Andrew Leigh

We won't beat homelessness without tackling inequality, joint op-ed with Jan McLucas, Homelessness Australia Magazine

Glenn Tibbitts was born at 26 weeks in the back of an ambulance because his mother had endured yet another beating. Glenn’s first recollection of abuse he suffered was between the ages of one and two.

Around the age of seven his parents broke up and as Glenn describes it: ‘the door of the cage was left open and that was my opportunity to go’. 

Both of us have parented seven year-olds. On a good day– with a bit of cajoling – they might eat breakfast and get themselves dressed for school. There is something horrifying about such a child having to choose homelessness in order to survive.

Glenn slept in car parks and under bushes and bridges. This was interspersed with short periods in refuges and shelters. As a child he experienced the indignity of having scraps of food thrown at him by strangers. Not given. Thrown.

As he describes it: ‘You are always constantly hungry, you are always constantly cold’. Dealing with the abuse and trauma he suffered was a constant struggle that kept him on the streets.

As heart-wrenching as Glenn’s story is, it is also a story of hope.

I’m worried that young Australians are being locked out of home ownership.

Joe Hockey seems less worried - his advice for affording a home is to ‘get a good job that pays good money.’

We all know housing affordability is a lot more complicated than that.

Here in Canberra, plenty of people have great jobs yet struggle to put together a deposit when the median house price is over $635,000.

Those who can find a way into the market will carry mortgages multiple times the size of their yearly income.

There’s no quick fix to housing affordability. But my party is determined to look for solutions.

We’d like to hear from you about your priorities and ideas.

You can tell us what you want done to improve housing affordability by following this link.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST

THURSDAY, 2 JULY 2015

SUBJECT/S: Superannuation fairness.

FRAN KELLY: The Prime Minister left nobody in doubt yesterday on the Coalition's position on superannuation tax concessions.

TONY ABBOTT: We aren't ever going to increase the taxes on super. We aren't ever going to increase the restrictions on super because super belongs to the people.

KELLY: That sounds like 'never ever' to me. That emphatic response from the Prime Minister follows revelations yesterday that the Government had been looking at options to change the tax treatment of super right up until 22 April. That was the day Labor released its policy on super tax changes. Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh obtained these letters from Treasury under Freedom of Information. Andrew Leigh is speaking with our Business Editor Sheryle Bagwell, and she began by asking him what prompted his decision to go for an FOI request.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: The Government had been so unequivocal in saying that it would never make changes to superannuation that it occurred to us that it would be interesting to see what they were really talking about. What’s striking is that all the way up until Labor made our statement on superannuation – moving for superannuation concessions to be changed so that they were fairer and more sustainable – the Government's own Expenditure Review Committee were going forwards and backwards with Treasury looking at options for changing superannuation. The reason they backed off that was Labor's announcement.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE

TUESDAY 30 JUNE 2015

SUBJECT/S: Political donations; Q&A; Greek economic crisis.

JONATHAN GREEN: Joining me now from Sydney is Senator Arthur Sinodinos and in our Canberra studio, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Welcome to you both. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: G'day Jonathan, g'day Arthur.

SENATOR ARTHUR SINODINOS: G'day gentlemen.

GREEN: Touch gloves, gentlemen.

LEIGH: I thought it was swords, isn't that what knights do? Or is it lances?

GREEN: That's sounding very fancy. To this [Hockey] ruling, Arthur Sinodonos, is it vindication for the Treasurer or a warning to editors about how to sell a story?

Confronting family violence, Canberra Times, 1 July

In the house where Emma* grew up, family violence was a regular part of life. Her father was abusive to Emma’s mother, and to the children. Emma told me that the smell of Dettol still evokes fear, as it reminds her of her mother’s injuries. Eventually, the harm that Emma’s mother sustained during her life would contribute to her early death at age 69.

When she grew up, Emma was determined not to suffer what her own mother had endured. But over the coming decades, she would find herself in two abusive relationships. In each case, she told me, there were some people – like the police officers to whom she reported the violence – who were supportive.

But then there were others who didn’t seem to understand her situation. One person suggested that perhaps it was just a ‘relationship problem’, and she needed to work harder to resolve it. Others questioned whether she had reported the violence from the very first blow, and suggested that she was a bad mother to her children if she had not sought an apprehended violence order immediately.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA

MONDAY, 29 JUNE 2015

 

SUBJECT/S: Australian Climate Roundtable; Mafia infiltration of the Liberal Party; Electoral funding

 

KIERAN GILBERT: Gentlemen, thanks for joining me. With me I have the Assistant Social Services Minister Mitch Fifield and Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Andrew, to you first of all on this climate roundtable involving key business groups, unions, welfare groups, investors, environmental groups, all agreeing to parameters that so far the Federal Parliament and the nation's politicians haven't been able to agree to. Should this provide some impetus, do you think, for some sort of bipartisanship here?

