Andrew Leigh

Congratulations to my predecessor Bob McMullan, who will shortly be off to the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, continuing his long-running interest in foreign affairs and international development.

*** MEDIA RELEASE ***

THE HON WAYNE SWAN MP
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER
TREASURER



Nomination of Australian executive director to the european bank for reconstruction and development

Australia has nominated Bob McMullan to the role of Executive Director to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Mr McMullan would represent a constituency comprising Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Egypt. Pending a vote by constituency members, Mr McMullan will be appointed by the EBRD for a term ending in July 2012.

Australia has been a member of the EBRD since it was established in 1991. The EBRD is an international financial institution that supports projects in 30 countries from central Europe to central Asia. It is owned by 61 countries and two intergovernmental institutions.

The Government considers that the continued uncertainty surrounding the global outlook, including concerns about the economic situation in Europe, warrant continued involvement in the EBRD.

Mr McMullan brings a strong record of reform and a wealth of experience to the position. His understanding of the international environment will lend distinction to Australia, our constituency and the EBRD. Mr McMullan is a former Minister for Trade and is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University.

Mr McMullan has agreed that the EBRD position be treated as if it were an ‘office of profit’ for the purposes of the Parliamentary Contributory Superannuation Scheme (PCSS). Consistent with the rules governing the PCSS, Mr McMullan will have his parliamentary pension reduced to take account of the remuneration received from the office of profit.

Mr McMullan will replace Dr John Eyers who is not seeking re-election at this year’s EBRD Annual Meeting.

On behalf of the Government, I would like to thank Dr Eyers for the significant and valued contribution he has made during his term as Executive Director.

Federal ACT Labor Representatives, Kate Lundy, Gai Brodtmann, and Andrew Leigh, have welcomed 2011-12 Budget investment in Canberra.

To mark the capital’s Centenary celebrations, the Budget delivers over $68 million to partner with the ACT Government to deliver a program of Canberra Centenary celebration for all Australians.

Labor’s responsible Budget will strengthen Australia’s economy, create more jobs, and generate training opportunities in Canberra and the region.

The 2011-12 Budget delivers for Canberrans, key highlights include:

• $82.2 million for road infrastructure this financial year


• $30.6 million for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation building


• $6.1 million increase in base funding for the High Court


• $33.9 million increase over four years for the Australian War Memorial


• $1.7 million seed funding for the Australian War Memorial to commence planning for a new permanent exhibition on the first World War to commemorate the Centenary of ANZAC


• Additional $2 million this financial year for the completion of the National Gallery of Australia building refurbishments and enhancement project


• $2.3 million dollars to improve critical outreach and training in health


• 6700 local families eligible for an extra $4200 per child between 16-19 years old to assist with the cost of living


• 7397 apprentices will be eligible for the Trade Apprentice bonus scheme

The Budget builds on Labor’s strong economic record and will ensure we are back in black by 2012-13.

There is a renewed focus on creating opportunities for all Australians, focusing on jobs and skills for Canberrans.

Labor also continues to support families and young people in the ACT by investing in training, education and job creation.

This budget builds on Labor’s core values, particularly our commitment to strong employment.

I spoke in parliament yesterday about my 'Welcoming the Babies' event, held last March.

Welcoming the Babies
11 May 2011

On 27 March this year I held Canberra's inaugural 'Welcoming the Babies' event at Stage 88 in Commonwealth Park. Over 150 mums, dads, bubs, brothers and sisters enjoyed a perfect Canberra autumn morning while taking the time to engage with local services and other families. As a parent of two young boys myself, I know the challenging moments that one has in raising a family: endless nappy changes, throwing food at dinner time and early wake-ups. For example, my one-year-old arose at 4.15 this morning. That is why I believe it is important to celebrate being a parent and to share survival tips.

I want to thank ACT Playgroups, ACT Health and the breastfeeding initiative, senior child health policy and immunisation officers, Anglicare, the Breastfeeding Association, Bundle Baby Ultrasound, Cafe 2U, DJ Dennis, Gymbaroo, Kidsafe, Kings Swim School, Junior Entertainment, Monkey Mania, Players Football Club, Post and Ante Natal Depression Support and Information, Soul Yoga, MC Laurie McDonald and guest speaker Pam Cahir, and my staff and volunteers from the ACT Labor Party for cooking sausages, staffing our tent and helping other stallholders. I would also like to thank Treasurer Wayne Swan, who pioneered this kind of event, making him 'the father of Welcoming the Babies'. As first-time dad Tito Hasan told me, 'It's been great to see kids having fun. My wife and I see the range of things out there for first-time parents. I'm looking forward to coming back next year.'

