Life on the West Island - Controlling the lobby

Since wresting control of one of the West Island’s reputedly safe seats from the Liberal Party, Senator David Pocock has made his mark in Canberra. The former star rugby player has quickly established a reputation as a fearless advocate for important causes by calling out the rorts and distortions which can cripple public faith in the institutions of government. This week he wrote a scathing critique of how unelected insiders exercise undue influence on the decisions made within Canberra’s Parliament House. He began as follows:

Before I decided to run for parliament, like many Australians I was frustrated and angry about the many decisions the government made that clearly weren’t evidence-based or in the best interests of Australians. Over the years I’ve served as the first independent member for the ACT, I’ve come to see why: a lack of transparency and broken lobbying rules.

Lobbying does have a legitimate role to play in our political system. But to protect the strength of our democracy, lobbying needs to be transparent and well regulated. In Australia, it’s not. Most Australians believe, as I once did, that the “government relations” teams at companies such as Qantas, Woodside Energy, Santos and others are considered lobbyists. That’s not the case.

In Canberra, these representatives are known as “in-house lobbyists”. They are exempt from the few federal rules that apply to the relatively small group who are treated as lobbyists – those who act on behalf of third-party clients. That group must register and comply with a code of conduct, while in-house lobbyists, whose interests are considered sufficiently transparent, can get a sponsored pass from any politician – and this is not made public anywhere.

Thanks to this unjustifiably narrow definition of a “lobbyist”, 80 per cent of those operating in Canberra aren’t covered by what is already a weak code of conduct – the vast majority of influence happens in the shadows.

Pocock elaborates that more than 1,500 people currently hold the orange sponsored passes which grant them unlimited access to all areas of Parliament House at all hours, seven days a week. There are no public records about who these people are, or which parliamentarians granted them this extraordinary access. He explains that these passes aren’t merely convenient swipe cards. They allow the holder to stroll through security, sit in the coffee shops, knock on doors, wander the corridors and engineer “chance” encounters with ministers and advisers. Meanwhile, community groups and members of the public are forced to wait weeks or months for meetings, if they get them at all. After three years in politics, I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it is to get the major parties to stand up to vested interests. I’ve seen lobbyists from gambling and fossil-fuel industries stroll into ministers’ offices, while community groups struggle to get a meeting.

Senator Pocock is far from alone in his concerns about the insidious influence of in-house lobbyists on federal government decision making. One of Australia’s leading integrity academics, Professor AJ Brown of Griffith University, has written that the current oversight regime – a lobbying code of conduct and public register – fails to guarantee that the public interest will be preserved in government decision making: especially without independent enforcement, it really is the worst kind of window-dressing, because it’s not even a window with glass in it. It’s just an empty frame.

In its Transparency Project, Guardian Australia reported that anti-corruption advocates, integrity experts and former crossbenchers all agree that the rules are fundamentally flawed. Even the rules that exist, weak as they are, are rarely enforced, experts say.

The lobbying expert and academic George Rennie said the sector in Australia was effectively self-policed. The absence of any real enforcement, he said, sent a clear message to lobbyists is that they don’t really need to pay too much attention to the code, and if they don’t need to worry about the code they don’t need to worry about the register.

Geoffrey Watson SC of the Centre for Public Integrity encapsulated the problem: we are entitled to know how we are being governed, why we are being governed, and who is making the decisions which affect our daily lives.

Senator Pocock and lower house independent member for Kooyong, Monique Ryan, are proposing changes to help remedy this situation. Pocock writes that last year I got support for a Senate inquiry into lobbying. It highlighted just how broken our current system is, and also demonstrated that many lobbyists also support a stronger one. The major parties don’t want a bar of lobbying reform, however.

Along with crossbench colleagues, I’m trying to drive change in parliament. I have introduced the Ryan lobbying reform bill into the Senate. It would bring real transparency and accountability to the lobbying industry in Australia. That means expanding the definition of “lobbyist” to include in-house lobbyists, industry associations and consultants with access to decision-makers. It would also mean legislating the Lobbying Code of Conduct and introducing real penalties for breaches.

The bill would also bring more transparency, including the publication of quarterly online reports showing who lobbyists are meeting with, for how long, and why. This extends to the publication of ministerial diaries, so the public can compare, cross-check and verify lobbying disclosures.

Publishing ministerial diaries is already standard practice in several states. It doesn’t stop ministers doing their jobs, but it does shine a light on who is shaping policy and, equally importantly, who isn’t. It makes no sense that federal ministers should be exempt from this simple, proven integrity measure.

The bill would also ensure independent oversight by the National Anti-Corruption Commissioner and ban ministers and senior staff from lobbying for three years after leaving office. Without these safeguards, the revolving door between politics and harmful industries keeps spinning, crushing public trust in the process.

The time has come for the West Island Parliament to stand up against the destructive antidemocratic influence of lobbyists and to govern transparently in the interests of all. Senator Pocock is showing us the way.