Andrew Leigh

Today, The Mercury published my opinion piece on the Federal Budget:

James Kelly of Berriedale has been unemployed for more than four years since graduating from Year 12. He’s been actively looking for work in retail. “I didn’t expect it would be this hard to get a job. It’s a bit demoralising ... I’d much rather not be on benefits but unfortunately I don’t have too many other options.”

James has a Certificate II in retail. But as most Tasmanians know, it’s tough if you’re young and unemployed across the state.

In Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s first Federal Budget, people like James will be hit even harder. In effect, they will be punished just because life’s dice has rolled against them.  

 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TELEVISION INTERVIEW
BREAKING POLITICS - FAIRFAX MEDIA 
MONDAY, 19 MAY 2014

SUBJECT/S: TONY ABBOTT’S BUDGET OF BROKEN PROMISES

CHRIS HAMMER: To discuss the opinion polls and the continuing fall-out from the Federal Budget, I'm joined in the studio by Andrew Leigh, the Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh, the member for Fraser here in the ACT, and Andrew Laming, Liberal Member for Bowman, joins us from Brisbane. Andrew Laming where are you this morning?

ANDREW LAMING: I’m down at the children’s park, minus the children, so I hope we will be delivering a clear signal to Canberra.

HAMMER: Now, Andrew Laming, the Prime Minister is sticking by his guns this morning, saying no change, the Budget is right. The opinion polls tell us that people don't think it's right. Is it time for the Government to start compromising?

LAMING: Definitely not. This is the right Budget for the times. It’s a fair but firm Budget and we have to be able to make the tough decisions when after six years they weren’t being made at all. The basic and the bottom line here is the marchers up here on the weekend were no bigger in fact they were smaller than the march from March was. We can only presume that the some of the marchers were happy with the Budget. Look a move of 4 per cent or whatever simply shows that 4 per cent of Australians will change their voting intention because it’s a tough Budget. But those kind of people need to be convinced over time which is something we are really determined to do. It’s the right thing. It does ask business and incomes earners of all levels to make a contribution. And ultimately if you are going to go to the doctor you simply ask if you can be bulk billed and that is still possible. The seven dollars doesn’t have to be paid at every visit and that is a point that is missing in this debate.

HAMMER: Okay but the opinion poll, the Nielson poll, shows that people are not getting that message. The Budget is unpopular. The Government knew that. A majority of people are saying it's unfair and two, a majority of people are saying it's not good for Australia. What's gone wrong?

This morning I spoke to ABC NewsRadio's Marius Benson in the wake of Labor leader Bill Shorten's spirited budget-in-reply speech in which he hit back at changes to Newstart and Medicare.

 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC NEWSRADIO   
FRIDAY, 16 MAY 2014

SUBJECT/S: Debt levy; Budget deficit; Newstart cuts for people aged under 30; GP tax.

MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Leigh good morning. 

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER, ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Marius. 

BENSON: It was very clear from some of the things Bill Shorten said last night you will be opposing measures some of which we just mentioned in that lead, it's not entirely clear some others, the fuel excise indexation, the reintroduction of that, you are opposing that?

LEIGH: Yes we will Marius, we've been very clear about number of issues: raising the pension age, putting a GP co-payment in place, and the cuts to unemployment benefits are measures that will definitely be opposing. 

Yesterday I spoke about the federal budget with ABC Radio National Drive host Waleed Aly and the Liberal's Josh Frydenberg. Here's the full transcript:

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE WITH WALEED ALY 
WEDNESDAY, 15 MAY 2014

SUBJECT/S:  Tony Abbott’s Budget of broken promises; manufactured debt crisis and debt levy; fuel excise indexation; budget impact of losing mining tax and carbon price; premiers angry about cuts to schools and hospitals funding

HOST WALEED ALY: What do you make of the Budget? The Prime Minister said it’s tough and fair. The Opposition leader Bill Shorten says it is full of broken promises and bad news. Joining me now to thrash this out is Josh Frydenberg, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, and Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Andrew Leigh. To both of you, thank you very much for joining us.

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER, ANDREW LEIGH: Pleasure.

JOSH FRYDENBERG: Good to be with you.

ALY: I might start with Josh, with this whole idea, the overarching aim of this, the overarching promise was to get the Budget back into shape. We had a fiscal crisis, a budget crisis, yet at the end of all this, the deficit has been reduced by $4.1 billion for the next year, which is not really crisis proportions. What happened to the crisis? 

Yesterday I spoke in the Parliament on the most recent amendments to tax law.

Labor will not be opposing the measures in this bill, which go to farm management deposit accounts and the repayment of overpaid GST. But it is vital that we see this bill in the context of the broader picture of taxation reform, or lack thereof, and last night's budget.

I want to do this by commencing with a few stories.

RADIO INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

ABC 666 CANBERRA - MORNINGS  
WEDNESDAY, 15 MAY 2014

SUBJECT/S:  Budget:  Australian Public Service cuts bigger than promised and impact on ACT; Zed Seselja; Infrastructure spending ignores public transport; State schools and hospitals budgets slashed and prospect of a rise in the GST

 

HOST GENEVIEVE JACOBS: Let’s do some excavation on what the budget means for the Territory’s economy. The Member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh, is on the line. Andrew Leigh, good morning to you.

SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER, ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Genevieve. How are you?

JACOBS: I'm well. Now there's a lot of heavy lifting here according to the Treasurer. Does Canberra end up with the hernia?

LEIGH: I think we do Genevieve. I mean we were the place that was targeted the most by the Coalition's pre-election promises and I think the place that was most entitled to think that was as bad as it was going to get, that when Zed Seselja said there would be 12,000 public service job cuts that there actually would be 12,000 job cuts, not 16,500.

Andrew Leigh, Gai Brodtmann and Senator Kate Lundy have condemned the Abbott Government’s first budget as an attack on Canberra that Liberal Senator Zed Seselja has failed to stop.

The Abbott Government will cut 16,500 jobs from the Australian Public Service, with over 7000 of those jobs slated to go in the next financial year.

This is an even bigger cut than the Coalition promised. It demonstrates that Senator Seselja is a limp defender of Canberra.  

In her terrific book Dirt Cheap, the late Elisabeth Wynhausen decided to take leave from her journalism job and try life as a low-wage worker. In one job, Wynhausen moved to a country town and worked packing eggs. She earned near minimum wage in a job that started at 6am, left her body aching at the end of the day, and where the smell from the nearby chook sheds was constant. Three weeks in, the manager, a millionaire several times over, came to tell the workers they were losing their jobs.

I thought of Wynhausen's story again last night as I looked at the budget papers.

Today I spoke in Parliament about the National Day of Mourning and the importance of workplace safety.

Kane Ammerlaan was a 16-year-old building apprentice when his boss asked him to do some cash work on the weekend. His job was to carry overloaded buckets of concrete up to a roof with no safety harness and no railings. If he carried to the buckets half full, his boss would throw concrete at him and send him back down to fill up the bucket. One day the buckets were overloaded and he fell. Concrete went into his eyes. He told his boss it was hurting, but his boss laughed and told him to get back to work. Eventually, he phoned his girlfriend rather than an ambulance and, by the time he got to the hospital, the concrete had set on his eye. He lost 100 per cent vision in his eye.

I led off the Matter of Public Importance debate in parliament today, focusing on the issue of inequality.

This morning I received an email from one of my constituents which read in part: 'I am 48 years old and unemployed. The fact that I have not been able to find another job makes life difficult but just manageable because my husband works. He is 52 years old and works for the federal government. He is very good at what he does but unfortunately the program he works with has been cut and he finds out today if his job has been cut.'