I spoke last night on legislation that deals with 'complementary protection'. Its effect is to update our 1950s-era refugee legislation so that it expands the existing categories to include asylum-seekers who would face persecution based on their sexuality, or who would face domestic violence. Astonishingly, the opposition are opposing it.

Migration Amendment (Complementary Protection) Bill 2011
11 May 2011

As a child, four years of my childhood were spent in Malaysia and Indonesia, including attending primary school in Banda Aceh. I was there because my father was working on an AusAID project to improve education in Indonesia. As the only white child in my class, I came to appreciate perspectives and cultures quite different from my own. It also does not hurt to have the experience of being the outsider.

Australia is a modern nation. Our humanitarian ethos has advanced considerably since 1951, when the Refugee Convention was originally drafted. Our moral attitudes towards asylum applicants can no longer be bottlenecked by a convention written in the context of post-war Europe. Those who require humanitarian refuge but fall outside the 1951 convention include individuals who are at risk of being subjected to the death penalty, such as a woman at risk of an 'honour killing' or domestic abuse, or a person who would be prosecuted on the basis of their sexuality. These are all people of whom the vast majority of Australians would feel that the federal government has a duty to protect. Does the coalition really believe that someone who would be jailed for being gay in their home country does not deserve our protection? Is a woman who is at risk of an honour killing really a woman who is making a vexatious refugee claim?

The Migration Amendment (Complementary Protection) Bill 2011 will provide an international standard complementary protection regime for those individuals seeking protection visas under Australia's non-refoulement (non-return) obligations. The bill will ensure that Australia continues to meet non-return obligations in a transparent and compassionate fashion, according with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The current bill reasserts the government's position to ensure that Australia meets its international legal and moral obligations. Rather than relying on an informal system employed at the discretion of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, the new complementary protection legislation reflects the Gillard government's commitment to humane and just treatment of asylum seekers. This amendment will update an outdated law—a law that is now over two decades old. A number of legal academics, human rights lawyers and local and international humanitarian groups have noted that relying on a regime which is non-reviewable, non-compellable and wholly dependent on personal discretion is far from ideal. Under current arrangements, those seeking complementary protection are referred to the minister through section 417 of the Migration Act. After review criteria are met, the minister may then exercise his or her discretion to intervene and grant the individual a protection visa.

It is well-known that this process is inefficient and time-consuming. It adds stress to the applicants. The discretionary role of the minister in this process causes excessive uncertainty and delays for applicants seeking protection. Over the years, a broad consensus has formed over the need for complementary protection provisions to be explicitly incorporated into domestic legislation. Groups supportive of such a legal codification include: the United Nations; the Australian Human Rights Commission; Amnesty International; the Uniting Church; the Law Council of Australia; and the Refugee Council of Australia.

I would also note that the codification of complementary protection has been recommended by several parliamentary committees, the most recent being the 2009 Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. The passage of this bill would place Australia along with nations such as Canada, the United States, New Zealand and 27 member states of the European Union. All of these nations have already moved to create harmonized, legal approaches to non-refoulement by codifying complementary protection within domestic laws. his is not a risky reform. This is not a radical reform. This is a commonsense reform. The bill ensures transparency, due process and consistent humanitarian outcomes and removes concern regarding the use of a non-codified system to address complementary protection obligations.

This government does not believe that introducing a legislated complementary protection framework will increase people-smuggling. The single procedure process, already in place in the UK, the Netherlands, Canada and Ireland, will assess all claims for protective asylum, first against the refugees convention, and only then move to assessment under complementary protection criteria. Nor will this bill increase the number of protection places allocated to new arrivals. It should be remembered that those granted protection asylum, who are not recognised as refugees under the 1951 convention but still owed complementary protection, are dealt with under the existing discretionary arrangement. This bill acts only to improve the system.

