Andrew Leigh

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC CANBERRA, WITH LEON DELANEY

MONDAY, 31 MARCH 2025

SUBJECTS: Labor’s tax cuts, non-competes, cracking down on supermarket price gouging, Peter Dutton’s public service cuts plan and comments on The Lodge.

DELANEY: Well, we're headed towards an election whether you like it or not, so time to make your mind up. Will you be in voting for the Philistines or the Dilettantes? Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, not to mention our local member here in the seat of Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh good afternoon.

LEIGH: Good afternoon Leon. I was just trying to work out which of those insults you were going to apply to me.

DELANEY: Well, you know, you take your pick - Philistines, Dilettantes. I think it really sort of is kind of self-explanatory isn't it?

LEIGH: Well I prefer to be neither of course, and certainly spend my days trying to think about ways of making the lives of people in Canberra better.

DELANEY:  Yeah, I'm obviously being a little bit facetious with that one but people do tend to be a little bit cynical about our political leaders. And do you blame them when we get a federal budget that really displays a significant lack of ambition? The centrepiece is a tax cut of $5 a week that we don't even get for another 15 months. By that time, it will have been eroded by inflation anyway, won't it?

LEIGH: Well Leon, you put together the tax cut budget with the tax cuts we've already delivered, you get some $50 a week. That might be trivial to you, but I don't think it's trivial to many Canberrans, and we'll have Peter Dutton going to the election promising to raise everyone's taxes. Every income taxpayer in Australia will pay more income tax under Peter Dutton to pay for his mad cap nuclear scheme. But also in the budget, some significant pro-productivity measures. What we've done with banning non-competes for workers earning under $175,000 will unlock job mobility, allow people to move to a better job or to set up a firm of their own, and that's great for long-term growth prospects for the economy.

Anthony Albanese MP
Prime Minister of Australia

Jim Chalmers MP
Treasurer

Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury
Assistant Minister for Employment

Labor Will Ban Supermarket Price Gouging In Another Move On Cost Of Living 

30 March 2025 

A re-elected Albanese Labor Government will crack down on price gouging by supermarkets because Australian families deserve fair prices for their groceries.

Australians shouldn’t be treated like mugs at the checkout – that’s why Labor will make supermarket price gouging illegal.

This is another cost-of-living relief measure the Albanese Government is taking – along with tax cuts for every tax payer, energy bill relief and cheaper medicines. 

It is unfair and un-Australian for supermarkets to exploit consumers by inflating prices and profits when they do not face enough competition. 

A re-elected Labor Government will confront price gouging to fix a key gap in Australia’s competition and consumer protection framework.

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

Opinion Piece

Want to quit your job? Your contract may be keeping you prisoner

Published in Australian Financial Review

29 March 2025

When Othelia decided to leave her job in property management, she thought she was just changing employers. Instead, she found herself cornered. Her boss told her that if she wanted to stay in the industry, she’d have to leave town. Othelia was 21, living in a regional community, and had no family support. Her choice? Stay in a job that made her miserable, or risk having no income at all.

Jasper was in a similar bind. He’d been coaching kids’ sport part-time for three years. He wasn’t in charge of marketing or finances – just teaching kids how to kick a ball. But buried in his contract was a clause banning him from working for a competitor for six months after he left. When he resigned, his boss made it clear: try to coach anywhere else, and there’d be consequences.

I’ve changed the names to protect their privacy, but these are real cases. They are among more than three million Australian workers – one in five employees – caught in the grip of non-compete clauses. Once reserved for senior executives with access to sensitive information, they’re now everywhere: in the contracts of construction workers, hairdressers, personal trainers, security guards.

They’re clauses that quietly lock people out of their own careers.

Connected, but Protected: Telecommunications for the Public Good

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

Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025
House of Representatives

27 March 2025

Telecommunications really is fundamental to modern Australia. More than 99 per cent of Australian adults own a mobile phone; 93 per cent own a smartphone. Over a third of Australians worked from home regularly, according to the most recent ABS survey—which, in passing, does make you wonder what would happen if the Leader of the Opposition were ever to become Prime Minister and ban public servants from working from home. Suddenly public servants in the regions, with disabilities or with caring responsibilities would find themselves out of a job.

