Rachel Mealey: Dozens of former defence officials, including ministers and high-ranking officers, have jumped from their government roles into lucrative lobbying firms or into the private defence sector. Critics say it creates an unfair playing field where former officials can use their connections to potentially influence the awarding of multi-million or even billion dollar contracts, including those relating to AUKUS. Mark Willacy reports.<\/p>\n
Mark Willacy: For 26 years, Christopher Pyne was a member of the Australian Parliament. After retiring in 2019 while Defence Minister, he set up the lobbying firm, Pyne & Partners.<\/p>\n
Christopher Pyne: So I have a wealth of experience of how government works, how opposition works, how politics works. So to me it would be crazy not to tap in to that experience and that lifetime of learning about the political system.<\/p>\n
Mark Willacy: You’ve been operating for a few years now, how’s business going?<\/p>\n
Christopher Pyne: Seven years we’ve been going, so we’re now the fifth largest government relations firm in Australia. We’re number one in defence, number two in infrastructure and construction. Business is good. I’m very happy.<\/p>\n
Mark Willacy: Christopher Pyne is by no means the only former minister in the defence space to go through the revolving door into lobbying firms or private defence industry. Others include Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon, Mike Kelly and Kim Beazley and the Liberal’s David Johnston. And they’re not alone. Analysis by Four Corners has identified at least 60 former Defence Ministers, staffers, senior officers and officials who have moved into defence industry firms or lobbying companies. One of them is Jeremy King.<\/p>\n
David Shoebridge: Jeremy King was one of the most senior members inside the Army and responsible for a series of critical procurement decisions and most notably getting a US weapons system called the Black Hawk helicopter.<\/p>\n
Mark Willacy: Green’s Defence spokesman David Shoebridge says the maker of the Black Hawk helicopter is the world’s biggest weapons company, Lockheed Martin. In 2023, Major General Jeremy King had a role in the Army’s purchase of 40 Black Hawk helicopters for nearly $3 billion. And where is Jeremy King now?<\/p>\n
David Shoebridge: Well he’s running Lockheed Martin Australia of course. There wasn’t even a week between walking out of defence and taking the most senior position in Lockheed Martin Australia.<\/p>\n
Mark Willacy: In a statement to Four Corners, Lockheed Martin said it had instituted rigorous conflict of interest safeguards that isolate Jeremy King from programs connected to his time in the military. Jumping ship is not a breach of the rules, provided any conflict of interest is managed. But critics like the Green’s David Shoebridge say it gives an unfair advantage. With $368 billion being spent on the AUKUS deal over its lifetime, there’s a lot of money to be made for everyone, including lobbyists. But Minister turned lobbyist Christopher Pyne says there are never any guarantees.<\/p>\n
Christopher Pyne: When you win obviously you tell everybody about it. When you don’t win you sort of hope that no one’s noticed. So business is business. You have a go and you see if you get there or not.<\/p>\n
Rachel Mealey: Former MP, now lobbyist Christopher Pyne. Ending that report by Mark Willacy. And you can see Mark’s report on iview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rachel Mealey: Dozens of former defence officials, including ministers and high-ranking officers, have jumped from their government roles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1136,1021,14,4504,2096],"class_list":["post-7576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-adf","tag-aukus","tag-defence-industry","tag-defence-lobbyists","tag-podcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}