(Image: Private Media)

This is part 10 in a series. For the full series, go here.

The game of access and influence is running hot in Canberra — well-connected lobbyists have easy access to politicians on behalf of their clients or employers.

As the new “Julie Bishop” rule shows, the secret to their success is their insider status: almost 40% of them are former politicians, public servants or ministerial advisers. This has been described as the “revolving door”, where former public officials capitalise on and monetise their networks to gain access to powerful decision-makers and policymakers for profit.

Issues have emerged with this sale of access and influence. For one, a few lobbyists have crossed the line and engaged in unlawful or corrupt conduct.

Former New South Wales Labor MP Eddie Obeid, his son Moses, and former NSW mining minister Ian Macdonald, were recently sent to jail. Obeid had improperly influenced Macdonald as mining minister to make decisions that favoured his family’s financial interests.    

Hearings of anti-corruption commissions also abound with lobbyists behaving badly. In the Victorian IBAC’s Operation Sandon in 2019-20, it was revealed that a lobbyist had funnelled bags of cash totalling more than $100,000 from a property developer to a councillor.

So one impetus for regulating lobbying is to prevent corruption. 

But there is a broader purpose too: to enhance political equality. By increasing transparency in the disclosure of lobbying activities, fairness in government policymaking would be assured. For example, if environmental organisations know the mining industry is meeting five times a week with a minister to try to get a mine approved, they can marshal their forces and counter-lobby.

The third main purpose is to improve the quality of government decision-making. When government decision-makers have a wider range of views presented to them, it ensures they are better informed and less likely to be skewed towards narrow sectional interests. This in turn will increase public confidence in the integrity of political institutions.

Yet the regulation of lobbying at the federal level remains dismal. The federal register of lobbyists includes only about 20% of lobbyists because it covers only commercial lobbyists hired by third party clients, not in-house lobbyists. 

By contrast, comparable democracies such as the United States and Canada regulate third party lobbyists. 

Another issue is that the federal register of lobbyists requires only details of lobbyists and their clients to be disclosed. There are no details about how often the lobbyists meet ministers, or what policies they discuss. 

The states have been more proactive. Queensland requires lobbyists to disclose each and every lobbying contact, and makes ministers disclose their diaries. But even then the quality of disclosure has been poor; some lobbyists merely list the reason for lobbying contact as “other”.

Scotland has a much better policy. In its lobbyist register, lobbyists publicly disclose their activities, including precisely who they met, the subject matter, which legislation they are lobbying in relation to, and what they were hoping to achieve.

Finally, compliance and enforcement are key to a successful system of lobbying regulation.

Guardian Australia has reported poor enforcement efforts by Australian regulators; not a single lobbyist has been punished for breaching the rules in five years from 2018 federally, or in Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia.

As part of the impetus to improve a declining public faith in democracy and political institutions in Australia, governments should seek to regulate the strong influence of vested interests and influence peddlers that can drown out less well-resourced and -connected voices. A light should be shone on what is happening behind closed doors, in the shadowy rooms linking a network of pulleys and pistons and counterweights of power. 

Reform of lobbying regulations will reduce the risk of corruption by lobbyists and public officials. And ultimately it will promote the democratic norms of political equality and fairness.