Parliament of Australia: as Scott John Morrison prepares to leave the building by the front door is he arranging access through one of the many backdoors?

 

It has been an open secret that the Member for Cook, Scott John Morrison - of 324 mocking nicknames fame - would not see a full parliamentary term out once he lost government on 21 May 2022. Many thought that he would be gone within a year.

His Statement of Registerable Interests 47th Parliament tells the story as it unfolds.....

Two months and 11 days after the 2022 federal election Morrison registered Triginta Pty Ltd with himself as sole director and shareholder. It is now entered in his Statement as "superannuation". An apparently self-managed super fund to complement his other two superannuation accounts with Australian Super & MLC Super & Investments.

He reactivated the Morrison Family Trust now operating "Advisory Services" with himself as both sole registered director  and, a "Beneficiary" along with his spouse & dependent children.

It is probable he was intent on availing himself of every lawful tax advantage when he also listed Triginta Pty Ltd as As Trustee For (ATF) the Morrison Family Trust with himself as "Trustee".

Either while putting these financial building blocks in place or afterwards, Morrison began to 'embed' himself deeper within a number of organisations that align themselves with increasingly rigid right wing ideology, U.S. foreign policy and/or the defence industry lobby.

These are organisations that make the Australian-based Institute of Public Affairs look like so many silly children.

In his Statement of Registrable Interests document processed on 28 August 2022 Scott Morrison lists 20 organisations under line item 13. Membership of any organisation where a conflict of interest with a Member’s public duties could foreseeably arise or be seen to arise.

On 13 September 2022 Morrison added another organization to this list: 

Honorary Advisory Board, International Democrat Union.

This 11-member Honorary Advisory Board is made up of former leaders of 'conservative' political party parties both in and out of government and, contains three former Liberal prime ministers, John Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison.

NOTE: In 2023 the International Democrat Union (IDU) which currently styles itself The Global Alliance of the Centre Right appears to be a decidedly right wing group whose principal purpose is to assist political parties with IDU membership to win elections and to retain government. The Liberal Party of Australia was one of 19 founding signatories of IDU in London on 24 August 1983.

History: Early US. Central Intelligence Agency assessment of UDI as transnational, anti-socialist & anti-Soviet at

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T01058R000303190001-0.pdf

Present leadership of the IDU comprises representatives of: 

Conservative Party, Canada

Liberal Party, Australia (Brian Loughnane)

Conservative Party UK

New Patriotic Party, Ghana

Partido Unionista, Guatemala

Conservative Party, Norway

Republican Party, USA.

With the remainder of its organisational structure also including representatives of:

Kataeb Party, Lebanon

Christian Social Union, Germany

Christian Democrat Union, Germany

European People's Party

Likud, Israel

PRO, Argentina

Renovación Nacional, Chile

Democratic Party, Mongolia

PDM, Namibia

Asia Pacific Democrat Union

ECR Party.

On 29 September 2022 Morrison added another board to 13. Memberships of any organisation where a conflict of interest with a Member’s public duties could foreseeably arise or be seen to arise

Member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the China Center of the Hudson Institute.

This conservative institute peopled by former Republican politicians & former US government advisors or politically-appointed diplomats gives a simpler title to this 4-member board - “The Advisory Board”.

Then on 2 May 2023 Morrison again updated his Statement to include a position on the Board of Advisors of the Washington DC-based Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) whose 20-member board of directors includes James Murdoch. A position he describes for the record as an "honorary member". The Centre has strong ties to the American military and the U.S. defence industry.

Ahead of his retirement from the Australian Parliament he has been making additional casual income as he assembled his network of influence from:

Victory of Life Centre;

Worldwide Support for Development; and

The Hudson Institute.

Morrison has also had international air travel, accommodation and incidentals paid by:

• Owner of a South Korean daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo Co Ltd, Asian Leadership Conference 12-15 July 2022; 

• World Wide Support for Development, Japan 24-30 July 2022 (this included WWSD picking up the tab for his wife and multinational Servcorp supplying him with office facilities & administrative support); and

• International Democrat Union (IDU), New York & Washington DC 4-11 December 2022. 

As part of An initiative of the Worldwide Support for Development in association with the International Democratic Union and the Japan Forum for International Relations Morrison also gave an apparently ghost-written address at the Global Opinion Leaders Summit in Tokyo on 28 July 2022.

In fact whilst Morrison was supposedly focussed on being the Opposition backbench MP for Cook he was assiduously keeping himself before the international eyes he believes matter.

