Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

It's a real pleasure to rise to speak in the address-in-reply debate following a remarkable election victory for the Albanese government. The Prime Minister spoke during the election campaign about the importance of kindness and about looking after the most vulnerable. That message resonated with the Australian community, and the number of seats that Labor now holds in the House of Representatives is higher than at any time in Australian history. The share of the seats is higher than at any time since 1943.

I was really honoured in my own electorate of Fenner to receive a 6.4 per cent swing, with 53.8 per cent of the primary vote and 72.1 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. I want to acknowledge the other candidates who ran in that election—Bola Olatunbosun, Dani Hunterford and Elizabeth Kikkert—and to thank each of the 97,000 voters who participated. You might think that I'm approximating when I say '97,000 voters'. No, I'm being exact. There were precisely 97,000 voters in the last election in the electorate of Fenner.

I want to thank my staff who worked on the campaign—my campaign manager, Kal Slater; my chief of staff, Nick Terrell; Blair Arnold; Bronwyn Asquith; Chris Davis, Cohen Elliott, Cullen Savle, Felicity Wilkins, Frances Kitt, Maria Neill and Meg Thomas—and my volunteers, including Christine Debu, Gerry Lloyd, Jo Corrigan, Naomi Nicholson and 93-year-old Trevor Smith. As the previous speaker did, I acknowledge the immense support that I receive from my family: my parents, Barbara and Michael Leigh; my wife, Gweneth Leigh; and my three wonderful boys, Sebastian, Theodore and Zachary.

Since being elected, the government has turned its focus to the issue of productivity. Productivity is a significant challenge in Australia, and the decade up to 2020 was the worst decade of productivity growth in the postwar era. The quarter in which our government came to office in 2022 saw a huge fall in productivity. Our government wants to boost productivity, because we recognise that this is the way we raise living standards and the way Australia can be more generous to those who are vulnerable here and overseas.

The Treasurer's economic reform roundtable was preceded by a range of productivity roundtables across the country—more than 40 in all—and I was pleased to participate in a number of those. On 13 August, the ACT Labor federal representatives—Katy Gallagher, David Smith, Alicia Payne and myself—held a roundtable focusing on how we boost productivity, resilience and budget sustainability. I would like to thank the attendees: Blake Conor Proberts, Devin Bowles, Abid Khan, Michael Thomson, Hala Batainah, Margot McNeill, David Marshall, Mandy Hill, George Kadmos, Adam Fennessy, Matthew Kadelaars, Markus Doherty, Janet Salisbury, Maddy Northam, Corinne Dobson, Anna-Maria Arabia, Andrew Meares, Greg Harford, Michael Matthews, Alison Percival, Frank Porreca, Garry Watson, Kathy Ehrmann, Michael Hamill, Keith Cantlie and Emma Sparks, as well as Bill Shorten, the vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra. The discussion was free-flowing and thoughtful, engaged in topics such as how the ACT can help to serve as the nation's social laboratory and how we can use our willingness to be at the cutting edge of reform to provide productivity lessons that benefit the nation as a whole.

On 7 August I drew together a range of economists from universities and think tanks to focus on the drivers of productivity growth. We met in Melbourne and held sessions on technology and human capital, investment and allocative efficiency. I want to thank the many attendees, including Bob Breunig, Kristen Sobeck, Jenny Gordon, Timothy Moore, Beth Webster, David Byrne, Miranda Stewart, Simon Loertscher, Cassandra Winzar, Flavio Menezes, Janeen Baxter, John Quiggin, Michael Brennan, Silvia Griselda, Brendan Coates, Aruna Sathanapally, Deborah Cobb-Clark, Richard Holden, John Piggott, Alison Preston, Janine Dixon, Leonora Risse, Peter Tulip, Guy Debelle, Alberto Posso, Ingrid Burford, John Asker—who joined us from UCLA—John Fingleton, Dan Andrews, Henry Sherrell and Saul Eslake. That conversation was the most wonkish productivity discussion I've participated in.

Among the ideas discussed were the importance of ensuring we get the very most out of assets, how we might use the electricity grid in a way that ensures we don't have to build too much excess capacity for those few hours a year when the grid is peaking out and how we make the very most of our transport network to ensure we don't need to build roads that are only at their maximum capacity for an hour a day. Also emphasised was the notion of investment and how we make smart investments and evaluate those investments using rigorous processes such as randomised trials, as we've sought to do through the establishment of the Australian Centre for Evaluation. I thank all of those economists from academia and 'think tank land' for the thoughtful way in which they engaged in that discussion. As a professor-turned-politician I very much see one of my roles in this place as being to act as a conduit from the world of ideas to the world of power and welcome those who have raised their ideas and will continue to be part of that conversation.

On 5 August, the Minister for Social Services, Tanya Plibersek, and I held a productivity roundtable with charities and not-for-profits. The focus of that roundtable was to ensure how the not-for-profit sector can deliver more impact—not by compromising values or chasing metrics but through better systems, smarter incentives and greater capability. That roundtable explored how governments can support the sector with a focus on long-lasting, positive intergenerational change, including for First Nations people, people with disability and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. There was a discussion around evaluation and how we ensure that government programs are better evaluated, and a discussion around IT capability and the recognition that we need to do more in order to ensure that charities and not-for-profits are protected against cyber threats and are able to make the very most of the artificial intelligence revolution.

