Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne) and the President to questions without notice asked by Senator Lambie today relating to the Lobbyist Register and access to Parliament House, Canberra.

Every year, the number of lobbyists balloons further and further out, and every year the number of lobbyists who are registered and on the books shrinks further and further away. Don't forget, either, that only the registered ones are required to stick to the code of conduct. The ones who aren't registered—well, apparently, we don't care what they do. If you want to lie, that's fine! If you don't want to tell anybody who you're actually working for, that's fine too; there's not a problem there! If you want to walk in and out of a minister's office, you go for it!

The lobbying register needs more than a lick of paint. It needs a total makeover. It needs to be wider, and it needs to be a hell of a lot tougher. It needs to be wide enough to cover everybody who is lobbying government. It needs to be tough enough to keep them on the straight and narrow. Right now, it's narrow enough to cover basically nothing and it's weak enough to achieve basically nothing—which is exactly what it's doing.

The government says we can't see the list of people with sponsored passes. Think about this: there are 2½ thousand people with complete access to offices in the parliament. They have this access because a parliamentarian sponsored them—they signed a form saying they have known them for at least 12 months and they vouch for them. And we have—what do you guess?—no idea who they are. We don't know who sponsored them. We don't know who they work for. We don't know how often they come into parliament. We don't know how many times they're coming in and out of certain offices. In fact, we had to drag it out of the government to even find out how many there are. What's going on? Why the secrecy? Who is benefiting out of this?

New Zealand publishes details of approved visitors who have swipe access to their parliament house. Like Australian orange pass holders, in New Zealand approved visitors have to show that they require regular business access to parliament to obtain a pass. New Zealand can do it. Why can't we? We're not able to cover that, apparently.

All lobbyists in Canada and the US have to disclose information about their lobbying activities, whether they work for an employer or they work as a client. Those jurisdictions also have strong penalties for breaching the regulations, including fines and jail time for deterrence.

What do we have here? Under our system, apparently the Minerals Council aren't lobbyists. The Business Council aren't lobbyists. The Australian Council of Trade Unions, apparently, are not lobbyists. They aren't in the building, lobbying the Senate today, as we speak. Whatever they're doing, apparently it's not lobbying. It must be plenty of cups of tea they're having. And get this: lobbyists who break the code can be kicked off the lobbyist register. But guess what: they never are. And even if they were they could keep their sponsored pass and keep getting access to parliament unescorted, unaccounted for and basically invisible.

I've been saying for years that the solution to this problem is right under your noses. Rewrite the rules so that everyone with a sponsored orange pass is considered a lobbyist, everyone who is a lobbyist is required to sign up to the register and everybody on it is required to abide by the Lobbying Code of Conduct. If they don't abide by it, they go off the register and lose their pass—it's pretty simple—and they lose their privileged access to this parliament.

Governments can only govern with the consent of the governed. If you lose the trust of the people you're trying to govern, you lose everything. This building is more than just a place for politicians to hang around complaining about each other. This building is where governments are formed. Governments change the country, and they only do that because we trust them, supposedly, to do so. We're losing the grip on that trust.

My proposal says: if you're a lobbyist and you break the rules, you lose your special access to parliament. If you still need to get in to see someone, sign the visitors' book, like everybody else has to. You had the chance to do the right thing. You were trusted with that privilege and you abused it to benefit your own special interest, which is exactly what's going on. When you undermine the trust that fuels this place, you don't get to keep coming back to it. We've got to send a very clear message that the rules are rules. It doesn't matter if you're working for unions, for big companies, for charities or for your own business down the road: if you go into a meeting with a minister, you're required to play by the rules. Don't lie. Don't bribe. Don't threaten. Don't harass. Don't corrupt the political process so you can make a dollar or two out of it. Don't do these things, because if you do we'll come down on you like a tonne of bricks. You'll lose more than an orange pass around your neck, I can tell you. You'll lose access and you'll lose influence. And you know what? You'll deserve it.

Question agreed to.