Noah Secomb:
And now we’re talking to the Assistant Minister for – here we go: Competition, Charities and Treasury. I’ve missed one. I’ve missed one in there. I think productivity is somewhere in that pile. So, here’s to Andrew Leigh and first of all, thanks for coming on.
Andrew Leigh:
My pleasure.
Secomb:
For those who perhaps aren’t engaged in federal politics too much – talk us through what your portfolio means, what your job looks like and how that kind of fits in with representing a chunk of Canberra?
Leigh:
So my job is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury, which means I assist the Treasurer on a range of issues in his portfolio. Productivity is a big challenge for the government in this term. Productivity has languished over the course of the last 15 years and one of our big priorities is getting a strong growth agenda.
Part of that is through competition. We’ve done some competition reforms, national competition policy and mergers but we’ve got a lot more to do, including holding the supermarkets to account. I’m responsible for the government’s regulation of charities, which I think of as kind of a community building portfolio. Rebuilding that sense of shared purpose that increasingly Australia has struggled with. And then Treasury is the sort of catch all for the work that I do on a range of issues, including the Mint, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and multinational taxation.
Secomb:
Yeah right. So, you’ve got plenty to do. That’s always good.
Leigh:
I’m very lucky. Yes. Lots of interesting things to work on with the Treasurer.
Secomb:
And so looking at some of the news of this last week, especially coming out of Iran and the conflict in the Middle East. A lot of concern has been going to the rising petrol prices and we’ve heard in recent days that the Treasurer has empowered the ACCC to really look into petrol price gouging. So what does that actually look like when we’re talking about empowering the ACCC to do something like that?
Leigh:
Well the competition watchdog already does regular petrol price monitoring, but we’ve asked them in particular to look at the prices that are being charged to Australians. We do know that there’s been differences in terms of the increase in fuel prices at the bowser across different states and territories and that there’s going to be a lag, typically one or 2 weeks between when the oil price goes up on the world market and the petrol price goes up at the bowser.
We want to make sure Australians aren’t being gouged. It’s a time to use those petrol apps and to shop around, because there is more price dispersion now than we see many times. And we’ve raised the penalties for anti‑competitive conduct. And so any petrol stations that are out there erroneously claiming that their prices are due to world increases in world prices where that’s not true, they face bigger penalties than ever before as a result of the new laws Labor’s put in place.
Secomb:
Another sort of sector where we’ve seen you introduce anti‑price gouging laws – we saw that was introduced for the supermarket industry. Is this quite a similar sort of a process? Are we looking at a very –2 similar industries in how they can price gouge and how we can see the trends happening, or is this completely different?
Leigh:
Well our price gouging laws which will apply to Coles and Woolworths and kick in from the first of July this year are specific to the supermarket sector. Within the broader fuel sector, we’ve been ensuring that the ACCC has those powers in order to follow any issues of collusive conduct. There has been academic research in the last decade that’s talked about tacit collusion. The ability of petrol companies to manage the weekly price cycle through signalling to one another using prices and the ACCC’s new data analysis capability will allow them to be more on top of that than ever before.
The petrol price cycle, I think, does speak to challenges that are going on in the fuel market. You wouldn’t think that in a highly competitive market this should be a cheap day to buy petrol or an expensive day to buy petrol. But increasingly there has been signs that that’s the case across some fuel markets.
Secomb:
Is there any concern that some of these petrol stations are owned by supermarkets or is that actually going to be a positive, considering that there’s now more scrutiny on the supermarket sector?
Leigh:
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that has come out of the ACCC supermarket inquiry is concern over loyalty programs and that flows into the propensity of people to shop at particular petrol stations because they get loyalty points. One of the things that we’re looking at is whether supermarkets should have to provide in dollar terms, the benefits to consumers of their loyalty programs. In some cases, that might suggest to consumers that actually they weren’t getting that much back on loyalty programs and therefore encourage them to look for the cheapest bowser price. That sort of competitive pressure can be useful. The more people are price sensitive, the better the prices are for everyone else.
Secomb:
And just briefly to what we’re actually seeing in terms of the price rises here, we’ve heard from your colleague, the Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, saying that it’s largely people panic buying is actually causing the price spike in Australia. Is that a correct assessment? And what’s actually happening?