I want to thank Tim Liu, Cassandra Goldie, Sarah Davies, Maiy Azize, Barry Sandison, Harry Greenwell, Eleanor Williams, Travers McLeod, Armine Nalbandian, Heidi Peterson, David Crosbie, Stephanie Harvey, Robyn Clough, Mary Ann Geronimo, Ian Hamm, Julian Elliott, David Spriggs, Graeme O'Connor, Jason Tabarias, Jo Barraket, John Hartman, Marion Bennett, Kristy Muir, Krystian Seibert, Andrew Colvin, Nick Tebbey, Mel Parks, James Toomey, Saffron Zomer, Toby O'Connor, Tanya von Ahlefeldt, Rob Sturrock, Kristen Stevenson, Angus McFarland, Karen Douglas, Julia Keady, Robyn Mildon, Adrian Appo, Paul Conroy, Geraldine Menere, Tabatha Feher and Michael Carmody for their participation in that charities and not-for-profits productivity roundtable.

On 12 August, I was pleased to participate in a roundtable about productivity in Western Australia, organised by Tania Lawrence, alongside WA Treasurer Rita Saffioti. That discussion focused on the unique role of the resources sector within Western Australia but also on the importance of ensuring a diverse industrial base for Western Australia. Attendees contributed a wide range of ideas about technological uptake, boosting investment and how to ensure that Western Australians are ready for the jobs of the future. I was particularly impressed by the way in which Tania Lawrence had engaged so extensively with the attendees, spending at least half an hour with each of them beforehand and adeptly drawing together their contributions in order to make the most out of that roundtable.

All of these roundtable discussions fed into the Economic Reform Roundtable conducted here at Parliament House from 19 to 21 August. That roundtable was convened by the Treasurer, and the Assistant Treasurer and I were pleased to be in the room for the three days of the conversation. Twenty-nine hours sitting in a windowless room may not seem like everyone's idea of fun, but when you're talking about economic reform there is nowhere I would rather have been. I admire the way in which so many of the attendees took off their sectional interest hats and put on a national interest hat, engaging constructively on how we boost productivity and engaging in particular with those ministers who came into the room for particular parts of the discussion. We had Minister Tim Ayres; we had Minister Murray Watt; and, of course, we had Minister Clare O'Neil, who came in to discuss the significant challenges that she is grappling with in the housing sector and the vital work that she doing across local, state and territory governments in order to ensure that we build the houses we need.

Many members will be familiar with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book Abundance, which emphasises the way in which a series of well-meaning regulations can together overlap to create a thicket of regulation which prevents us building the homes and the clean energy infrastructure and doing the research that advanced countries need. That philosophy is very much in accord with a government led by a prime minister who is the former infrastructure minister and who has a passionate commitment to seeing more homes built. While in the last parliament we fought the housing supply denialists to our left and right, we are getting on with the job of building—not only with the Commonwealth balance sheet but also in engaging with state, territory and local governments in order to ensure that the regulations don't stand in the way of construction. I'm sure Minister O'Neil will speak much more articulately than me in her contribution next.

The roundtable identified 10 areas of consensus: progressing work towards a single market to improve the federation; simplifying trade and tariffs; better regulation to cut the clutter; speeding up approvals in national priority areas; building more homes more quickly; making AI a national priority; attracting capital and deploying investment; building a skilled and adaptable workforce; creating a better tax system; and modernising government services.

We understand the importance of ensuring that government is more productive as well. The work we're doing through Minister Gallagher is vital, as is the better evaluation of government programs. In some sense, the challenge that we face with productivity is akin to the challenge we face on the sporting field. Sport doesn't face a trade-off between fairness and excellence, and neither should the economy.

Our objective as a government is to ensure that we lift everyone up and that we don't simply look at average measured productivity and worry it might go down if we move somebody from long-term joblessness into work. We recognise that it is the productivity of everyone that counts and that we need to have measures of productivity that better capture the vital work that is done in the care economy.

In closing, can I just acknowledge an important milestone that passed this year. The ANU Indonesia Project has turned 60. The ANU Indonesia Project is run out of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU and been a jewel in the crown for the ANU. I want to acknowledge Professor Budy Resosudarmo, the head of the ANU Indonesia Project, and the faculty who work within that project. Hal Hill has played a critical role in the ANU Indonesia Project throughout his career. He is somebody who has been a real mentor to me and to so many others within that project. Terima kasih banyak, Hal.

The project's 60th anniversary saw speeches given by Stephen Kennedy, Dennis Richardson, Lisa Cameron, Mari Pangestu, Chatib Basri, Bambang Brodjonegoro, Ross Garnaut and Penny Wong. It reflects the strong standing in which the ANU Indonesia Project is held and the vital work that ANU does in strengthening the relationship between Australia and Indonesia.

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