Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Shoebridge for letting me speak first. I'm always brief, Senator Shoebridge. I never take any other approach. Every word matters.

I just indicate that the government doesn't support the motion. The lobbying code of conduct was indeed created by the last Labor government. It was one of the many integrity measures introduced by Kevin Rudd's Labor government, which included a new code of conduct for ministerial staff and a strengthened ministerial code. When tabling the lobbying code in this place in May 2008 the responsible minister, our former colleague senator John Faulkner, outlined the purpose of the code. It is instructive reading, and I commend his speech to Senator David Pocock and the Senate. In May 2008 Senator Faulkner said:

The government recognises that lobbying is a legitimate activity and part of the democratic process. Lobbyists can help individuals and organisations communicate their views on matters of public interest to the government and, in doing so, improve outcomes for the individual and community as a whole.

However, there is a legitimate concern that ministers, their staff and officials who are the target of lobbying activities are not always fully informed as to the identity of the people who have engaged a lobbyist to speak on their behalf. The government believes that this information can be fundamental to the integrity of its decisions and should be freely available to those who are lobbied and to the wider public.

For these reasons, the code and associated register aim to ensure government representatives know who is engaged in lobbying and whose interests are being promoted. When a third-party lobbyist contacts a government representative, including a minister, the code requires that they confirm they are on the register and disclose whose interests they are representing. The code also imposes an obligation on government representatives: they must not knowingly be a party to lobbying by a third-party lobbyist not on the register. There are penalties associated with the failure to comply with the code, including a power for the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department to bar a lobbyist who has committed a serious breach.

I acknowledge that not everyone is happy with the scope of the lobbying code. Some, like Senator Pocock, want registration obligations to extend to in-house lobbyists. Some want to ban lobbying altogether. The government believes that the code strikes the right balance, recognising the right of lobbyists to lobby but placing conditions on the manner of third-party lobbying through mandatory registration and disclosure obligations.

I would caution that there are indeed competing principles that are engaged here. I think Senator Faulkner's outline of some of those competing principles is useful. I wouldn't start this debate by referring to the codification of lobbyist rules in other jurisdictions, because they do not have perfect results either. Extensive codification sometimes produces perverse results. There are many fine elements of the American system, but I would not hold it up as an example of that kind of codification, because it has not produced the result that its original proponents hoped that it would produce.

I also think that it's important that claims that are made here in relation to integrity in the system are well weighted. Claims about transparency that are made in other but related debates by people who launch, for example, dozens of OPD requests in this place and then complain that they're not fully complied with some weeks later are gaslighting the transparency debate in a way that—in some cases, not all cases—is cynical. In some cases, it is designed to create a little bit of whataboutism and equivalence around transparency and lobbying issues. That is actually not helpful. If you genuinely are concerned about transparency issues, then, for some people in this place, a reflection on what the last nine years was like might actually be instructive in terms of fixing the culture on some of those issues.

A reference to the states and territories isn't necessarily helpful either, because, of course, the jurisdictions that they operate in engage other sets of issues. For example, the planning regimes and their interactions with property developers do mean that there are different steps undertaken, depending on the structure of the legal framework in those states in relation to those issues.

I want to address the last element of Senator Pocock's motion. The lobbying code is an administrative instrument. It's an executive action, an action of executive government. For that reason, in my view and the government's view, it's misconceived to expect that the code require the disclosure of sponsored pass access to Parliament House. The question of access to Parliament House is not a matter for executive government. It is a matter and a prerogative of the parliament. That point is important to understanding what it is that executive government can deal with here. The question of disclosure of access—I heard Senator Pocock's outline of those issues in the debate but I have also heard it in the public discussion of these issues—is a matter for the parliament, not the executive.

It would be a great surprise to me indeed if the Senate adopted the position that's outlined in this general business debate, because that would have the executive reach into matters that are properly the preserve of the parliament and of the Senate. In terms of that issue, I caution colleagues about the broader implications, and I thought it was useful to set out the government's position at this stage of the discussion.