Andrew Leigh Mp: Speeches & Conversations

In Melbourne, on 19 November, I launched Innovation + Equality:How to create a future that is more Star Trek than Terminator, which I co-authored with Joshua Gans. 

Michael Lester hosts the Innovation Talk program on Radio Northern Beaches. We chatted about my book with Joshua Gans, 'Innovation + Equality: How To Create a Future That is More Star Trek Than Terminator.'

Replication, Randomisation and Rigour: AIMOS 2019. This talk was delivered at the launch of the Association for Inter-disciplinary Meta-research and Open Science on 7 November 2019 at the University of Melbourne.

In conversation with Allan Fels about his new book Tough Customer - chasing a better deal for battlers. You can learn more about Allan's book here.

"Australia Disconnected - and Reconnected" - Address to the Power to the People Conference, Canberra 16 August 2019.

As part of ANU's Authors In Conversation series, I spoke with Adele Ferguson about Banking Bad, her account of corporate cover-ups, whistleblowers and how she broke the stories that led to the Banking Royal Commission.

Ten Ideas for Reducing Inequality - inequality won't fix itself. If we want a fair society with equal opportunity for everyone, we need to make public policy choices accordingly. Here are ten places we could start. 

In conversation with Peter Lewis about his new book Webtopia: The Worldwide Wreck of Tech and How to Make the Net Work. You can learn more about Peter's book here.  

Small-L Liberalism and the Labor Tradition Keynote Address - Second Annual History and the Hill Conference - Australian Policy and History  

Launching John Quiggin's 'Economics in Two Lessons'.  Because one-lesson economics only tells half the story. For more information on John's book - Economics in Two Lessons - Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly - click here.

Announcing Labor's Tax Inspectors without Borders policy, I spoke at the ANU Devpolicy Centre about how tax havens hurt other developing countries, and what we can do about it.

As a part of Per Capita's reform series, and on the first day of the federal Election campaign, I set out Labor's centrist economic agenda for fairness and opportunity.

As a part of the ANU 'Meet the Author' series, i was In Conversation with Rebecca Huntley about polling, focus groups and the character of Australian democracy. Rebecca's Quarterly Essay, Australia Fair, is out now.

I spoke with award winning author Judith Brett as a part of ANU's In Conversation program. Judith's new book From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage, gives a landmark account of the character of Australian democracy. We spoke about the peculiarly Australian aspects of our democratic system and the effects our innovations have had on elections here and on voting practices around the world.

Reflecting on heat waves and high stakes, I set out the urgent climate challenge we all need to face up to.  The full text of the speech is also available here.  

Building a better feedback loop: Labor to establish an Evaluator General Increasingly, policymakers in other nations are testing programs through randomised trials, with the same kind of control group used to evaluate new pharmaceuticals in clinical drug trials. When Australian policymakers develop programs in early childhood, health, crime and employment, we often look to those overseas randomised trials.

Presenting one of the keynote address to 2018 Conference of the Australia Indonesia Business Council, I recalled my childhood in Aceh and celebrated the connections Labor has been forging with this major trading partner and our region more broadly.

On 31 October, i presented the Lionel Murphy Lecture at the ANU, reflecting on Lionel Murphy's legacy and the challenge of framing competition laws that could help reduce inequality. Australia has a competition problem: there is not enough of it. Our industries are concentrated. Our markets show signs of weak competition.  There is a strong progressive case for repositioning how we think about competition. Focusing more on the competitive process, the structure of markets and the incentives those structures create for firms will play an important role in reducing inequality.

Why unions are vital to Advance Australia Fair - Melbourne, 2 October 2018

As a part of the ANU / Canberra Times 'Meet the Author' series, I joined Peter Mares to shine some light on Australia's housing affordabilty blindspots. Peter's new book is called No Place Like Home: Repairing Australia's Housing Crisis.  More than a million lower-income households in Australia pay above the affordability benchmark for their housing costs. More than 100,000 people are homeless. Seventy per cent of us are concerned we'll never own property. Yet owning a home is still seen by most Australians as an essential part of our way of life. Peter's expertly informed and eminently readable, No Place Like Home cuts through the noise around housing affordability and asks the common-sense questions about why we do housing the way we do, and what the alternatives might be. You can learn more about No Place Like Home here.