CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (10:50): Australia's political lobbying rules are broken. Nearly two-thirds of registered lobbyists in Canberra are former government representatives: former ministers, advisers and party officials. These are people who've spent years building relationships and knowledge on the public dime who are now able to sell access to the highest bidder.
Their most numerous in those industries which do us the most harm. Transparency International Australia has found that Responsible Wagering Australia has had access to more than 100 lobbyists across all jurisdictions—Sportsbet more than 70, Tabcorp more than 50. Each company has had access to the most lobbyists at the federal level.
At least seven former federal ministers and senior advisers have gone to work for gambling interests since 2011. Fossil fuel, mining, tobacco, timber and alcohol industries are similar—and that's counting those people who are actually on the lobbying register. As many as 80 per cent of lobbyists in this House aren't on the lobbying register at all.
In-house corporate lobbyists and industry associations are exempt from the government's broken lobbying rules. Fifty-eight per cent of ASX 100 companies, including the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas and Santos, are not on the lobbyist register. It's not because they've stopped lobbying the government, it's because our rules, your rules, don't capture them.
Australians didn't send us here to protect big coal, big gambling and the big banks. They sent us here to show up for our community's best interests. That's why next month I will introduce my national lobbying act.
It'll do four things. Firstly, it will create a lobbyist register with teeth, one which will capture in-house corporate lobbyists and industry associations. Secondly, it will close the revolving door with enforceable bans on former ministers cashing in on their contacts.
Thirdly, it will open ministerial diaries to the public so we can actually see who's actually getting access to our ministers—where, when and why. Finally, it will ban political donations from industries which are directly contributing to public health harms. It will ban political donations from the tobacco industry, from the alcohol industry and from the gambling industry.
Lobbying is not the enemy. Charities lobby. Unions lobby.
Community groups lobby. They come and tell us what they need. That's democracy working as it should.
The problem is a system that lets the most powerful interests operate in the shadows, while Australians are left in the dark. It's time to clean up politics, and it's time to pass my national lobbying act.