A register of Australian and foreign lobbyists is to be welcomed by the Rudd Government. Finally an executive administration has recognised the inherent danger of allowing lobbyists unhindered access to parliamentarians.

Over 600 lobbyists currently have a pass to Parliament House in Canberra. Since the 1980s lobbying in Australia has grown from a small industry of a few hundred employees to a multi billion dollar a year industry. According to Lobbying in Australia there are more than 1,000 lobbyists in Canberra.

Over $1 billion is spent lobbying the Federal and State governments in what has become an industry in its own right. Of the 150 lobby groups analysed in Lobbying in Australia, they had more than 260 public relations officers, 2431 staff and a budget of over $713 million. This equates to more than $6 million on average for each lobby group. The concept of one or two shady characters trying to manipulate the government in Canberra is false; the lobbying industry has turned totally professional and now resembles some of the unsavoury habits that have occurred in the United States!

Lobbying has become a political fact of life and is now endemic in Australia. It is not just the local councillors, state and federal politicians being lobbied. What was once the preserve of big multi-national companies and at a more local level, property developers, has morphed into an industry that employs more than 10,000 people and represent every facet of human endeavour.

We have become a country of “aspirational” public relations companies and non-government organisations (NGOs) that now seek to influence and control public policy initiatives and programmes, not through debate in parliament but through accessing millions of dollars in public funding grants and running programmes.

The main concern about just the registration of lobbyists is that it does not go far enough and regulate the industry. It is only through the public disclosure of financial annual reports that the public can feel that they are fully informed of the activities of the lobbyists. There are several forms of legislation in democratic countries around the world and it is the Canadian model that is proving popular in the corridors of Canberra.

However, the Canadian Lobbyists Registration Act and the new Australian proposal still need to go further. In Canada lobbyists are not required to disclose financial information other than the government funding received by their clients. Lobbyists’ finances in Australia are growing at three times the rate of inflation and staff numbers are increasing. Thus, it should not only be a register, but we must regulate the industry as well.