The bill also saves administrative resources and relieves some of the pressure put on decision makers within the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Refugee Review Tribunal. In a recent editorial in the Australian, the member for Cook stated that the legislation runs the risk of 'creating a further policy incentive for people-smuggling', while the current discretionary system should be retained because it promotes what he called 'flexibility'. This stands in stark contrast to his predecessor as the member for Cook, the Hon. Bruce Baird, who rightly said: 'This is not the way we should be treating the weakest and most vulnerable in our community.'

The member for Cook, in his ongoing efforts to make political capital out of Australia's humanitarian and refugee programs, has in the past managed to confuse visa subclasses and erroneously introduced a private member's bill that accused the government, wrongly, of ignoring female applicants for the Woman-At-Risk visa. He argues that any amendment to our migration laws is a confession that 'push factors' do not matter. By this logic, Labor's fiscal stimulus in 2008-09 must have been an admission that Australia caused the global financial crisis. It is a strange view indeed.

By blocking this bill, the opposition would be showing a callous attitude to women fleeing domestic violence, physical abuse and sexual assault who come to Australia to seek refuge. Too often we hear deliberate inflammatory language from our political opponents, rhetoric that is entirely divorced from reality. We must never forget that behind every statistic there is a human story. My grandparents lived in Victoria in Seaholme in a two-bedroom house with their four children. Their house was constructed by my grandfather, who was a boilermaker and not a carpenter, so there was always something that needed fixing around the home. Living by the seaside did not exactly help as the cold blustery winds were forever finding their way inside.

My mother tells the story of her father, my grandfather, going down to the local tip to get some more building materials, where he met an Egyptian migrant woman who had three children with her; she was just there at the tip. The woman said they did not have a place to stay in, so my grandfather invited them back to his own home—a two-bedroom home that already housed six people. My mother said that as a little girl, when she saw this new family of four coming into her home, she wanted to cry as she was so angry with her father. But her father said, 'Well, if they're not staying with us, they may not have a place to stay.' My mum told me how she was initially envious of the Egyptian refugees, people who had less than her but who, from her point of view, were taking 'things away' from her and the other kids in the family. All my mum could see was that she lived in a rickety, cramped, cold house with hardly any possessions and these people who were staying the night were taking something away from her. But later she went on to see the need that the immigrant family had.

Being able to see the big picture—to see that refugees are not taking something but, rather, are giving back to our community—is fundamental to the success of the Australian multicultural story. The great success of multiculturalism in Australia has been the way that suburban Australians have, without fuss, accepted successive waves of new migrants into our neighbourhoods. As a local member of parliament, one of the things I most enjoy is to stand in a school assembly—amidst children from all ancestries in the world—and sing with them those terrific lines from the national anthem: 'For those who've come across the seas/We've boundless plains to share'. Australia is a big country with a big heart. This bill reflects that fact. It harmonises our laws with our international responsibilities. It ensures we meet our moral obligations. It demonstrates that we in the Labor Party are committed to a humane and just approach to migration, and that we are not prepared to let the opposition's tub-thumping and incendiary rhetoric stand in the way of long-overdue reform.

I spoke in parliament yesterday in response to the opposition's latest tub-thumping on migration.

Refugees and Asylum Seekers - The Big Picture
10 May 2011

The issue of refugees and asylum seekers is a global challenge. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2009 there were 43.3 million forcibly displaced people throughout the globe and, of those, 15.2 million were refugees. These are vast numbers for the international community to deal with and there are also huge numbers around the world who are affected by the challenge of asylum seekers. Just to give you a sense of the scale of the number of internally displaced people and refugees, Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to quote a couple of statistics from a Parliamentary Library paper by Janet Phillips. She points out that, in 2006, over 72,000 people arrived by boat on the coasts of Italy, Spain, Greece and Malta alone. In 2007, that number was 51,000.

The arrival numbers in Australia are actually very small compared to global asylum seeker applications. The paper makes the point that, in 2009, Australia received 6,170 asylum seeker applications, which is just 1.6 per cent of the 377,160 applications received by the 44 industrialised nations for which the UNHCR tracks figures. Of those 44 nations, Australia was ranked 16th overall and 21st on a per capita basis. It is critical to put the numbers into perspective and to remember that Australia has a long and proud history of accepting refugees for resettlement.

