
As a long-ago holder of an orange lobbyist Parliament House pass (referred to as a ‘gold diggers’ pass, in contrast to the ‘true blue’ pass of staffers or the ‘yellow press’ pass for the press gallery), I read the latest kerfuffle about lobbying, political donations, influence peddling and political insider trading with an element of quiet resignation.
Outrage about corporate links with government and the lobbying industry generally comes and goes, as regular as clockwork, and no substantial changes ever result.
Lobbying after all is simply the business of making representations to decision-makers, whether that’s for a new pedestrian crossing at your local school, or the acquisition of a mining licence worth zillions of dollars.
The basic skills are the same – marshal your facts in a succinct but comprehensive form, be aware of the environment you are operating in, and make your case to the appropriate decision makers.
But it’s the third point that separates the wolves from the sheep.
You can marshal your facts (or at least your version of them), identify the decision makers but if you can’t get access then you may as well write a letter to the Canberra Times.
Access of course is heavily influenced by who you know, and contacts you have built up over the years. While I agree on bans on those leaving senior Government positions as either politicians or public servants for a lobbying role, I think this would be very difficult to enforce in practice.
While the revolving door of rent-seekers is an important issue, the guts of the problem is money, specifically donations to political parties, and I think so long as this central issue remains unaddressed, other initiatives are just window-dressing.
The Lobbyists Register is simply a joke. After all, the best-funded and some of the most effective lobbyists are from the big institutions, such as business, industry and professional associations, unions and other groups, who are not included on the Register.
Some on the Register treat it as an advertising/bragging platform. A few years ago there was a frisson of interest when a little-known person on the Register suddenly included a raft of Australia’s largest and most prestigious companies as clients.
How could this be?
It turned out that he worked in a semi-voluntary capacity for an informal organisation founded to promote a good cause, which had received letters/rumbles of support/best wishes from major corporates. Sometime later, they were extremely surprised that they had been registered as clients, and that this individual was their lobbyist in Canberra.
But boy did it look impressive.
One of the reasons originally advanced for the Register was so that decision-makers would know who they were dealing with, and who the lobbyist was employed by.
Maybe I’m too unsophisticated a soul, but I could never understand how you could be an effective adviser or advocate if your target audience didn’t know who you were representing.
Anyway, back to the main game – donations to political parties.
Make no mistake, donations buy access. Companies and organisations expect a return on their investment, and mostly, but not always, get it.
Indeed I do recall an incident where a client paid the admission price, and secured a seat next to the Minister at a fundraising dinner. The client was duly coaxed on how to behave, but his overweening commercial enthusiasm had him rabbiting on, in eye-watering detail, to the Minister for much of the evening.
The next morning we got a phone call from the Minister’s Office saying ‘If you try to sit that little c..t next to the Minister again, you’ll be blackbanned.’
So you pay your money, and take your chances. But mostly, having paid your money, your chances are much, much better. And if you don’t win on the night, you can always deposit it in the favour bank.
The recent PWC ‘sponsorship’ of an ALP fundraiser in Canberra on Budget night was just another example of this, albeit a spectacularly poorly timed one.
And of course the activities of Stuart Roberts, the recently retired Member for Fadden, provide another pertinent example of how this system works from the politician’s standpoint.
At least he will enjoy spending more time with his family.
And we could go on and on……
So you can diligently do your homework, but if you can’t get access, as we have said you may as well write a letter to your local paper.
That excellent poacher turned gamekeeper, Michael Yabsley, has written extensively on this, with the advantage of an insiders perspective.
Amongst other suggestions, Yabsley proposed:
1) Realistic limits for donations of say $200, rather than the current $14,500 limit set by the Howard Government;
2) All donations to be anonymous and non-disclosable, given their small size;
3) Enforcement of laws regarding donations, including criminal sanctions for offences such as aggregating small donations into larger packages;
4) Importantly, donations are only permitted from individuals on the Electoral Roll – no corporate or institutional funding.
Being a pragmatist, Yabsley recognises that with business and unions against you, there is virtually no chance of this last but most important initiative coming to pass, despite it being potentially a massive improvement to the democratic process.
An alternative view that proposes public but limited funding of political parties while not allowing private donations, also runs into similar political opposition.
In addition to limiting influence-peddling, this would provide an element of much-needed transparency to the political process, and limit the enormous and rapidly increasing costs of running political campaigns.
You can hear the howls now, whinging about limits to free speech, not only from political parties but from the advertising industry, commercial media and other fellow travellers – ‘how can parties campaign effectively – given the enormous cost – how can they put their view to the public and explain their policies, without adequate funding? The costs of campaigning are enormous in our modern democracy…freedom of speech… the public deserves to be informed etc.’
And when was your view last informed by a corflute?
Given the prospect for meaningful reform in this critical area, I’m going back to watching Yes Minister re-runs.