Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise—digitally—to take note of item 12, which is the ANAO follow-up performance audit on the Lobbying Code of Conduct. As people probably realise, the Australian federal lobbying system is widely considered to be incredibly weak compared to international standards, and to state and territory standards for that matter.

The system is made up of the lobbying code and the public lobbying register and it has been criticised for having only limited transparency and imposing rules that are relatively loose, and not comprehensively or independently policed and which carry little serious punishment. That's why the ANAO looked into this two years ago. They issued some recommendations that were ignored—my words, not theirs. They have subsequently done a follow-up audit two years down the track to see if anyone took any notice of their recommendations the first time around. Sadly, the short version is: no.

So the ANAO found in June that the government does not adequately assess conflict-of-interest risks or monitor compliance with the Lobbyist Code of Conduct. Frankly, the lack of transparency about who ministers are meeting with is staggering. It is no wonder the community has lost confidence in the impartiality of its representatives and think that politicians are simply for sale to the latest person that took them out for lunch. It has almost gotten to the stage where the lobbyist might as well just be running the chamber, to cut out the middle person. It's incredibly disappointing, because we have these codes of conduct and registers and the ANAO has found that they are not properly enforced, that in the hand-over from PM&C to the Attorney-General's Department—who are now in charge of the lobbying code and the register—there was a litany of bungles and a continued failure to advise anyone what the rules are and a failure to implement them.

It's pretty tragic that there have been two ANAO reports and still we have very little action from the government. The ANAO used—for them—incredibly damning words. They said that governance arrangements to oversee the implementation of the ANAO recommendation were 'limited in their effectiveness'. They said there was no implementation planning in the transition from PM&C to Attorney-General's, that the Attorney-General's Department did not develop a strategy to raise awareness of the code and that there were limited activities undertaken to inform lobbyists and government representatives of their compliance obligations under the code. The Attorney-General's Department did not systematically assess risks to compliance with the code and did not advise the government about the sufficiency of the current compliance framework. Lastly, they did not develop an evaluation framework or performance measures.

You could not get a more clear criticism of this administrative bungle. Perhaps it's deliberate. We know this government are not big fans of transparency. They are big fans of lobbyists. So who knows? But we have had two ANAO reports now. The government needs to clean up its act. It needs to get rid of this revolving door for advisers, MPs and lobbyists. That's why the Greens have pushed for an awfully long time now to have a properly enforced lobbying code including a proper cooling-off period of five years for former ministers before they go off and work for the people they were meant to be regulating while they were sitting in parliament. That cooling-off period should be expanded to include other people. We have pushed for a proper parliamentary standards commissioner who is actually responsible for enforcing rules like this.

I think we all acknowledge that the community deserves better representation. The people want their democracy back. They're sick of it being held hostage to big donors, vested interests and lobbyists. So we have a chance now. There are some clear directions and recommendations from the ANAO, once more, for reform. Let's hope that this time they actually get the attention they deserve. Thank you.

Debate adjourned.