Andrew Leigh

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

Productivity gains come from getting the plumbing right

Published in Capital Brief

28 May 2026

Productivity policy is often imagined as a search for the next big breakthrough. Frequently, it begins with something more prosaic: clearing away the delays and duplications that make everyday business harder than it needs to be.

That is the thinking behind this year’s Budget productivity package. It is built around a powerful idea: make the economy easier to move through.

The package is expected to cut regulatory costs, with the National Competition Policy reforms alone adding around $13 billion to the economy each year once implemented. That is an average benefit of around $1200 for every household in Australia.

The productivity package reduces frictions that have accumulated across the economy: cutting financial-sector paperwork, reducing duplicative data requests from financial regulators, streamlining foreign investment, speeding up the investor front door for major projects, and ensuring skilled workers do not need separate licences and fees to work across state borders.

None of these reforms will dominate a political cartoon. Together, they make it easier for firms to invest and expand, while spending less time feeding the compliance machine.

A growing business should spend its energy finding customers and hiring workers, rather than learning eight licensing regimes. A foreign investor should face rigorous scrutiny where it is needed, while receiving faster decisions where risks are low. A bank should provide regulators with the information they require once, rather than repeatedly in slightly different formats.

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Matters of Public Importance
2026 Budget

What we just heard then was a diatribe by a dying tribe. A diatribe by a dying tribe that went to the last election promising to raise income taxes on all Australians and to spend taxpayer dollars on long lunches for bosses. But the fact is that the Liberal Party has always been the party that has opposed significant reform in Australia.

Indeed, when we go back to 1942, when the Curtin government put in place uniform income taxes, the coalition were against it. Arthur Fadden said:

...'taxpayers under 1,000 pounds pay too little tax and those over 1,000 pounds pay, relatively speaking, too much tax'.

Even back then we had the Coalition parties saying that low-income workers should pay more so high-income earners could pay less.

Then in 1986 we've got the fringe benefits tax put in place by the Hawke government, and we had Jim Carlton standing in the House of Representatives saying:

'We are totally opposed to this new business tax, this new payroll tax, which will destroy investment and destroy employment'.

And we had Albert Adermann, another coalition member, in 1986 saying:

…'these inequitable taxation propositions must be reversed and abolished'.

The party of long, taxpayer funded lunches for bosses has always had its snout in the public trough.

When the capital gains tax was introduced for the very first time and the debate came to this House in 1986, Jim Carlton said:

'This is a day of infamy for this Government…We are opposed to this capital gains tax. We will vote against it here and in the Senate, and should the legislation pass we will repeal it on our return to office. Make no mistake: After our Bicentenary in Australia there will be no capital gains tax'.

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

Dangerous Baby Bottle Prop Devices Permanently Banned 

Tuesday, 26 May 2026

The Albanese Government has acted to protect infants by permanently banning baby bottle self-feeding devices, following safety advice from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

These products are marketed as a hands-free feeding solution. In practice, they can leave babies unable to regulate the flow of milk or formula, creating a serious risk of choking, aspiration and suffocation.

Under the ban which takes effect from today, the following products will be prohibited:

• Devices that prop or position a bottle in an infant’s mouth
• Wearable holders designed to secure a feeding bottle to an adult’s body
• Flexible straw-style systems that connect a bottle to a teat positioned in an infant’s mouth

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Competition and Consumer Amendment (Responding to Exceptional Circumstances) Bill 2026
House of Representatives, Parliament House 

Monday, 25 May 2026

I present the revised explanatory memorandum to this bill and move that this bill be now read a second time.

Since the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran began on 28 February, our government has been responding to the biggest oil shock in history with a comprehensive plan to secure more fuel, strengthen supply chains, build resilience and take the sting out of prices. The government's Strengthening Australia's Fuel Resilience package will deliver more fuel for drivers and industry, more fertiliser for farmers and more fuel security for the economy, with its centrepiece being immediate fuel supplies and a permanent Australian fuel security reserve to ensure we have the fuels and fertiliser we need.

Our government is helping businesses and manufacturers bolster supply chains through interest free loans via the National Reconstruction Fund. Along with incentives to shift more freight onto trains and ships, targeted support for electric vehicles, more charging stations and heavy vehicle reform, this will strengthen our long-term fuel resilience, while the Cleaner Fuels Program and reforms to the low-carbon liquid fuels market will help Australia produce more fuel at home and support future demand. We're reserving 20 per cent of gas exports for Australian users to increase domestic supply and lower prices, and we're advancing the Future Made in Australia agenda through the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve and investments in domestic smelting and manufacturing.

We understand this crisis is adding to cost-of-living pressures, which is why we're more than halving the fuel excise, reducing the heavy vehicle road user charge to zero, putting petrol companies on notice by doubling the consumer watchdog's maximum penalties and ramping up enforcement and monitoring, giving businesses more leeway at tax time if they face fuel supply problems and continuing to make it easier and quicker for small businesses to access credit when they need. It. This bill supports that action by creating new powers for the Treasurer and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to permit coordinated action during a crisis by increasing the maximum penalties that can be imposed for breaches of the Oil Code of Conduct.

The Hon Catherine King MP
Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government

The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Member for Fenner

Yvette Berry MLA
Deputy Chief Minister
Member for Ginninderra

Tara Cheye MLA
Minister for City and Government Services
Member for Ginninderra

Construction Underway On William Hovell Drive Duplication

25 May 2026

Main construction works have begun today on the William Hovell Drive Duplication, with the major project set to improve safety, ease congestion and support growth in Canberra's northwestern suburbs.