Leigh:
Absolutely. We’re not seeing any ships bringing oil to Australia being stopped. What we are seeing is an increase in demand, which has led to shortages in some areas. We’ve got the fuel reserves in Australia which are in a better shape than they’ve been at any time in the last 15 years. Now we’ve got around 3 billion litres of diesel, 1.5 billion litres of petrol and also stocks of jet fuel. And so those fuel reserves exist. What we are urging Australian motorists and farmers is don’t panic buy, the fuel is available there and the government has ample fuel reserves as a result of bringing a range of those fuel reserves onshore compared to under the previous government when they were in places like Texas and Louisiana.
Secomb:
You’re listening to people powered Radio 2XX. I’m Noah Secomb and this is Wednesday Breakfast. We’re joined by Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury. Now just before that song, we were talking about the growing concerns over petrol prices in the wake of the Middle East conflict.
Now, to a bit of a different sort of topic but related to the pressures that we’re seeing out of the Middle East with a lot of people that were caught up in their travel. We understand that when they’re repatriated onto commercial flights, they’re often covered by the flight carrier themselves. But I mean, something that’s, I’m not certain where the line is drawn on this, so really I’m just seeking a bit of clarification. We know that travel insurance doesn’t cover situations of war. What are the actual protections in place for people looking to travel in the next few months, especially through the Middle East?
Leigh:
Yeah. That’s going to turn on people’s fine print. And I would urge people who are considering travel to look carefully at what’s in the fine print of the airline ticket and what’s in the fine print of travel insurance if you purchase such a policy. Some people also have travel insurance as a result of having bought the ticket on a credit card that applies travel insurance and there you really need to do the homework of checking it out.
Before anyone cancels their trips it’s also worth checking what your alternatives are because fares are moving quite quickly at the moment and there’s the potential to cancel one ticket, but then only to find yourself paying more down the track. So it’s a time where travellers need to be doing their homework, speaking to the travel agents if you’re working through a travel agent or otherwise carefully looking at what your options are.
Secomb:
And just to that concept of war being an exclusion from travel insurance for – I believe it’s all insurers, is that a loophole or a gap that is something that should be filled by the government, something that you’ve considered? Or is this actually perhaps an expectation that we have on insurance that isn’t reasonable?
Leigh:
Look, we don’t tend to prohibit certain provisions within insurance, except where they’re misleading consumers. A general principle of insurance is that the more that is insured, the higher the premiums will be. So in this instance, I think it’s a decision by the insurers to say, ‘Look, if we want to offer a more affordable product, then we need to rule out covering instances of war’. That’s not something the government is minded to legislate on at the moment. Though, the issue will be one for the Assistant Treasurer, Daniel Mulino ultimately.
Secomb:
Lastly, just to one other part of your portfolio, more the charities side of things. We were speaking with the Volunteering Australia CEO, Mark Pearce earlier this year and kind of talking about what the sector needs to survive.
[Excerpt]
Mark Pearce:
A national passport would alleviate a lot of those barriers, would provide a cleaner, simpler, more streamlined approach for volunteers to be able to say, ‘Hey, I’ve done the things, and I know because you’re connected into the passport’, that you already have all of that information, which is critical.
[End of excerpt]
Secomb:
When it comes to some of these accreditations across different states, what’s that at? Is there a universal sort of system being worked on?
Leigh:
Yeah. Mark Pearce has been a terrific contributor in terms of building the strength of volunteering across Australia and reminding people this isn’t just about pure altruism. There’s what they call the ‘helpers high’, in which the act of helping others can leave you with an extra spring in your step. I always find my boys are a little nicer when we’ve gone out and volunteered for Clean Up Australia Day rather than them just sitting on their devices. And I think they’d probably say the same is true of their dad as well. So Volunteering Australia has done a power of good in encouraging people to volunteer. The volunteering passport they’ve set up is a good way of getting people able to put up their volunteering credentials and approach a range of different organisations they might volunteer with.
And the government has also been focused on getting a national Working With Children Check. This is something that had been on the back burner under the former government. We’ve made it a priority because we believe that many organisations need to know for sure that their volunteers have passed that working with vulnerable people check. The standardisation is not a straightforward process but it is appropriate, particularly given some of the challenges that we’ve seen in the early childhood sector and others.
Secomb:
Well thank you very much Andrew Leigh, for your time.
Leigh:
Real pleasure, thanks Noah.
Secomb:
And that was the Assistant Minister for Charities, Competition, Productivity and Treasury, and not necessarily in that order.