MOTIONS

Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (16:31): I move: That the Senate— (a) notes that Australia's lobbying rules cover only third-party lobbyists, leaving most of those who lobby the Commonwealth outside the system entirely; (b) notes that the Code is not law, the Register is incomplete, and there is no independent regulator to enforce it; (c) affirms that lobbying rules should be transparent, cover everyone who lobbies, be independently enforced and ensure access is not determined by money or connections; and (d) calls on the Government to legislate during this parliamentary term to bring all lobbyists under an enforceable code overseen by an independent regulator; close the revolving door between decision-makers and the industries they regulate; and require publication of details of meetings with lobbyists.

When I was first elected to this place by the people of the ACT to be a senator for the ACT, I was shocked at our lobbying laws and just how loose they were. I think, like most Australians, I looked at decisions that were being made and thought, 'That doesn't really stack up; there must be some problems in this place.' You hear stories about lobbying, but it is only once you're actually in here that you realise just how bad things are.

One of the things that shocked me the most is that we have a lobbyist register that doesn't apply to the vast majority of lobbyists. Eighty per cent of the people lobbying in this parliament sit outside the lobbyist register—outside the Lobbying Code of Conduct. Let's remember that code is just a guideline; it's not actually a law.

It's administered by the Attorney-General's Department, and at Senate estimates I asked them about the consequences of breaking our Lobbying Code of Conduct. It seems like the worst thing that can happen to you is a three-month holiday. Many liberal democracies have civil, sometimes criminal, penalties because they understand the privilege of access to the parliament, to elected representatives and to the executive.

That privilege should not be abused. I was shocked to learn—and, when I speak to Canberrans and other Australians, they are just as shocked—what a lobbyist is. If you think about who is a lobbyist, you think about big companies like Qantas, Woodside and Santos.

They have teams of government relations people and their job is government relations—to speak to the government of the day and put the case forward for those companies. And I assume they are paid very well to do that. I think almost every Australian would say, 'Yes, that's a lobbyist.' Not in this place.

We have two major parties in this country who say that, no, that's not actually a lobbyist. They're an 'in-house' lobbyist. There are no rules for them.

They don't have to be on the lobbying register. They don't have to abide by the Lobbying Code of Conduct. And that simply does not cut it.

We have to do better as a country. We can't stand here and talk about and wonder why we're seeing a declining trust in us, in the parliament, in politicians, in the government and in institutions and at the same time not do something about this issue, which the vast majority of Australians want dealt with. When I talk about the need for more transparency around lobbying, sometimes people think that I don't like lobbyists.

I think that access to this building is a good thing. This is the people's house. This is a place where people should be able to bring their ideas and put forward their point of view on behalf of their organisation, their community, their company or their industry group.

You need and you want all these perspectives in the mix. But the thing that we shouldn't tolerate, and the thing that doesn't cut it with Australians, is that there's no transparency around that. They don't know who has access, who gave them access and what they're here to do.

There is a very reliable way to get a seat at the table, and that is by paying $10,000 to the Labor business forum, or whatever it's called. That gets you a seat next to the Prime Minister. If you have cash, you can get access.

Australians don't like that—and rightly so, because it stinks. That is not the way our democracy should work. We have this system where more than $110 million has gone to the major parties since 1999 through cash-for-access schemes—access sold by the seat.

I think that needs to stop, because those who have money, who have power, pay the 10 grand and get the ear of the PM. The nurse who's lost her brother to a gambling addiction and wants to put her case to the Prime Minister about the urgent need for gambling reform, about the fact that she wants the Prime Minister to put Australians ahead of the gambling industry or the NRL, doesn't have 10 grand to buy that access, and the Prime Minister won't meet with her.

That's the cold, hard reality of our politics at the moment. You can see why Australians want better, and you can see why Australians are going to start to demand better at the ballot box. The presiding officers have now acted on lobbyist passes, and I really welcome these changes.

For years we were told that there were privacy issues, that this was impossible, that we simply could not allow the public to know who has access to this place, the people's house, and who gave them that access. Lo and behold, that's happening. I think that is a great thing, and we should commend the presiding officers, commend the government, for doing that.

But let's not forget what we're up against. During an inquiry into lobbying we were told by various officials that the Privacy Act made what the parliament has now decided to do impossible. We were told there was a security risk.

We were told it would invite foreign interference. But when we get to the point when the public has had enough and demanded that the parliament do something, all of a sudden the excuses vanish and we can do it. We know that in this place we can do things when there is political will.

