Former West Australian Premier Mark McGowan is one of the few Australian politicians who can claim to have had popstar treatment. During the COVID years, the Labor leader had an approval rate of around 90 per cent in his state. Under his leadership, WA’s most profitable sector – the mining and resources industry – had a major boost.
One of the members of his cabinet was Ben Wyatt, the state representative for Victoria-Park and Minister for Indigenous Affairs. Wyatt had been a state member of parliament since 2007, and was the first Indigenous treasurer of any Australian state.
In 2021, Wyatt resigned. McGowan followed two years later.
While the pair have retired from politics, they maintain professional connections with industries that operate in WA.
McGowan has ties to mining giants BHP and Mineral Resources, and holds a senior advisory position at Bondi Partners, who service clients from the resources sector. Wyatt founded his own the consultancy company, WM. He serves on the boards of Rio Tinto and Woodside Energy, among others.
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The track record of WA's former cabinet members is far from uncommon in Australian politics, and it’s legal. The federal government has specific for this type of activity between lobbyists and Australian government representatives.
Wyatt told SBS Examines that lobbying is part of democracy.
“We all have the right to express a view to members of Parliament and governments, and the key is transparency,” he said.
“Most Australian parliaments now have registration processes for lobbyists, and I think that is appropriate. Experts lobby members of Parliament and governments in the same way as any other person.
“Transparency around lobbyists' activities has become very common in Australia and I think that is a good thing for democracy."
A common relationship
Relationships like these are far from unusual.
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison sits on several company advisory boards, including DYME Maritime, an Australian-American capital fund that invests in technologies for AUKUS – the military alliance his government formed with the U.S. and U.K.
Former Labor Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon is a registered lobbyist for Serco, a British multinational, and a special counsel for CMAX Communications.
Bondi Partners is a consultancy company run by Joe Hockey, a former Liberal MP and Treasurer under Tony Abbott's government. Bondi Partners has other former politicians as advisors, including former Nationals MP Peter McGuaran and former Liberal Senator Marise Payne.
Iemma Patterson Premier Advisory is a company Chris Patterson, a retired Liberal member of the NSW Legislative Assembly. According to the Australian Financial Review, the company actively lobbies for property developers in NSW.
Pyne and Partners, the lobbyist firm of ex-Liberal Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, was hired by Elbit Systems of Australia, a major private supplier of military technology to the Australian Defence Force, which was awarded tens of millions of dollars of government contracts while Pyne was in government.
SBS Examines is not alleging or suggesting any wrongdoing by those named.
‘Translation service’
Emma Webster is a director at Hawker Britton, one of the oldest lobbying companies in Australia. She previously served as the Senior Media Advisor for Daniel Andrews, the former Premier of Victoria.
She told SBS Examines that people often have misconceptions about lobbying.
“A lot of people think of lobbying as sort of opening up doors and setting up meetings, and that's part of it. But a lot of it is that explanation of government and the inner workings of government”, she said.
“If you think about someone going to court, for example, you wouldn't go to court if you didn't have a lawyer. And similarly, if you're going to make an approach to government, it would make the experience more efficient and effective with a lobbyist.
“We are almost like a translation service.”
Still, experts have raised concerns that the thin line separating the public sector from the companies' interests could harm our democracy.
‘Very limited transparency’
Anna Carballo is the head of International Programmes of Transparency International Australia. She said lobbying in Australia is “extensive, strategic, and highly resourced”.
“There are major industries, including mining, gambling, defence, and fossil fuels, that spend millions of dollars every year trying to influence government policy,” she said.
“While we do have a lobbyist register, there are countless more in-house or informal lobbyists who are uncovered by current regulations at all levels of government. It has very limited transparency. The system allows it without sufficient checks and balances.”
The federal government defines a lobbyist as any person who acts on behalf of third-party clients to lobby Australian Government representatives. They are legally required to register and comply with the code's requirements. 'In-house' lobbyists are generally understood to be professionals seeking to communicate with and influence public officials on behalf of their immediate employer.
The code does not apply to in-house lobbyists. This is because the interests that these lobbyists represent will be evident.
Dr Jill Sheppard is a political economics and elections expert at the Australian National University. She said this is a common problem for democratic nations.
“We're probably too relaxed about it in Australia. The closeness of the networks between politicians, staffers, former staffers, current lobbyists, is quite a small gene pool of people,” she said.
While there are rules for lobbying by former politicians, Dr Sheppard questioned their effectiveness.
“There is a rule [for ministers and members of Parliament] for 18 months after leaving Parliament. If you're a parliamentarian or just working for a politician, it's 12 months in which you can't work for a big company or a lobbying company on the same issues that you were responsible for in Parliament,” she said.
“This rule has helped a little, but all it does is delay people's transition into those industries”.
However, Dr Sheppard acknowledged that politicians face personal challenges after retiring from public office.
“Some of them will be thinking about what they're going to do after the election. If I lose, where will I go? And how will that affect my decisions today? It's hard to legislate that away”.
The ‘revolving door’
The Australian Institute examined 20 of the country’s most influential trade associations. In a released in December 2024, they identified potential misalignments between lobby groups' interests and their member companies' shareholders, including climate action, public health, and resistance to competition and regulation.
Experts have termed one of the lobbying industry's main trends as the ‘revolving door’: the movement of high-profile employees and elected representatives, from public sector positions to private sector posts related to their previous areas, and vice versa.
According to researchers, this can lead to conflicts of interest, and influence legislation in favour of powerful companies.
“At its worst, it means people taking the inside information and the network of favours that they've developed in one role, and taking it to an entirely different situation, which can put the interests of the public at risk,” Director of the Democracy and Accountability Program of the Australia Institute, Bill Browne said.
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Experts urging action
Currently, the Attorney-General has the power to prevent registration and remove a lobbyist if they consider that they are in breach of the code, having the power to remove a lobbyist from the register.
Centre for Public Integrity director, Professor Joo-Cheong Tham, believes there’s room for improvement.
“The problem with this regulation is that its weaknesses are twofold,” he said.
“One is that it only applies to direct lobbying, so when people meet the ministers. It doesn't prohibit the former ministers from giving advice to those who engage in a face-to-face meeting.
“And also the length of time, 18 months is too short”.
Professor Jill Sheppard said it may come down to skillset.
“There is a problem with transitioning out of Parliament. The skills they learn in Parliament don't necessarily lend themselves to being a teacher or a doctor … they lend themselves to more politics. And so we don't necessarily have what we might call a sort of off-ramp for politicians,” she said.
“This was less of a problem when politicians were retiring older, but as more politicians seem to be leaving parliament a little bit younger, they still have 20 or 30 years of their career left, and they need something to do.”
Prof Sheppard says there isn't a pathway for Parliamentarians exiting politics. Source: AAP
“The first one is that we need to expand the lobbyist register to include in-house lobbyists and industry associations,” she said.
“We need to require the publishing of minister's diaries so that we can see who they're meeting, and we need to have real-time disclosure of these lobbying meetings, and the topics discussed and outcomes. This is similar to what is happening in other jurisdictions worldwide.”
Dr Carballo said a “cooling off period” of at least three years for former ministers and senior officials would be beneficial.
“In some jurisdictions, like the US or Canada, cooling-off periods [are] much higher, five years,” she said.
“We also need a legislating lobbying code with real enforcement powers, which is unlike the one that we currently have.
“These are all safeguards that will help us ensure that government decisions are made in the public interest and that will help us build up our confidence in our democracy.”