The upgrade will duplicate 4.5 kilometres of road between John Gorton Drive and Drake Brockman Drive, creating two lanes in each direction to ease congestion and improve safety for more than 20,000 vehicles that who use the corridor each day.

The $107.25 million project is jointly funded by the Australian and ACT governments.

The start of main works follows completion of surveying, dilapidation assessments and site compound establishment over the last month.

Long-term modelling indicates that Belconnen’s population could exceed 185,000 people by 2065, and up to another 79,000 residents living in the Molonglo Valley, increasing demand for safer and more efficient transport.

Complementing the $225 million joint investment to build a new bridge crossing over the Molonglo River, which is expected to open to traffic later this year, these projects will support future housing growth in Ginninderry, Denman Prospect, Whitlam and Molonglo.

Julie Collins MP
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
Member for Franklin

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP PRESS CONFERENCE
MORNINGTON, HOBART
FRIDAY, 22 MAY 2026

SUBJECTS: Extending the Right to Repair framework to agricultural machinery

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, ANDREW LEIGH: Thank you for joining us today. My name is Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Competition. When Labor came to office, independent mechanics didn’t have access to the data they needed to fix modern cars. That changed with the introduction in July 2022 of the Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Scheme, That has created $2.4 billion a year in additional value. Much of it comes from independent mechanics like this one. Cooper Automotive, which is able to fix modern cars by getting access to the onboard computer data. We've also seen huge benefits for consumers. Independent mechanics tend to be a whole lot cheaper than the authorised dealer, and that gives more choice to consumers, particularly in regional areas.

What Julie and I are announcing today is the next stage in the Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Scheme. We're looking at how we can expand it to agricultural machinery, to tractors, harvesters and roll out more information that allows farmers to get that machinery fixed. Now for a motorist, having a car break down can be frustrating. But for farmers, this can cost thousands of dollars a day in lost productivity as a harvester isn't able to work when you need it most.

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

When Employers Collude, Workers Pay

Published in The New Daily

24 May 2026

Adam Smith saw it 250 years ago. ‘We rarely hear,’ he wrote, ‘of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen’. And anyone who imagines employers do not combine to lower wages, he added, is ‘ignorant of the world’. Such arrangements, Smith observed, are conducted ‘with the utmost silence and secrecy’.

He could have been writing about Silicon Valley.

For years, some of the biggest names in American tech operated what looked less like a labour market and more like a private arrangement among insiders.

Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay entered no-poach arrangements under which they agreed to avoid recruiting one another’s staff.

In some cases, they went further. If an employee applied to move, the current employer could be tipped off. In some instances, hiring required permission. At least one arrangement barred bidding wars.

It was cartel conduct, translated from the product market to the pay packet.

The secret deals were made by those at the top: senior executives and board members.

The Hon Julie Collins MP
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry

The Hon Anne Aly MP
Minister for Small Business

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

22 May 2026

Keeping machinery moving when it matters most: Right to Repair reforms for farmers and drivers

The Albanese Government is seeking feedback on reforms to strengthen competition in repair markets and expand choice for drivers and farmers.

We know some Australians are doing it tough, which is why we are expanding consumer choice to help put downward pressure on the cost of maintaining vehicles and machinery.

Global uncertainty, including the current conflict in the Middle East, is putting pressure on fuel prices, freight costs and supply chains.

For farmers, keeping their machinery running quickly and affordably has never been more important.

Today, the Government has released a discussion paper outlining proposals to extend Australia’s Right to Repair framework to agricultural machinery, alongside targeted improvements to the Motor Vehicle Information Sharing Scheme, which has been operating since 2022.

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

Linking the Dots

Workshop On Maximizing The Use of Linked And Integrated Administrative Data Assets To Inform Government Policy Decision-Making

ABS House, Belconnen,
Online Address

Friday, 22 May 2026

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, on whose lands you are meeting today, and pay respects to all First Nations people present.

I’m sorry to be appearing on screen rather than in the room. I’m in Tasmania, where the datasets are rich, the scenery is richer, and every regression should probably include a variable for sudden rain.

Let me begin by acknowledging and thanking Professor Philip Clarke, of the University of Melbourne and Oxford University.

Philip has probably had a bigger impact on Australian policy than any Oxford professor since Keith Hancock. That is because he brings intellectual horsepower, but also because he brings the rarer gift of applying frontier research to practical public problems.

Australia is lucky that Philip keeps returning home. He is one of those scholars who reminds us that research isn’t only about top journals. It can also help a minister, a department, a clinician or a service provider make a better decision.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO HOBART, BREAKFAST WITH RYK GODDARD
THURSDAY, 21 MAY 2026

SUBJECTS: 2026 Budget; Giblin Lecture on ‘The Economics of Human Extinction’; AI; Albanese Government cracking down on the supermarkets

RYK GODDARD: Right around Tasmania today, Dr Andrew Leigh MP is visiting Tasmania to deliver a lecture about economics and he's one of those people who actually has a portfolio in an area in which he has some expertise. Andrew Leigh, good morning.

ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Ryk, great to be with you.

RYK GODDARD: Welcome to Tassie. You're speaking at the Giblin Lecture today at the University of Tasmania on economics and we will dive into the economics of crisis. But is the Prime Minister really taking 47 per cent of my small business?

ANDREW LEIGH: No, that's simply not right. I mean, right now there is a capital gains tax discount and in the future, there'll be a capital gains tax discount. But it won't be an arbitrary one, it'll be based on inflation - going back to the system we used from 1985 to 1999. So you'll pay capital gains on the real gain, not on the nominal gain discounted by 50 per cent. For some people, that will be more generous. For some people, it'll be less generous. But overall, it's going to help 75,000 people get into the housing market who can't get in there now.