Andrew Leigh

The Hon Jason Clare MP
Minister for Education
Member for Blaxland

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

4 May 2026

Playground upgrade opening at Cranleigh School

Minister for Education and Federal Member for Blaxland, Jason Clare and Member for Fenner AM Andrew Leigh today opened a new playground upgrade at Cranleigh School in Holt, ACT.

The playground upgrade includes the replacement of six existing soft fall areas and the installation of a new soft fall zone featuring a new double swing, giant sandpit and shade sails.

The playground upgrade will give Cranleigh School students and community groups a safe, compliant environment that supports students to access fixed play equipment confidently and securely.

The Commonwealth Government has provided funding of $250,000 through the Schools Upgrade Fund towards this project, with additional funds coming from Cranleigh School.

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

Opportunity Knocks

Published in The Saturday Paper

2 May 2026

In My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin gave Australia a portrait of frustrated talent in the figure of Sybylla Melvyn. Sybylla is intelligent, ambitious, restless and painfully aware of the narrow world around her. She knows she has ability, and she can see how few doors are open to a girl in her position. Her family’s fortunes are sliding, money is scarce, and marriage to a wealthier man is held out as the respectable route upward. She refuses it. The book’s title is ironic: this is not the story of a brilliant career fulfilled, but of one blocked at the outset.

More than a century on, we still argue about the same question in different language. How tightly should a person’s future be tethered to their parents’ income, their suburb, their school, or the people they happen to know? How much should a childhood predict?

As a politician, I see that as a question of fairness. As an economist, I see it as a question of efficiency. A country is less productive when it does a poor job of finding talent, nurturing talent and deploying talent. Social mobility is not only about justice between citizens. It is also about whether we are making full use of the abilities of our own people.

That matters because talent is common, while opportunity is not.

Senator The Hon Murray Watt MP
Minister for the Environment and Water
Senator for Queensland 

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

Data confirms the environment is good for Australia’s economy and our wellbeing

Friday, 24 April 2026

The Albanese Government has released the second set of National Ecosystem Accounts, which will help improve our environmental stewardship for the future.

The data tracks the condition of Australia’s ecosystems and will help inform future decision-making processes and better measure environmental impact.

The accounts put a dollar value on the carbon storage, fresh water, and wild fish that our environment provides to the national economy, as well as measuring the contribution of some of Australia’s land, freshwater and marine ecosystems to the economy, showing:

• Australia had 3 consecutive years of La Nina from 2020 to 2023, which caused carbon-retaining grasslands and forests to grow. In 2021-22, these environments stored 34.6 billion tonnes or $59.5 billion worth of carbon

The Hon Kristy McBain MP
Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories
Minister for Emergency Management 

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

Tara Cheyne MLA
Minister for City and Government Services

Old Well Station Road Upgrade Completed At Nadjung Mada Nature Reserve 

29 April 2026

The ACT Government has completed a major upgrade of Old Well Station Road through Nadjung Mada Nature Reserve.

This project marks the final milestone for a program of works delivered by the Parks and Conservation Service for Canberra’s northern grasslands that received $2.1 million from the Albanese Government through the Disaster Ready Fund. This package also included major remediation and restoration works at Jarramlee Nature Reserve and the Budjan Galindgi Nature Reserve, which all provide critical habitat for threatened species.

Jointly funded by the Australian and ACT governments the Building Climate Resilient Visitor Infrastructure project also delivers safer access, stronger emergency management capability and improved protection for nationally significant grassland habitat in Canberra’s north.

The upgraded road now provides a safe, reliable, all‑weather route built to rural roading standards. It supports bushfire response, emergency services and land management operations, while also improving community access for pedestrians and cyclists connecting surrounding neighbourhoods with schools, services and the wider city.

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

Why leaving a bequest should become part of every Australian’s estate-planning

Published in The New Daily

23 April 2026

Jennie Mackenzie spent her life helping children learn.

As a former Play School director and early childhood educator, she believed in nurturing potential.

After facing cancer herself, she became interested in the work of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. When she died, she left a bequest to support early-career researchers.

One recipient said that support helped make her return to Australia possible after postdoctoral work in Canada and the United States.

It is a striking example of what a bequest can do. A person dies, but their values keep working.

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

Mobility Is a Productivity Policy

Keynote Address to Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility Workshop
Australian National University, Canberra 

Friday, 24 April 2026

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, on whose lands we meet today, and pay respects to all First Nations people present. My thanks to Peter Siminski for organising this important workshop on inequality and mobility, and to the Australian National University for hosting us.

There is a certain irony in speaking at a mobility workshop at the same institution where I was a professor sixteen years ago. As my continued presence on this campus suggests, mobility is easier to theorise than to demonstrate.

In 1901, a young woman from the drought-stricken New South Wales bush published a novel about a girl intelligent enough to see exactly why she was trapped, and powerless to escape. Miles Franklin called her book My Brilliant Career. The title was a joke. The career, at least in the novel, never comes. Sybylla Melvyn is clever, ambitious, full of force. Yet she inherits her father’s debts, her mother’s bitterness, and a social order that offers her one respectable ladder out: marriage to a wealthier man. She refuses it. So she remains where she began, with her eyes wide open, which is perhaps the cruellest version of the story.

Ninety years later, Tim Winton published Cloudstreet, with its two working-class families in post-war Perth, the Pickles and the Lambs, and in many ways he was asking the same question in a different key: does where you come from determine where you end up? Australian literature has worried at that question for as long as we have had a literature. Empirical economics arrived later, armed with big data and computing power, but it is still grappling with the same old problem.

