Canberra Lobbyists In A Spin Over Brian Burke's Antics

by John Warhurst - Canberra Times

Professional lobbyists around Canberra must be grinding their teeth about all the bad publicity. Their image in the community is being shredded by the antics of former Western Australia premier-cum-lobbyist Brian Burke.

Respected members of the Canberra government-relations fraternity are part of the representation industry that enables a great deal of legitimate two-way contact between the community and the government. There are humble ones and there are high-flying ones, but whatever their credentials and status most are not like Brian Burke.

Burke's demeanour and presentation is to the lobbying industry what the current BBC television series Absolute Power is to the public relations industry. His antics reinforce the worst image of lobbyists as undercover merchants working to undermine democracy by privileging some insiders and mates at the expense of others in the general community.

What else could one think of a lobbyist who convinces a minister to carry a second mobile phone for personal communications? It is so weird as to almost be unbelievable.

What the public sees is a former premier, having served a jail term for corruption, who is still on friendly terms with the federal Labor leader and many present and former WA Labor ministers and MPs. However, his clients in the business community swear by his work. The Kimberley Diamond Company says that he gives them access to the Western Australia government that they cannot achieve any other way.

Western Australia Premier Alan Carpenter has tried the familiar government line that "You don't need lobbyists". Companies were wasting their time, he said, (and presumably their money) by employing them. Companies that wanted to speak to the government only had to "pick up the phone" to make an appointment.

This incident goes to the heart of modern democratic processes. Carpenter is both right and wrong. He is right, though extraordinarily simplistic, when he says anyone can just ring up government to ask for an appointment.

They can ask, of course. But the experience of many citizens is that they will be brushed off.

Will they even have the confidence to do so? Will they receive a sympathetic hearing by a person with the right level of seniority? Will they know how to organise their material and to frame the discussion in a way that might bring success? Will they know enough about government processes to know where their particular proposal fits in to what the government has in mind?

The whole trend in the growth of intermediaries between government and the community-public relations, issues management, and corporate affairs, suggests Carpenter is wrong. Lobbyists cost money. Increasing numbers of companies pay money for their services. The clients can't all be mugs.

They must be satisfied customers. Otherwise they would just pick up the phone or send an email.

No, they think they will get an advantage over others. Furthermore, the government relations industry is only one part of a bigger picture. Parliament is full of MPs whose job it is to assist their constituents. They are supposed to be the first port of call as the people's representatives. And they often are.

Canberra is also full of a growing number of industry and community associations whose job it is to represent to government the interests and policies of their members. There are also many individuals with the ear of government by dint of their status or the ex-officio position they hold.

The truth is that democracy is often unfair and lopsided. There is an A-list of individuals and organisations, like Rupert Murdoch or the head of the Business Council or, one hesitates to say, Bono or Tim Costello, whose calls will be taken by the most powerful political leaders in the land. In Western Australian Labor circles Brian Burke was clearly one such individual. Many ministers and MPs continued to take his calls. We don't really know whether they did so out of friendship, self-interest, fear or a misguided sense of the public interest. But we do know that even the edict of successive Labor premiers, first Geoff Gallop and then Carpenter, could not stop this happening.

There have been some suggestions that a registration scheme for lobbyists is what is needed to clean up the mess. Such a scheme operated at the Commonwealth level between 1983 and 1996 during the Hawke-Keating years. This, advocates say, would make all dealings with government transparent and honest. But the federal scheme never really worked because it was never taken seriously within government.

If such a scheme was introduced it must be extremely broad to be successful, so broad, in fact, that it would probably be unworkable.

It would have to include all lobbying of ministers, public servants and parliamentarians by all paid and unpaid lobbyists. It would need to recognise the vast range of lobbying and not just concentrate on a small section of lobbying by paid intermediaries.

It would need to recognise that most lobbying is indistinguishable from the very representation of interests and views that is the core purpose of our parliamentary system. It would need to recognise that most lobbying serves a positive purpose that cannot be achieved in any other way.

More than anything else it would need to recognise that any such scheme can only work with the enthusiastic acceptance of the major players involved. This will not come about, despite Brian Burke's unacceptable escapades.

Most MPs, ministers and public servants accept that a certain amount of lobbying is in the interests of better legislation and policies because not all wisdom is held within government.


John Warhurst is Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.