Chapter 1Introduction
1.1Lobbying is a longstanding and legitimate feature of democratic governance dating back hundreds of years and is an important feature of any healthy democracy.
1.2The term ‘lobbying’ is generally understood to refer to communication with a public official with the objective of influencing legislative, policy or administrative decisions.
1.3Representative democracies are founded on the ability of citizens, individually or collectively, to lobby their elected officials and the government to ensure they are acting in the public interest.
1.4Lobbying has the potential to improve legislation and policy outcomes and strengthen democratic participation by bridging the divide between the public and decision-makers.
1.5However, lobbying also has the potential to be a corrosive force on democracy when private interests usurp the public interest.
1.6Recent decades have seen a significant professionalisation of lobbying practices in response to major events, technological developments and changing social, economic, and political conditions domestically and globally. This has seen lobbying transform into a multibillion-dollar industry.
1.7These changes have prompted a need to ensure adequate regulatory safeguards are in place to protect our democracy from undue influence and state capture by private, commercial, or foreign interests, and to ensure that elected officials and governments serve the public interest rather than the private or vested interests of certain actors.
1.8According to Associate Professor Yee-Fui Ng who has co-written commissioned reports on the regulation of lobbying for the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (NSW ICAC) and New South Wales Electoral Commission, there are three main purposes in regulating lobbying:
The first purpose is to prevent corrupt behaviour by lobbyists and public officials.
The second purpose is a broader notion of political equality in ensuring the fairness of government policy-making and decision-making processes by increasing transparency in the disclosure of lobbying activities. This is aimed at reducing the incidence of secret lobbying by vested interests and reducing the risk of regulatory capture of government.
This leads to the third main purpose of improving the quality of government decision-making and policy-making in ensuring that government decisions are made according to merit, rather than skewed towards narrow sectional interests.
1.9This brings us to the issues that the committee has been tasked with inquiring into. Namely, how to appropriately regulate access to Australian Parliament House by lobbyists and how to improve the current transparency arrangements under the Lobbying Code of Conduct and the Register of Lobbyists without unduly impeding what is both a legitimate political activity and an important feature of Australian democracy.
1.10There are various aspects to this matter, including:
How to define lobbying most appropriately.
Who gets lobbied at the Commonwealth level.
What the Commonwealth can learn from other jurisdictions both within Australia and overseas.
What if any interaction there is between the Lobbying Code of Conduct and the Register of Lobbyists and the Australian Parliament House pass system.
What appropriate options are available to improve the regulation of lobbying at the Commonwealth level.
1.11These matters are considered in the report.
Referral
1.12On 6 December 2023, the Senate referred an inquiry into the access to Australian Parliament House by lobbyists and the adequacy of current transparency arrangements relating to the lobbyist register to the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee for inquiry and report by 30 April 2024.
1.13The Terms of Reference for the inquiry chiefly relate to the adequacy of:
(a)current transparency arrangements relating to the lobbyist register;
(b)the current sponsored pass system for lobbyists to access Australian Parliament House with particular regard to transparency and publication of lobbyists who are pass holders and their sponsors; and
(c)publicly accessible information of Australian Parliament House pass holders who are lobbyists and their sponsors.
Conduct of the inquiry
1.14The committee agreed to open submissions on 7 December 2023 and set 9February 2024 as the closing date. The committee wrote to a range of key stakeholder groups, academics, government agencies, organisations, and individuals, drawing their attention to the inquiry and inviting them to make written submissions.
1.15The committee received 346 public submissions, which are available on the committee’s webpage and listed at Appendix 1.
1.16The committee also received a substantial amount of correspondence to the inquiry.
1.17The committee held a public hearing for the inquiry on Monday, 8 April 2024 in Canberra and by videoconference. A list of witnesses who gave evidence at the hearing is available at Appendix 2.
1.18On 30 April 2024, pursuant to Senate Standing Order 38(7), the committee presented a Progress Report requesting an extension of time to report until 7May 2024 to allow it to consider the evidence received and to conclude its deliberations.
1.19The committee thanks all those who contributed to the inquiry by making submissions and appearing before the committee at the public hearing.
Report structure
1.20The report contains 6 chapters.
This chapter provides an overview of the inquiry and report structure.
Chapter 2 sets out the regulatory challenge of discerning lobbying as a form of civic participation from lobbying as a profession. This includes exploring the regulatory tensions between effectively capturing professional lobbying activity without deterring or imposing undue compliance or administrative burdens on other forms of civic participation, including advocacy and activism.
Chapter 3 details the history and current regulatory arrangements of lobbying in Australia. Chapter 3 considers the adequacy of the Lobbying Code of Conduct and the Register of Lobbyists at the Commonwealth level. This chapter also considers lobbying regulations in other jurisdictions within Australia and internationally, seeking to identify best-practice regulatory schemes.
Chapter 4 provides an overview of the current processes for obtaining and maintaining a sponsored pass to access Australian Parliament House and the mechanisms by which information and data held within the pass system can be accessed and scrutinised.
Chapter 5 considers the concerns and options that submitters and witnesses put to the committee.
Chapter 6 sets out the committee's views and recommendations on additional measures that might be introduced to best ensure transparency and integrity around lobbying activities in Australia.