Digital health is mainstream. Over nine in 10 Australians have a My Health Record, and telehealth accounted for more than 25 million services. Online education is widespread, and we saw this particularly through the pandemic. Telecommunications are the way in which people access emergency services, with the 000 service receiving over eight million calls a year. Small business relies heavily on quality telecommunications. Over seven out of 10 Australian small businesses use mobile broadband.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AUSTRALIA, POLITICS NOW

WEDNESDAY, 26 MARCH 2025

SUBJECTS: The Albanese Labor Government Budget, non-competes.

TOM CONNELL: Well one of the inclusions in Labor's budget was non-compete clauses. They claim this will be a big increase for people's wages. Joining the panel now for more budget reaction on that, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh. In his own words, he's been banging on about this for a while. Welcome to the panel. Yes, everything you say off air is on air too in this show. So, non-compete clauses - a lot of people will sort of go, alright, has that got anything to do with me? What's a specific example that you've picked up because you've been very focused on this. You don't have to put names in there, of a non-compete that just had to go in your view?

ASSISTANT MINISTER LEIGH: So, we heard the story of a 17 year-old dance instructor who was being harassed by her workplace. She moved to a competing dance studio and then got a letter from the former employer saying that she'd breached a clause that said she couldn't work in another dance studio within 15 kilometres for 18 months. These clauses were originally applied only to executives, but are now being applied right across the economy, not just in the boardroom, but also in the mailroom.

Senator The Hon Katy Gallagher 
Minister For Finance
Minister For Women
Senator For The ACT

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister For Competition, Charities And Treasury 
Assistant Minister For Employment 

Alicia Payne MP
Member For Canberra

David Smith MP
Member For Bean 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
PARLIAMENT HOUSE

WEDNESAY, 26 MARCH 2025

SUBJECTS: Federal Budget; ACT; National Security Office Precinct project; Dutton’s cuts to services; infrastructure investment; Services Australia staffing levels; bulk billing.

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: It's great to be here the day after the Budget to talk about all of the important investments made in the Budget, the announcements made and their impact here in the ACT. And I'm so pleased to be joined by all of the Labor Members of Parliament for Canberra here with Andrew Alicia and Dave. They'll all go through some specific initiatives as it relates to their areas. At a high level, for the ACT, obviously, the approach with this Budget in pretty uncertain times was to look at how we could provide some relief to households. We're doing that with our tax cuts, but also with those important investments in Medicare, in cheaper medicines, in HECS debt relief, all of those areas which are so important to households as they're going through pretty difficult times. The Budget shows that the economy is at a turning point, that there's a lot of optimism in this Budget in terms of the forecast and the way forward, and we tried to build on that with the investments that we help households through some of these costs of living pressures.

Now there's a range of areas where we have made specific investments in Canberra, but I would draw on two, and I know my colleagues will have something else to say. Obviously, the public service is a big driver of economic activity in the territory. Rebalancing and resourcing the public service has been a key feature of the Albanese Government for this entire term, making sure the APS is fit for service and fit for purpose, and we have done that, and you'll see that continue in this Budget. We're not going to be intimidated by the opposition's reckless attacks on the public service or their threats of cuts, our view is you have to have a well-resourced public service in order to deliver the outcomes that the Australian people expect, and you see that in this Budget. On the other the other point I'd raise is I've heard some criticism about lack of infrastructure spending. The single biggest project in the territory right now is federally Government funded. It's the National Security Office precinct. It is a multi-year billion-dollar investment, plus into the act to make sure that we have the facilities we need in national security and to keep Australians safe, but also that we are investing in our local economy. We also have the AIS rebuild underway, and we've got our investments in light rail as well, and this Budget contains funding in all of those areas. I'll hand to my colleagues now I'll hand to Andrew, and then you'll hear from all of them, and then happy to take questions.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES, TREASURY AND EMPLOYMENT, DR ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks, Katy. I think what this budget illustrates is that when you've got a remarkable finance minister like Katy Gallagher, who hails from the territory, then Canberra gets a fair deal. People remember the Liberals last budget, where the ACT got just a fifth of our fair share of infrastructure spending. Now that's changed with projects like the National Security Precinct and other important projects my colleagues will talk about there's some exciting competition reforms in the Budget, but I'll leave that to questions if you have them.

Free To Move - Reforming Non-Compete Clauses

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

Matters of Public Importance Debate
House of Representatives

26 March 2026

You have to hand it to the Shadow Treasurer. Really, you do have to hand it to him because he doesn't have it himself. The fact is that this bloke has a three-part plan: (1) criticise Labor; (2) pause; and (3) hope no-one asks him for point 3! He's continuing as he has this entire term— a policy-free zone. Tomorrow night, we're going to hear more spin than substance from the Leader of the Opposition—the man whose only serious policy proposal has been that Australians should spend $600 billion on a madcap nuclear fantasy that won't deliver until the 2040s.