Many people who have come to Australia and made vast contributions to our wellbeing—I am thinking back here to people like Frank Lowy and the many people who came to Australia at the end of the Vietnam War—have made valuable contributions to our society. Australia is better off for being a destination that has welcomed refugees into our midst. There are only about 20 developed nations that formally participate in the UNHCR refugee resettlement program and we are one of those nations. But those developed nations do not house the majority of the world's asylum seekers and refugees. The majority of the world's asylum seekers and refugees are indeed housed in developing countries with the millions of people that already live in some of these developing countries. Pakistan currently hosts approximately 1.7 million refugees, Iran hosts over a million refugees and some 115,000 asylum seekers and refugees are in Thailand. Malaysia hosts around 100,000 asylum seekers and refugees and Indonesia faces significant numbers of irregular migrants moving through its territory.

It is critical that we keep the global challenge in perspective. The Minister for Foreign Affairs said in Bali early this year that worldwide transnational crime represents a business of two-thirds of $1 trillion a year and a large portion of that is the crime of people smuggling and human trafficking. That is the challenge that Labor's policy is aiming to address. We are aiming to address the challenge even within our own region of the 3.9 million refugees amongst us. It is important to recognise that Labor's policy happens in a global environment. Those opposite would very often like us to think that Australia exists in a little bubble and that the rest of the world does not affect us. But we know that is not the case.

There are international institutions set up to deal with the challenge of refugees and asylum seekers and we are marking the 60th anniversary of the convention of the status of Australia as a refugee country by the UNHCR and the 60th anniversary of the International Organisation for Migration. These two great international institutions have played a major role and Australia is looking to work with those institutions. But beyond the statistics there is also a set of very personal stories that accompany them. I spoke in my maiden speech about my own experience with my mother's parents, a boilermaker and a teacher, who always lived by the credo that if there was a spare room in the house it should be used by someone who needed the space. As a child, I remember eating at their home with Indigenous families and new migrants from Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. That early experience informed my lifelong passion for Australia's multiculturalism.

Last year I attended a prize-giving ceremony for an art competition held as part of Refugee Week and first prize went to a Korean-Burmese woman who had woven a traditional crimson tunic. Because she did not have a proper loom the woman had taken the mattress off her bed and fashioned a loom from her pine bed base. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the courage and spirit of Australia's migrants. That brings me to the announcement that was made on the weekend by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. It was an announcement aiming to do two things: to put people smugglers out of business, to ensure that fewer people are put on those boats, particularly women and children, to brave a dangerous and unnecessary sea journey to Australia; and it is also trying to ensure that Australia resettles more refugees than it has in the past.

As the minister has set out, the next 800 irregular maritime arrivals, who arrive in Australia after the date on which the agreement comes into effect, will be transferred to Malaysia. In return Australia will resettle an additional 4,000 refugees currently residing in Malaysia. Australia is going to fully fund that agreement and, importantly, it will be overseen by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is playing a more active role in Malaysia than it has ever done in the past.

This increase in asylum seekers will be the largest increase in the asylum seeker-refugee intake that has occurred since Labor was last in office. That increase of 1,000 a year reflects the fact that Australia is a generous country which is able to resettle refugees. I think that bipartisan commitment to resettling refugees has in the past—alas, not so much now—been a hallmark of Australia's social fabric.

What we are doing is not a bilateral deal. It is the beginnings of a regional framework. We recognise that refugees and asylum seekers are a global challenge. We recognise the way to tackle that challenge is through a regional agreement. That is very different from the bilateral deals that we saw under the Howard government and the temporary protection visas. Temporary protection visas did not work. They were introduced in October 1999 and, following the introduction of TPVs, the number of irregular maritime arrivals spiked.

By contrast the current policy proposal that the government has put forward has been welcomed. The UNHCR's regional representative, Richard Towle, said:

'I think in that sense it has the potential to ... make a significant practical contribution to what we're trying to achieve in the region. And if it's a good experience other countries can look at it and say "yes, that's a positive way of managing these issues. Perhaps we want to embark on similar or other initiatives under a regional cooperation framework".'

He also said:

'Well the core on which I think everyone agrees on and that's ... what we call the principle of non-refoulement: that's non-expulsion of asylum seekers and refugees out of the country to face persecution. We would want to see that and I think we are seeing that as a commitment from both Governments.'