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

Eight New Classrooms Open At Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School

23 April 2026  

Students and teachers at Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School will benefit from eight new classrooms and a new two-storey learning building, supported by a $1 million Australian Government investment through the Capital Grants Program.

Member for Fenner Andrew Leigh has officially opened the new facilities, which also include two reading rooms, two teacher planning spaces, a flexible learning space, outdoor decking and gardens.

Assistant Minister Leigh said the new building would strengthen the school’s capacity to support students now and into the future.

“Holy Spirit has built a warm and ambitious school community. This new building gives that community more room to grow, with modern spaces for students to learn and for teachers to plan and work together,” Assistant Minister Leigh said.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 21 APRIL 2026

SUBJECTS: One Nation; Middle East conflict; fuel supply

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Alright. Time to catch up as we do on a fortnightly basis with the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh. Andrew, I’m sure I forgot one of your portfolio responsibilities there?

ANDREW LEIGH: I think you did all four of them there, Stephen!

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Did I? Okay. No, Competition, Charities and Treasury, what’s missing?

ANDREW LEIGH: Productivity.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Productivity, that’s it. The important one.

ANDREW LEIGH: A big priority for the government.

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

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING, WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
MONDAY, 20 APRIL 2026

SUBJECTS: NDIS; May Budget

PATRICIA KARVELAS: For some more pre-budget chat, I want to bring in Andrew Leigh – the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition and Charities. Welcome to the program.

ANDREW LEIGH: Thanks Patricia, great to be with you.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: You work very closely with the Treasurer. I suppose this question around the NDIS being pared back is now key and the government's put it on the agenda. When he meets with state and territory Treasurers tomorrow, what will he ask of them?

ANDREW LEIGH: Well, we engage respectfully with our state and territory colleagues and we do understand the NDIS is the biggest savings challenge we have in the budget. It's nearly $50 billion; almost the amount we spend on the age pension. And when we came to office, it was growing at 22 per cent a year Patricia. We got that down to about 10 per cent and we're working to find further savings because as a Labor creation, Labor knows how important it is to sustain the NDIS and to make sure money is going to those who really need it, not to some of sharks and shonks who've come into the industry.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: But it’s not just about sharks and shonks. Isn't it Labor's design of this scheme that's been a failure?

ANDREW LEIGH: Look, the design is strong. What we need to make sure is that the support is going to those who need it. Thriving Kids deals with one of the challenges in the NDIS, which is that we've seen a big increase in the uptake of young children with autism, particularly boys. And we think that Thriving Kids is a better way of supporting that vulnerable cohort than the NDIS. But the work that we've been doing through the competition portfolio, making sure that people aren't falsely advertising that products are NDIS approved where there's no such thing, and ensuring that we crack down on the misuse of the scheme has been absolutely critical.

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

Bequests, Belonging and the Long Future

CPA Australia Profit for Purpose Conference,
Melbourne

Tuesday, 21 April 2026

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. Thank you to CPA Australia for the invitation to open this year’s Profit for Purpose Conference.

Stories of Giving

Let me begin with three stories.

Bruce and Jenny Pryor lived simply, splitting their time between Canberra and Sydney. After their deaths, it emerged that they had left $10 million to the Australian National University, the largest bequest in the university’s history, to support research into dermatomyositis, the rare autoimmune disease that Jenny Pryor had suffered in her later years. Their nephew James Graham said they were ‘extremely humble and generous people’, and that they had ‘worked hard their whole lives, living modestly, to generate an amazing legacy’. For Jo Morris, who was diagnosed with juvenile dermatomyositis as a child and now lives with chronic pain and severe physical limitations, the bequest opened the possibility of better treatments for others. ANU Professor Carola Vinuesa said the funding would help researchers produce tangible outcomes, adding that scientists feel ‘a duty and an obligation to do our best to make a difference to our patients’. A couple who lived without fuss left behind a gift that could turn grief into discovery, and discovery into relief.

Alan Shaw was one of Australia’s most distinguished historians, a contemporary of Manning Clark’s. Upon his death, he left a bequest of almost $18 million to the National Gallery of Victoria – a gift that, as one news report put it, ‘raised the bar for philanthropic giving to the arts’. Shaw and his wife Peggy had been dedicated supporters of the NGV for more than 30 years. Peggy Shaw, an artist, had drawn him into a circle that included Fred Williams, John Olsen and John Brack. NGV Director Tony Ellwood said the Shaw bequest would have a substantial effect on the gallery, ‘including supporting the growth, preservation, presentation and awareness’ of the collection.

And then there is the story of Jennie Mackenzie, the former Play School director and early childhood educator. Having been through her own cancer journey, Ms Mackenzie was attracted to the work of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, which works on a range of health challenges, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes. As the then academic director of the Charles Perkins Centre put it, ‘In her typically dynamic and generous way, Jennie went on to be involved as a volunteer, mentor, donor and, ultimately, dear friend’. The bequest supports early-career researchers at the Charles Perkins Centre. One researcher, Melkam Kebede, said Mackenzie’s bequest helped make her return to Australia possible after postdoctoral fellowships in Canada and the United States.

Three gifts. Three institutions. Three donors with different passions and different lives. Yet the underlying act is the same. A bequest says: I have lived in this community, I have benefited from this society, and I want some part of what I leave behind to keep doing useful work.

That matters enormously for the for-purpose economy.