Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

2GB, MONEY NEWS WITH ROSS GREENWOOD

WEDNESDAY, 24 AUGUST 2016

SUBJECT/S: Labor’s genuine solution for budget repair

ROSS GREENWOOD: Let's now go to the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, who is very close to the decisions and the policies that the Labor Party will take to the government to try and push them through. Many thanks for your time, Andrew.

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: Pleasure Ross, great to be with you.

GREENWOOD: Can I just say, some of the superannuation – let's go there first up. Do you think the compromise that you are offering the government in any way shape or form places a question mark over its mandate to govern? After all, it took a set of policies to the Australian people. The Australian people have voted them in – by a very close margin – but have voted them in. Does that mean that the government has simply got to push through its own superannuation policies holus-bolus as they were?

LEIGH: Let's go through two things. Firstly why we have superannuation tax concessions, and secondly what a mandate is. We have superannuation tax breaks – as the government's own financial systems inquiry noted – to reduce reliance on the aged pension. But half of those superannuation tax breaks go to the top 20 per cent who – that report says – are unlikely to be relying on the aged pension.

The government's got a mandate to pursue the changes that it took to the election. But nothing in that says that Labor needs to fold and just pass whatever the government likes. What we're doing is we're putting constructive proposals on the table that we believe are more likely to get through the Coalition party room than the policies they took to the election, but also have the virtue that they're not retrospective. So we can add more money to the budget bottom line without making a retrospective change that's worried so many experts.

The Minefield

Thursday 25 August 2016 11:30AM 

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/theminefield/does-love-have-any-place-in-politics/7774916 

Next week, the 45th Parliament sits for the first time since the federal election. The government holds a paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives; the Liberal Party Room is suffering significant internal discord; and the new Senate is more fractious, demanding and wilfully recalcitrant than any in modern history.

These are the ideal conditions for political discord and outright opportunism.

Australia is hardly unique in this respect. Western politics as a whole seems to be following this trend toward greater political instability, less cooperation; more anger, less empathy. The media’s own fetishisation of the spectacle of conflict is doubtless complicit in this state of affairs.

But the proliferation of social movements and forms of political activism are not exempt from blame either.

On all sides, the prospects for constructive, broad-based collective action are under threat. The question is: if there is to be a change in our fraught and fractious political climate, what will be the agent? From where might the impetus for change come?

For one Australian politician, that change must come from within politics itself.

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
CANBERRA
THURSDAY, 25 AUGUST 2016

SUBJECT/S: Labor’s plan to protect Medicare; Budget; Superannuation; Scott Morrison; NBN; Petrol prices; Labor’s plan for a banking Royal Commission; Asbestos

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER AND SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION: Good morning everyone, thank you very much for coming out to Macquarie in the heart of the Fenner electorate. My name is Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and member for Fenner and it's a great pleasure to be welcoming Opposition Leader Bill Shorten here to the National Health Co-op. The National Health Co-op began life as the West Belconnen Health Co-op in 2010, it was an initiative of the local community who wanted to do something to raise accessibility to bulk billing. Since then it has expanded to seven sites across the ACT and is now in conversation with three states across Australia. 

The co-op model is a great one for delivering healthcare, because it is focused not on how much money it makes but on how much good it can do in the local community. And in ensuring that people get access to bulk billing doctors by providing access through a membership based model to bulk billing doctors. The National Health Co-op ensures that people get ongoing care, get to see a doctor before problems turn too serious and get access to Allied Health services such as mental health, such as pathology, such as diabetic wrap around care. It's a great model and I would really like to thank Blake and the team for taking the opportunity to show Bill Shorten what the National Health Co-op is achieving here today, and to remind Canberrans and Australians about the value of Medicare for Australia. I will hand over now to Bill Shorten. 

E&EO TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWSRADIO WITH MARIUS BENSON

WEDNESDAY, 24 AUGUST 2016

SUBJECT/S: Labor’s genuine solution for budget repair; Marriage equality plebiscite.

PRESENTER: To look at Labor's budget repair formula, Marius Benson is speaking to the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh.

MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Leigh, Bill Shorten will be outlining savings of about $8 billion over a four-year period – the forward estimates. Now these are well-known savings. These are the savings you were promising during the election campaign?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER AND SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMPETITION: These are fair savings Marius, which make sure that we're able to bring the budget back into surplus without hurting the most vulnerable Australians. Savings like the changes to negative gearing that we took to the last election – which experts recognise would not only add to the budget bottom line but would also help the housing situation in Australia that's seeing a generation of young Australians priced out of the housing market. 

AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT HOUSE

CANBERRA

TUESDAY, 23 AUGUST 2016

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

I acknowledge we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I acknowledge Peter van Noorden, Professor Margaret Harding, Bruce Moore and the editorial team.

I was delighted to receive the call-up to speak today. But it only came yesterday, so I have been – as they say – lucubrating over the evening in preparing my remarks today.

This is the Second Edition of Oxford’s Australian National Dictionary. The first one to come along in 28 years – since 1988. It has indeed been a long time between verbs.

I've been asked to say a few words today and I'm happy to do that. 

Apophany. Ultracrepidarian. Stemwinder.  

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

SKY AM AGENDA WITH KIERAN GILBERT

MONDAY, 22 AUGUST 2016

SUBJECT/S: Chifley Institute on inequality; superannuation; Chinese investment; Country Fire Authority; same-sex marriage

KIERAN GILBERT: With me to discuss this and the other issues of the day – the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. What exactly does that mean? To stop trickle-down politics? I know Wayne Swan's used this quite a bit in terms of criticisms of the Business Council of Australia. As far as you see, what does that actually mean?

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: It’s recognition of the fact that inequality's grown massively in Australia over the last generation. We've seen earnings grow three times as fast for the top 10th as for the bottom 10th. We've got the top one per cent share having doubled and the richest three Australians now having more wealth that the poorest one million Australians.

What Australia needs isn't more tax cuts for the top one per cent but a strategy to ensure that everybody shares in prosperity. Because otherwise you get the nasty politics you're seeing emerge in the United States and Europe. Part of which is caused by the increase in inequality in those places. 

Looking for the liberal Liberals
Labor Herald, 16 August 2016

When Malcolm Turnbull toppled Tony Abbott to become party leader for the second time, the partisan side of me was a little worried. I thought we’d see a PM with a strong inner core, guided by his values and confident in his instincts.

But, after nine months in office and eight weeks’ campaigning, Malcom Turnbull worries me no longer. In fact, I’m beginning to worry for him. I am worried Australia still does not really know what he stands for, and neither does he.

The Politics of Love

Collins Street Baptist Church

Melbourne
16 August 2016

This is the first time I’ve given a speech in a Melbourne church. Which is a bit neglectful, since I literally owe my life to a Melbourne church. Let me tell you the story.

In 1964, a man called Michael delivered the sermon at Ivanhoe Methodist on behalf of his father, Reverend Keith. He was lean and bookish – a runner and an academic-to-be. He had been in Sarawak in Borneo. In the congregation was Barbara, a blonde-haired young woman who had represented her school in debating championships, and was training to be a teacher. She had just returned from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. They got chatting, and he offered to drive her home. She lived a few hundred meters from the church – and said yes. They talked about religion, travel – and even some politics. And so my parents fell in love.

In a world where religion is too often a source of conflict, it is easy to forget that attending a church isn’t just an opportunity to meet your future spouse (by the way, if you’re single, feel free to take a moment to shoot a quick smile to your left and right). Those who attend a religious service regularly are more likely to volunteer time to community organisations, give money, or donate blood.[1] As someone who does not regularly attend church, I’m keenly aware of the positive role that our religious organisations can play in encouraging us to be better versions of ourselves.

Politics, too, provides an opportunity to be a better version of ourselves. After all, as Aristotle noted, politics is simply the art of working out how to live together. Politicians were at the heart of shaping Federation, creating the age pension, abolishing child labour, designing Medicare, and legislating native title. I’m honoured to serve in the same profession as Winston Churchill, Alexander Hamilton, Xanana Gusmao and Aung San Suu Kyi.   

[The report is available from ANU Press]

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

MONDAY, 15 AUGUST 2016

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

 Thank you for that very generous introduction. Can I of course acknowledge we’re meeting on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

Let me start by thanking Peter Drysdale for inviting me to speak at this event.

As all of you know, Peter was recently awarded the Order of Australia which, among many other things, was for his ground-breaking work as the intellectual architect of APEC.