By contrast the opposition on the issue of refugees has taken the narrow and parochial road. They are the ostriches of the Australian political system. They are willing to put their head in the sand and pretend the rest of the world does not exist. We have seen this through a spate of issues.

During the global financial crisis we saw the opposition's refusal to support the stimulus and their willingness to talk now as though the GFC never happened. On climate change we saw their startling readiness to reject both the science and the economics. On migration we saw the return of Hansonism wrapped in a blue ribbon. Whereas the former member for Cook, Bruce Baird, would stand up for principle, the current member for Cook is only willing to stand up for the spreading of fear.

Migration has strengthened Australia. Refugees have strengthened Australia. What this policy seeks to do is to increase our humanitarian intake and, in an equally humanitarian way, to discourage the dangerous sea journey and to see fewer young children set adrift in leaky boats to brave a dangerous sea journey to Australia. In those twin regards this is a humanitarian policy and one that I am proud to support as a member of the Labor Party.

If there’s one single lesson about the politics of economic reform in Australia, it’s that the politics are never easy. Climate change is no different. Whether it’s vested interests overplaying their hand, or the Coalition confusing opposition with opportunism, reformers need to fight fear with facts.

Here are ten common myths about climate change.

Myth 1: Climate change isn’t real.
Simple temperature data show that the world is warming. Globally, 2010 was the warmest year on record. If you’re aged under 35, then every year of your life has been hotter than the 20th-century average. In Australia, every decade since the 1940s has been hotter than the preceding decade.

Myth 2: Climate change isn’t caused by human activity.
The vast bulk of scientific evidence points towards human activity as the cause of climate change. For a straightforward overview of the science, see the summary put out by the Australian Academy of Science last year, which stated ‘The role of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is qualitatively well understood. It is known that increasing the atmospheric concentration of the principal anthropogenic greenhouse gas, CO2, leads to higher mean global surface temperatures.’

Myth 3: Australia is moving ahead of the world.
Already, 32 countries and 10 US states have emissions trading schemes. Other countries have policies that effectively act as a carbon price. In Europe, emissions trading schemes are fostering innovation. For example, Ecogen has devised a technology that will generate heat and hot water, Novacem has developed cement that it claims is carbon-negative, and Sorption Energy has developed an absorption heat pump for use in houses and cars.  As the most carbon-intensive economy in the developed world, the risk for Australia isn’t moving too quickly - it’s being left behind.

Myth 4: The carbon price debate is causing electricity prices to rise
It’s true that electricity prices have increased substantially over recent years. From 2007 to 2010, real electricity prices rose by 32 percent. But this increase is largely due to higher costs of transmission and distribution, as well as uncertainty regarding the carbon price among generators. Capital investment in the electricity sector requires the certainty of a carbon price. Without a carbon price, we are unlikely to see sufficient investment in zero-carbon generation technologies (such as wind and solar) and low-carbon generation technologies (such as gas).

Myth 5: We can deal with climate change without a carbon price.
A central insight of economics is that if you want to reduce pollution, the best way is to put a price on it. Because Tony Abbott’s plan misses that fundamental truth, his plan is both expensive and ineffective. The inconvenient truth for the Opposition is that if you want to subsidise alternatives to carbon pollution, you need a lot of money ($30 billion, to be precise). The only way of raising that money is through taxation. And the most likely source of tax revenue they would turn to is personal income taxation. That means that under Mr Abbott’s plan, your income taxes would need to go up to pay for the Opposition’s grab-bag of subsidies. While the Gillard Government is proposing to raise the price of carbon pollution, the Opposition’s scheme will most likely raise the price of work. While we want to tax polluters, they want higher taxes on workers.

Myth 6: Business doesn’t support a carbon price.
Companies like AGL, Linfox, Fujitsu, BP, Better Place, IKEA, Kell & Rigby, Alstom, Pottinger, ARTC and Pacific Hydro have backed a carbon price. In their words “[p]ricing carbon is critical to providing business certainty and unlocking the jobs and investment that will accompany the transition to a prosperous, cleaner and internationally-competitive economy.”

Myth 7: The proposed emissions targets are too timid
Under our climate change plan, Labor has committed to emissions in 2020 that are 5% lower than they were in 2000. In terms of emissions per dollar of output, this represents a halving of our emissions intensity from 2000 levels. We want our economy to grow, so Australians can enjoy higher living standards. But we need to decouple economic growth from environmental pollution. As a nation, we have done this before. Once it was thought that urban air pollution was an inevitable consequence of economic growth. But over recent decades, we have managed to increase the size of our economy while cleaning up the air quality in our cities.