 

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER ANDREW LEIGH: Kieran, it's a great initiative. I really hope that we're able to kick Australia forwards along a path that so many other countries in the world are travelling down. You know, China's emissions fell last year – possibly just a temporary drop – but people now think they're going to peak around 2025 which is much earlier than previously anticipated. But what we've got in Australia is the Government setting up a Wind Farm Commissioner, we've got them debating motions at Liberal Party Conference denying climate science, we've got the Abbott Government really backing away from where the rest of the world is going. Britain, New Zealand, the United States – all these countries are taking serious action on climate change. Meanwhile Australia is being described by Kofi Annan as a climate villain. We need to step up to the plate on accepting that the science is real and doing something about it.

Why should we care about inequality? Sydney Morning Herald, 29 June

Dutch economist Jan Pen once suggested a simple way of visualising the amount of inequality in a society. Imagine, he suggested, a parade, in which each person’s resources were represented by their height.

Suppose we were to conduct such a parade in Australia. People of average wealth would be average height. Those with half the average wealth would be half the average height. Those with twice the average wealth would be twice the average height.

Let’s suppose the parade took an hour to pass you. What would you see?

For the first half a minute, people would be literally underground. These are the people with more debts than assets. Perhaps they are homeless, but have credit card debts. Or they are a business owner about to go bankrupt.

Then would come the little people. For the first few minutes, they are no bigger than Lego figures. They might have some clothing and a television, but little else. By the ten minute mark, people are the size of a child’s doll. They might own an old car.

Twenty minutes have gone by, but still the marchers are no taller than a newborn baby. Most probably don’t have regular work. Few would dream about them – or their children – breaking into the central Sydney property market.

Forty-five minutes in, and the watcher can now look the marchers in the eye. These are homeowners with well-paying jobs – in many cases probably with two full-time workers in the household. 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

PVO NEWSDAY

THURSDAY, 25 JUNE 2015

SUBJECT/S: Citizenship; IMF report; Q&A; Infrastructure

PETER VAN ONSELEN: Joining me now from Canberra I have the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Christian Porter, and Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh, two men probably better known for their careers before politics. Andrew, you were a prolific professor of economics at ANU, and Christian Porter, you were a former state Treasurer in WA – I bet you're glad you're not in that role now with the way their budget is looking. Gentlemen, thanks for your company. Let's start by talking about citizenship. I want to ask you, Christian Porter: are you comfortable about stripping the citizenship of minors? That wasn't, as I understand it, in the 1948 Citizenship Act but it will be in the new legislation.

PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE PRIME MINISTER CHRISTIAN PORTER: I'm not entirely sure whether your assessment there about the first run of the s35 drafting is correct. But nevertheless, the Minister here has the residual ability to exempt persons who would otherwise fall into the category. So I'm more than comfortable with the way in which it has been drafted. It seems to me to be rather elegantly drafted with a mind to constitutionality.

SENATE PASSES MOTION OF SUPPORT FOR CHARITIES COMMISSION 

The Senate has today voiced support for the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission in the face of ongoing uncertainty about its future under the Abbott Government.

Labor moved a motion acknowledging the strong support the commission has within the charity sector and called on the Abbott Government to drop plans to scrap it.

In March last year the Government introduced a bill to Parliament to repeal the charities commission. That bill has remained on the Notice Paper even after Scott Morrison replaced Kevin Andrews as Social Services minister and acknowledged that abolishing the commission was not his priority. 

DIGITAL CANBERRA iAWARDS

SKILLS FOR THE FUTURE WE CAN’T PREDICT

 Thank you to Suzanne Campbell from the Australian Information Industry Association for inviting me to be with you tonight, and to iAwards team for putting together such a great event. I’ve just come from a day up on the Hill with my parliamentary friends and foes, trying to find solutions to the very concrete and prosaic challenges that are right in front of us. Because of that, it’s very exciting and energising to be amongst a group of people who have their eyes lifted instead to the digital and technological horizon.

Predicting what lies ahead in that future is a notoriously risky business. William Preece from the British Post Office proved that back in 1876 when he confidently asserted: ‘the Americans have need of the telephone, but in England we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” I might try telling my sons that when they get to the age where they start asking for iPhones.