{"id":80183,"date":"2026-08-25T17:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/80183\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T17:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:14:12","slug":"australias-lobbying-rules-are-too-loose-whatever-murray-watt-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/80183\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s lobbying rules are too loose, whatever Murray Watt says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe already have very strict\u00a0lobbyist\u00a0rules in place within government \u2026 and, of course, any\u00a0lobbyist\u00a0needs to be on the\u00a0lobbyist\u00a0register.\u201d So said Murray Watt, Labor\u2019s Mr Fixit, famous for trying to push through laws<\/a> to enable ministers like him to secretly approve environmentally damaging fossil fuel projects.<\/p>\n

Any commentary from Watt about lobbyists should thus be taken with a grain of salt \u2014 or several tonnes of it. Despite Watt\u2019s glib insistence, there are no strict lobbying rules in place within the federal government, and most lobbyists don\u2019t need to be on the lobbyist register.<\/p>\n

The spotlight is on lobbying due to the efforts of the Australian Democracy Network (ADN) to analyse<\/a> lobbying and lobbyists, and Four Corners, which devoted an episode to the issue on Monday night. It\u2019s rare for the mainstream media to devote attention to lobbying, and if it does, it\u2019s usually because of the actions of individual lobbyists, not the systemic faults in what passes for the regulation of it.<\/p>\n

Despite Watt\u2019s fanciful claims, the only strictures on lobbying are that third-party lobbyists have to be registered \u2014 unless<\/a> they\u2019re a lawyer, or accountant, or consultant, or some other provider of professional services, in which case they don\u2019t have to register if their lobbying is occasional or incidental to their services. But most people who try to influence decision-makers work directly for corporations \u2014 ADN\u2019s research shows that most ASX100 companies aren\u2019t mentioned on the lobbyist register, meaning their lobbyists are unregistered \u2014 or for industry associations and peak bodies, advocacy groups and unions.<\/p>\n

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And unlike in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, at the federal level there are no requirements for ministerial meetings with lobbyists to be formally and regularly disclosed, along with what was discussed. Unlike in NSW, there is neither blanket regulation covering all people engaged in lobbying, whether directly employed or third-party, nor a meaningful mechanism to deter lobbyists if they are found to have breached the rules.<\/p>\n

There is no attempt to prevent party power brokers and campaign strategists from also working as lobbyists, which Peter Coaldrake identified as a major problem in his report<\/a> for the Palaszczuk government in Queensland. And there is certainly no interest in implementing the NSW ICAC\u2019s best-practice lobbying regulations<\/a> \u2014 the implementation of which was killed off when NSW Labor won power.<\/p>\n

Strict rules, Murray? Yeah, right.<\/p>\n

Lobbying is part of democracy. People have a right to make their views known to government, and to attempt to influence decisions. But that process has to be fair and transparent. At the federal level, it is neither. Unregistered lobbyists can and do influence federal ministers in secret. Sometimes they pay to do so, via political party fundraisers; at other times they do it without offering money, in meetings with ministers and staffers.<\/p>\n

Ordinary voters, who get no such access to decision-makers, can only wonder at what goes on behind closed doors. Politicians like Watt aren\u2019t about to tell them, and indeed think that there is already too much transparency<\/a> around government decisions.<\/p>\n

The ADN research also demonstrates the extent to which being politically connected is central to lobbying. Sixty-four per cent of registered lobbyists are former federal or state government representatives or public servants, ADN found. Three-quarters of those are former politicians or former staffers, including 22 former frontbenchers from both sides. Many former politicians, such as Christopher Pyne, move quickly and seamlessly into lobbying after politics; some do so between political stints. After Tasmanian Liberal Guy Barnett lost his Senate spot in 2011, he became a lobbyist, before entering Tasmanian state politics in 2014. He\u2019s now deputy premier.<\/p>\n

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There are, ostensibly, revolving-door rules: former ministers are supposed to wait 18 months before lobbying on issues they handled as ministers, but the rules are trivially easy to circumvent. And there\u2019s no meaningful punishment for breaching the cooling-off period anyway, given that the perpetrator would have already left politics. Even when former minister Bruce Billson was revealed to have taken a job as the head of the Franchise Council of Australia while he was still in parliament, all he received was the earth-shattering punishment of a parliamentary censure.<\/p>\n

The lack of meaningful regulation is one reason why the public policymaking process is in the grip of a professional class disconnected from community and national interests: political staffers, MPs, ministers, former ministers turned lobbyists, lobbyists at party fundraisers, former politicians appointed to statutory boards and other jobs-for-the-boys appointments \u2014 all pursuing their own or their clients\u2019 or their parties\u2019 or factions\u2019 interests.<\/p>\n

And the lucrative opportunities available to former MPs once they exit politics provide a strong incentive for both MPs and ministers to stay in the good books of party leaders \u2014 you\u2019re far more likely to have a successful post-political life as a lobbyist or statutory board member if you\u2019re known as a team player. Mavericks and troublemakers can\u2019t look forward to much once they leave parliament.<\/p>\n

Lobbying can be done transparently and fairly. Many hardworking lobbyists play fair: some see their role as about showing community groups, companies and anyone else who seeks their services how the political and parliamentary system works, and where they can provide input in an effective way. They don\u2019t attend meetings with ministers, but merely provide advice on what might work best. Not every former MP or staffer turned lobbyist is a spiv. It\u2019s fair enough that if you\u2019ve developed skills and expertise in one area, you should be able to make a go of them.<\/p>\n

But at a time when trust in democracy and politics is ebbing, the idea that the current federal system \u2014 which enables secret lobbying by well-connected former politicians to influence decisions in favour of their clients \u2014 is strictly regulated is not merely absurd; it\u2019s damaging. What better way to confirm the suspicion among so many voters that the system is stacked against their interests, and in favour of a well-connected elite?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe already have very strict\u00a0lobbyist\u00a0rules in place within government \u2026 and, of course, any\u00a0lobbyist\u00a0needs to be on the\u00a0lobbyist\u00a0register.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,125010,21,323,21210,24661,125011,125012,13156],"class_list":["post-80183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australian-democracy-network","tag-austrlia","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-lobbying","tag-lobbyist-register","tag-ministerial-standards","tag-murray-watt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}