During that inquiry a number of recommendations were made. That was one of the recommendations of the inquiry—that there be a publicly accessible register of people who have a sponsored pass and which parliamentarians have given them that pass. But that was only one recommendation, and it is more than two years old now, and we're still waiting for a government response to that inquiry.

We still have no legislative code. We still have no penalties. We still have no independent regulator.

We've still got no publication of ministerial diaries, In the other place, when the Prime Minister was asked about ministerial diaries by the member for Wentworth, I think it was—Alegra Spender—he basically said, 'Well, we've got more transparency than a whole bunch of countries; when I go to the UN there'll be some countries where you won't even know who the leader is meeting with.' That's a terrible, terrible argument to make.

We expect better. We should be holding ourselves to a much higher standard than some of the leaders in places where they don't even have free and fair elections. One of the other things that is very closely related to lobbying, and that Australians are, you could say, sick and tired of, and want change on, is the revolving door.

Today we've seen reporting that the Minister for Resources has been accepting gifts from gas giant Woodside—free, I presume, box seats to the footy—at the very same time that the minister is implementing the gas-led recovery—sorry, the Future Gas Strategy. The gas-led recovery was Scott Morrison's package for gas, which was reheated and rebranded the Future Gas Strategy.

Australians expect better than that. They do not want to see the minister, who clearly has a really important role in regulating a powerful, powerful industry, schmoozing on the weekend and accepting box-seat tickets to the footy. We expect better.

Australians can start to see that resources ministers almost always go to work in the resources industry, because they clearly cultivate very cosy relationships, and they get paid very good money when they finish up making decisions that you'd hope are in the Australian people's interests, but then they go straight to the resources industry. It's not just resources.

We've seen Stephen Conroy, a Labor communications minister, become the head of the peak body for the gambling industry. Both sides have sent ministers into the industries that they used to regulate, and neither side has really ever had to explain it. I think that is not good enough anymore in this country.

There's a lot at stake when it comes to these sorts of things, which may seem minor in this place but, I think, really matter in the community. We've recently seen the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program, where more than 90 per cent of the money went to Labor seats—different scheme, same pattern. The system is rigged.

The closer you are to power, the better it works for you. Australia now scores 76 on the corruption index; that's nine points below where we sat back in 2012. Public trust collapses because people keep being told: 'The system is fine.

There's nothing to see here. We can't make any changes.' But they know it's not good enough. They want better.

They want it to actually deliver for the Australian people. They want it to deliver for our young people, for young Australians, and their futures. One of the other things I've learnt in this place is that there are solutions.

There are so many solutions. There are lots of problems, but there are just as many solutions. There are people who have spent their lives working on these problems—studying them, looking at what's happening overseas, looking at best practice, looking at unintended consequences—and we've got solutions for all of this.

We could expand the definition of what a lobbyist is to ensure that everyone who is actually lobbying is considered a lobbyist and that there is a very strong code of conduct. We could have an independent regulator. We could have a lobbying code with penalties that actually bite.

If you have the privilege of lobbying, Australians would expect that you are held to a very high standard, and, if you wilfully go against that—if you break that—the regulator would come down hard on you. Currently, we have weak standards implemented by a few hardworking public servants in the Attorney-General's Department, and I don't think that that cuts it.

We need real cooling-off periods for ministers and senior staff. Ministers earn a lot of money. I get that politicians need jobs after politics, but you can't tell me that, after earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, you should be able to jump straight into an industry that you've regulated.

There are many countries around the world that have far longer cooling-off periods, and I think some of the committees in this place have been looking at other industries that are facing issues around cooling-off periods. I think we should lead by example here. The other one we should be doing is ministerial diaries.

I think Australians have an expectation that they can see who ministers, who are working for them, employed by the Australian people and paid by the Australian people, are meeting with so they can make their own mind up about the different points of views that have been taken into account, and who is getting access and who is missing out on that access. There are many places that do this—Canada, UK, New Zealand.

It can be done. We're running out of excuses as a parliament, and I would urge my Senate colleagues. We can do this, but I fear that it'll only be public pressure that makes it happen.

Australians can go to lobbyingreform.com.au and actually make their voice heard. Tell your local representative: 'You work for me, and this is something that I want. This is something that I expect of you.' We should expect a base level of transparency in this place, and I think that is a big part of restoring trust and rebuilding trust in our parliament, in politicians, in our government and critically in our institutions at a time of so much instability.

Question agreed to.