Myth 8: Labor has been inconsistent on carbon pricing
In the 2007 election, both Labor and the Coalition promised voters a price on carbon. Labor has always argued that in the long-run, the best way to do that is through an emissions trading scheme, in which the government sets the number of pollution permits and the market determines the price. In the last term of government, we attempted to do this through the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which had a fixed price for the first year, and a price cap for the next four years. Now, we are proposing that carbon pricing should be implemented with a fixed price for the first three to five years. The economic reality is that these schemes are fundamentally very similar. The backflip in the climate change debate is Tony Abbott’s, who won his job as Opposition Leader by being a self-described political ‘weathervane’ on the issue of climate change. Mr Abbott supported carbon pricing in the 2007 election – but has now staked his leadership on denying both mainstream science and mainstream economics.

Myth 9: A price on carbon will be costly for business
In his address to the National Press Club, Greg Combet pointed out how small the price impacts are likely to be, using the example of a $20 per tonne carbon price and the assistance package that applied under the former CPRS.

At $20 in the steel industry, the average carbon price after 94.5 per cent assistance for the core pollution intensive activity would be around $2.60 per tonne of steel, out of a price per tonne of steel of around $800.

In the aluminium industry, the average carbon price after assistance for the core pollution intensive activity would be around $18.70 per tonne of aluminium, out of a price of around $2,500 per tonne of aluminium.

In other words, the carbon cost relating to the core pollution activity for steel would be one third of one per cent of the value of a tonne of steel and three quarters of one per cent of the value of a tonne of aluminium.

Another reason why costs are likely to be low is that market mechanisms harness the ingenuity of entrepreneurs to serve environmental ends. When the US used an emissions trading scheme to tackle acid rain, the costs ended up being one-third of what had been projected, because those setting up the scheme didn’t predict all the creative ways that firms would reduce pollution.

Myth 10: Carbon pricing will be costly for households.
The Federal Government has committed to spending at least half the revenue from a carbon pricing scheme on assistance to households. Because we are a Labor Government, this will be focused on those most in need. Only Labor can be counted on to improve the environment, foster economic growth, and look after the neediest.

(Cross-posted at the ALP blog)

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has just announced his resignation. Here's my media statement.

A Lasting Legacy



Jon Stanhope retires from the position of ACT Chief Minister with Canberra as strong as it has ever been. Our unemployment rate is the lowest in Australia, our schools are first-rate, and our natural environment is a treasure for all Canberrans.

Mr Stanhope has been willing to make hard decisions about schools, roads, and health care. He has introduced new innovations such as ‘Chief Minister’s Talkback’ – making government more accessible. We have Australia’s first prison built to meet human rights obligations, focused on getting the crime rate down through better rehabilitation programs. Mr Stanhope has stood up against discrimination wherever it raised its ugly head. Under his government, economic growth and social equity have gone hand-in-hand.

If there is a signature ‘Stanhope Style’, it is his deep understanding of Canberra’s history, geography and community. Few others can aspire to Mr Stanhope’s knowledge of our city and its diverse heritage. His pride in his home is unmatched.

Throughout his time in office, Jon Stanhope’s government has been marked by its unity and purpose. Though Mr Stanhope will be missed, I am confident that Katy Gallagher will be a worthy successor. Ms Gallagher will lead the Labor team to the 2012 election with a spirit of optimism and a determination to make the essential investments to keep our city strong.

I wish Jon Stanhope and his wife Robyn all the best for the next phase of their lives. Whatever opportunities Jon chooses to pursue, I am sure Canberra will continue to benefit from his passion and energy.

Andrew Leigh
Federal Member for Fraser

It’s gone largely unremarked in the press, but Julia Gillard has been giving some terrific speeches over recent months. For pure oratory, some of the best include:

• the Whitlam oration (citing Walt Whitman)


• a statement to parliament on Afghanistan


• the St Patrick’s Day lunch


• the CEDA lecture


• a condolence motion for victims of the summer natural disasters


• an address to the US Congress


• an after-dinner speech to the Australian-American Association