In last night's budget, you heard Labor put forward our positive economic plan: a new tax cut for every taxpayer, more energy bill relief, growing wages, even cheaper medicines, cutting student debt, strengthening Medicare, making it easier to buy and rent a home, permanent free TAFE and a fair go for families and farmers. You'll hear much more about that from the other Labor speakers in this debate.

I want to focus my remarks today on non-compete clauses, which are an important part of Labor's competition reforms. The fact is, if you had a competition agenda, then you would be pretty worried about something called a non-compete clause. The clue is in the name. These are affecting real people across Australia. Let me start with a couple of stories.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO CANBERRA, DRIVE WITH GEORGIA STYNES

WEDNESDAY, 26 MARCH 2025

SUBJECTS: The Albanese Labor Government Budget, non-competes.

STYNES: Our guest is the Labor Member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh, who has been listening into this previous conversation and joins us. Good afternoon.

LEIGH: Good afternoon Georgia, great to be with you.

STYNES: Yeah, nice to be with you too. Do you acknowledge that there were some forgotten people in this budget that a lot of the measures seem to be aimed towards, well, either people who are paying tax or business?

LEIGH: Well in our previous budgets, we've raised the JobSeeker rate, we've increased Commonwealth Rent Assistance by over 40%. We have prioritised those who are doing it tough by supporting increases to the minimum wage and supporting increases to aged care workers and early childhood workers. Our tax cuts are directed towards everyone. So, everyone earning over $45,000 receives that same benefit over the two tax cuts. Somewhere around $10 a week in conjunction with our previous tax cut totals around $50 a week or $2,500 a year. So, we've looked to deliver egalitarian reforms at the same time as focusing on the long run productivity challenge that our predecessors left us with.

Fairer, Smarter, Stronger: What the 2025 Budget Delivers

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

Canberra Business Chamber and Institute of Public Accountants Online Budget Breakfast

Wednesday, 26 March 2025

It’s terrific to be with you and I'm sorry we're not meeting in person in the Great Hall today. I acknowledge that I’m on Ngunnawal land today, and acknowledge all First Nations people joining us.

Thank you to the Canberra Business Chamber and the Institute of Public Accountants for again putting on this event, which is really a fixture in the Budget calendar. I've done your event many times. I enjoy it more in person than virtually, but it is a real pleasure to be able to engage with the Canberra business community.

Let me start off with where we are in a global context, then go to a couple of the key measures in the Budget and finally finish up by asking the question: ‘What does the Budget meant for Canberra?’

If we look around the world, uncertainty is up. We've always lived in an uncertain world, but policy uncertainty is combining with geopolitical uncertainty. At this moment, we've seen a range of our counterpart economies go into recession as they've sought to battle inflation. The UK and New Zealand have suffered recessions, and many other economies around the world have experienced quarters of negative growth as they sought to tame the global cost of living challenge. Australia, uniquely in our history, has managed to bring inflation down into the Reserve Bank's target band without a significant rise in unemployment. We should be collectively extraordinarily proud of this. It's not the story of the 70s, the 80s or the 90s, where taming inflation meant increasing unemployment.

Senator The Hon Katy Gallagher

Minister For Finance
Minister For Women
Senator For The ACT

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister For Competition, Charities And Treasury 
Assistant Minister For Employment

Alicia Payne MP
Member For Canberra

David Smith MP
Member For Bean

Media Release

Fourth Albanese Government Budget Delivers For Canberra

Tuesday, 25 March 2025

Labor is continuing to deliver for Canberra through the Albanese Government’s fourth Budget which will confirm more than $400 million in cost-of-living relief, critical infrastructure, community investments for all Canberrans.

Following a decade of neglect under the former Liberal National Government, Labor has spent the last three years ensuring Canberra and Canberrans get their fair share. This budget builds on that commitment.

Building upon key investments in previous Budgets, including funding the light rail, national institutions, and improving the health of the Upper Murrumbidgee River, this Budget brings Labor’s total investment in the ACT almost $2 billion since coming to government.

Key investments for the ACT in the Government’s Budget include:

• A sixth Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, located in Woden
• Over $50 million for roads in the ACT
• $331 million over 10 years for ACT schools
• An additional $50 million for our hospitals
• Continued investment in secure and permanent jobs within the APS