Dr Andrew Leigh, the 441st person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, describes himself as an introvert doing an extrovert’s job.

Andrew is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury & Employment, as well as the Federal Member for Fenner in the ACT, which means a large part of his role involves meeting people. Andrew is a very nice person and a very good conversationalist, but, as an introvert, needs to be alone from time to time to replenish his energy.

Before being elected to parliament in 2010, Andrew was a professor of economics at the Australian National University. While Andrew really enjoyed the job, it exposed him to only a narrow cross-section of society – almost everyone he met either had a PhD or was studying for one. Andrew says one of the privileges of being a parliamentarian is that you get to converse with people from all walks of life.

During our conversation, I proposed an idea to Andrew (I can no longer recall about what), to which he replied, “I’d like to see the data on that” – not because he was trying to challenge me but because he genuinely wanted to see the data. I don’t know if Andrew became an economist because he was data-driven or if being an economist made him that way, but he believes in using evidence to reach conclusions, rather than staking out positions and then working backwards to make the evidence fit. 

While Andrew is a member of the Australian Labor Party, he has friends from across the political spectrum – although he says he should probably have more. He also makes a point of consuming content from people he disagrees with, to be exposed to different points of view.

Andrew is fit of body as well as mind – he’s planning to do a 30km run to ring in the new year and a 100km ultramarathon in March. I wondered how such a busy person could find time for all this exercise, but Andrew told me that going for long training runs before work is less time-consuming than it sounds. I’ll have to take his word for it.

I really enjoyed getting to know Andrew: he’s interesting, intelligent and modest. I also appreciated what our meeting revealed about Australia: in many countries, a powerful politician would never deign to meet with an ordinary person unless they stood to benefit in some way. But I thought nothing of asking Andrew to lunch; he thought nothing of accepting; and we had a friendly conversation, as equals.