Andrew Leigh has played down the significance of taking a $40,000 pay cut to stay on the Labor frontbench as the result of a factional deal to save left powerbroker Kim Carr.
Leigh told Radio National on Monday “the last thing we need to be worrying about … is whether someone slipped from the top 1% of the income distribution to the top 2%”.
In the reshuffle, announced on Saturday, Leigh was reappointed shadow assistant treasurer and shadow minister for competition, and gained responsibility for productivity, trade in services, charities and not-for-profits.
But Leigh was forced to take a pay cut from $230,000 to about $190,000 because only 30 members of the frontbench can receive shadow ministerial salaries.
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, was forced to expand the shadow ministry to 32 when one of his key allies, left faction powerbroker Kim Carr, gained the support of the party’s right to remain on the frontbench following a left factional split.
Asked whether he had paid the price for being factionally unaligned, Leigh said: “There are families in Australia today that are struggling to be able to afford to buy Christmas presents for their kids, struggling to afford to be able to get to the doctor, there are people who slept homeless last night.
“Let’s not worry about people in the top couple of per cent of the income distribution, we’re doing just fine.”
Leigh said he felt “extraordinarily fortunate” to be in federal parliament and even more so to be on the Labor frontbench. “I have no sense of disappointment about this.”
Leigh said everyone preselected to contest a seat was lucky because “there are probably 100 people who could have done the job and would have loved to do it”.
“You don’t sit around in this job saying woe is me.”
Asked about Leigh’s pay cut on Saturday, Shorten said: “I don’t think any of our people are motivated by the pay and I don’t think Andrew Leigh deserves to be characterised in terms of that’s what motivates him.”
Shorten said he had “great confidence” in Leigh and he had been determined to ensure he stayed on the frontbench.
He acknowledged there had been “passion” in the argument but he had decided to keep Carr on the frontbench after “quite a range of people came to me and said they still think he had something to contribute”.
Leigh reiterated his opposition to an effects test, after the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims, strongly backed the changes as “rational policy” opposed by big companies because they did not want to face competition.
Leigh said he was concerned the effects test would result in a “lawyers’ picnic” that had been opposed by 10 of the last 12 competition reviews.
The effects test could stand in the way of cheap milk, nationally standard grocery prices and big chains opening up new stores in regional areas, he said.
Leigh reiterated Labor’s call for an inquiry into superannuation changes. He refused to say whether Labor would support exempting major life events, such as an inheritance, from the $500,000 nonconcessional cap on super contributions, as some in the Coalition have called for.
