and incredibly thoughtful at looking after me. She went on a holiday down to Tasmania and tragically ended up being one of the victims of the Port Arthur massacre.
 
WYLLIE: That must have touched you very deeply and everyone who knew her. Did you start campaigning at that time?
 
LEIGH: I've always been concerned about getting gun safety right. Australia is a country which has managed to maintain a strong sports shooting culture but in the decade before Port Arthur we'd had an average of one gun massacre a year. Nearly 100 victims to mass shootings in that decade leading up to Port Arthur. What's striking is that in the decade after we had no mass shootings. I got interested when I became an economics professor in looking at whether we could actually measure the impact of the gun buyback on gun homicides and suicides. And the research I did with Canadian economist Christine Neill found that in fact the number of lives saved every year was about 200. Some of them were averted homicides but most were averted suicides – because tragically the person most likely to kill you with a gun is yourself.

A MESSAGE OF REMONSTRANCE

House of Representatives, 18 September 2018

For the first time in its 29-year history, the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly has brought to this parliament a message of remonstrance, and it does this asking that the ACT assembly have removed the bar to it having the deeply difficult conversation about voluntary assisted dying.

It was 21 years ago that this parliament took that power away from the ACT assembly.

THE GOVERNMENT HAS RUN OUT OF LEGISLATION IN THE SENATE

House of Representatives, 18 September 2018

It is a pleasure to be debating this bill. I note for the benefit of the House that the only reason we are now in the House debating this uncontroversial tax bill is that Labor voted to stop the filibuster in the Senate.

Twice the government in the Senate voted to keep on filibustering this piece of legislation. There is one very simple reason for that, which is that the government has run out of legislation in the Senate.

WE'LL KEEP ON CAMPAIGNING FOR THE AIS

Federation Chamber, 17 September 2018

Founded in 1981, the Australian Institute of Sport has been a vital part of our nation's sporting prowess, responsible for training some of our sporting legends, among them Michael Klim, Cadel Evans, Sam Stosur, Petria Thomas, Anna Meares and Michael Milton.

And yet the Australian Institute of Sport is now under threat due to staffing cuts and neglect. Since the coalition came into office, the number of Canberra based staff has fallen from 173 to 140. The institute has lost 70 sports specialists, and executives have indicated that there are more losses to come.

Several sports bodies avoid the institute altogether, and many refer to it as a ‘ghost town’.

HORSE AND SPARROW ECONOMICS

House of Representatives, 17 September 2018

Before they called it trickledown economics, there was a term known as 'horse and sparrow' economics.

The idea of horse and sparrow economics was that, if you want the sparrows to eat better, you just have to feed the horses enough and eventually there'll be enough left on the road for the sparrows.

That is fundamentally the way in which the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government thinks about economic policy. 

When red tape strangles our charities, we all lose

The Herald Sun - 17 September, 2018

“It has been a nightmare”, reported one charity worker. “It was extremely time consuming to research all the different requirements state by state... each of the states need something different to satisfy the requirements for an application. It is such burden for organisations like ours who are doing our best to help those most in need of help.”

What nefarious activity was the charity involved in? Nothing more than a nationwide online fundraising campaign. Yet because our fundraising laws were written in the pre-internet era, they require charities to seek permission from six states plus the Australian Capital Territory (only the Northern Territory does not have fundraising laws).

AUSTRALIANS DESERVE BETTER THAN MORRISON

Federation Chamber, 13 September 2018

According to a survey by Travel Leaders, Australia is the world's No. 1 travel destination.

So, you'd think that promoting Australia to the world would be the easiest job going. But there's one chap who was sacked in 2006 by the Howard government as the head of Tourism Australia in a unanimous decision of the board.

Don't feel too sorry for him since this chap was reportedly fired from his $350,000 job because tourism minister Fran Bailey couldn't stand his ego.

THERE WAS A HIGHER SHARE OF WOMEN IN THE LIBERAL PARTY ROOM TWO DECADES AGO THEN THERE IS TODAY

Federation Chamber, 10 September 2018

The Prime Minister du jour said some questionable things during his first fortnight, but I draw attention to just one comment. Speaking to a football coach over the weekend, he invited the man to Canberra to 'give the boys a bit of a rev up’.

Let me repeat that: 'the boys.'

I'm here not to talk about sport but to talk about gender equity and what message that comment sends to girls and women in Australia who are contemplating a parliamentary career.

LABOR SUPPORTS SENSIBLE, BROAD BASED TRADE LIBERALISATION

House of Representatives, 10 September 2018

Labor has a strong tradition of supporting sensible, broad based trade liberalisation.

It was the Whitlam Government that instituted a 25 per cent tariff cut in 1973 and the Hawke and Keating governments that reduced tariffs in 1988 and 1991. The net impact of that was to make the Australian economy more competitive and to put thousands of dollars back into the pockets of regular Australian households. Indeed, if you go to a department store now to buy a pair of kid's shoes, you'll see sticker prices that are similar to where they were 30 years ago. If you go to buy a bottom-of-the-range new car, you'll find sticker prices not that different from 30 years ago. Trade liberalisation has benefited households and has the potential to create jobs.

But trade liberalisation has to be done right. Labor's commitment to trade liberalisation is a strong, multilateral one. As they say in trade, ‘bigger is better’, not only with respect to the number of countries engaged in agreement but also with respect to the breadth of the trade agreement. High-quality agreements generate greater benefits.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS AGENDA

MONDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER 2018
 
SUBJECTS: The Coalition’s civil war on climate change, US-China trade, Peter Dutton’ eligibility, the divided and dysfunctional Coalition.
 
KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: Joining me now is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Thanks so much for your time. Before we get into the politics of the day, I know Labor wants to focus on Peter Dutton quite a bit in terms of the various questions around the Home Affairs Minister. But in terms of Labor's policy questions right now, a challenge for you is where do you go to climate change and the mechanism that will be put in place, because the NEG as it was known - the National Energy Guarantee - is not only dead, it's been pronounced dead it seems you know a handful of times in the last week.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: It's a challenge for the nation, Kieran. This was a policy supported across business and its dumping by the far right of the Liberal Party again shows how extreme the Liberal Party has become. It's been nearly a decade now since the British conservatives and the New Zealand conservatives dealt with climate change in a sensible market based approach using the advice of the experts. The Liberals have had multiple chances – the emissions intensity scheme, the clean energy target, the national energy guarantee - and every time the far right has dragged them off into the wilderness. It's a real problem for households. The government's own modelling said that the NEG would see power prices go down by $550 and in its absence power prices would rise $300. So we'll be continuing to engage with stakeholders. Mark Butler is doing a series of roundtables, I've been part of some of those business roundtables to work out a policy which is detailed, carefully calibrated, brings down emissions and brings down power prices.