Morrison is not acting like a man who intends to keep out of politics and his international lobbying may be particularly problematic for the Commonwealth of Australia in the future.

@idualliance

@idualliance

This may be where he turns up next. June being the month recently rumoured for his parliamentary retirement to be announced.

Two more months to go until the 40th anniversary of the @idualliance. We are looking forward to welcoming our global membership and freedom loving partners and friends to the birthplace of IDU, to London! Register today and join us this June! #idu40 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/5hVZ5pXMLh

— International Democrat Union (@idualliance) April 18, 2023

All this has not gone unnoticed.....

The Saturday Paper, 6 May 2023:

Editorial

The lobbyist

prime minister

It is almost too perfect. Scott Morrison will leave parliament to become a lobbyist, an oily little stain trailing him out of the office. The irony is that this will be the first time he has represented somebody other than himself. He will finally go to Canberra with a purpose.

Looked at another way, AUKUS was a $368 billion pitch to get Scott Morrison a job. It is reported that he will soon take a role at a British defence company. He will not resign until the contract is signed. It is a continuous, unbroken grift.

Morrison is not “going to the other side”. He was always a shill for corporate interests. His approach to defence was always about his fortunes, not the country’s. This year, as he called for an enormous increase in military spending, he was shopping himself to the very companies that would profit most. There is no shame. There is not even self-respect. There is just Scott.

Lobbying is a grub in the political system. It exists to distort democracy. It is grotesque that someone who was once prime minister would hang out his shingle. It is appalling how common it has become for ministers and their staffers to take up work touting for industry.

This week it was reported that nearly 1800 lobbyists have orange passes that give them full access to Parliament House. There is no register for who has these passes or of which politicians sponsored them.

The lobbying code and register are not enforceable. As The Centre for Public Integrity notes, they need to be legislated and breaches need to carry criminal penalties. Ministerial diaries should be published and meetings with lobbyists noted.

In a report released this week, the centre points to a string of recent ministers now working as lobbyists: former Defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon; former Foreign minister Julie Bishop; former Trade minister Andrew Robb; former Defence minister Christopher Pyne, who days earlier had to register himself as a representative of a foreign government.

It notes that one of Anne Ruston’s staff took up as a lobbyist for Airbus nine days after leaving her office. One of Mathias Cormann’s staff began lobbying for Ampol a fortnight after their employment ended. On it goes, like a child pouring bath water from one cup into another.

Morrison the greaseball prime minister will soon be Morrison the greaseball lobbyist. It’s a smaller change than it should be, a final tarnish on the office, a sad expression of a failed politics, unable to attract real talent, bobbing back and forth through the sluiceway of venality and self-interest.

His pass will change colour, perhaps his shoes will get better, but he will remain the spiv he always has been, a travelling salesman driving a caravan of cant and opportunism and now guns and probably submarines. It is terribly sad in the way that realising the country was run for four years by a solipsistic thug is terribly sad.

Cartoons of the Week

Cathy Wilcox

Peter Broelmann

Rod Emmerson

Matt Golding

Global oil and gas industries make a combined US$4 billion in profit a day (or US$1 trillion annually) & have done so for the past 50 years. That obscene wealth is thought to be how these industries induce politicians & governments to only pay lip service to the urgency of a world-wide climate emergency which is now lived experience

 

“It’s a huge amount of money,” he said. “You can buy every politician, every system with all this money, and I think this happened. It protects [producers] from political interference that may limit their activities.....The rents captured by exploiting the natural resources are unearned. It’s real, pure profit. They captured 1% of all the wealth in the world without doing anything for it.”

[Prof Aviel Verbruggen, one of the lead authors of a 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report & current Emeritus Professor Energy and Environmental Economics, University of Antwerp, Belgium, quoted in The Guardian, 21 July 2022]

Crikey, 8 December 2022, reprinted in Crikey Holiday Read, 5 January 2023:

‘Short of dictatorships, we are world leaders’: Australia’s record on criminalising environmental protest

MAEVE MCGREGOR

'The jailing of peaceful protesters is chilling for anyone who cares about our democracy — we need to restore and protect the right to protest before it’s too late.'

“After the High Court’s decision on the Franklin River on 1 July 1983,” said Bob Brown to Crikey, referring to the famous Tasmanian dam case during which he was arrested, “I stated we had entered a new era of environmentalism and that it would never be so hard as it was in the Franklin campaign.”

“I was totally wrong.”

Nearly 40 years on since the historic victory — in which the Commonwealth government succeeded in stopping the large hydroelectric Franklin Dam being built in Tasmania — the founder and former leader of the Greens was once again arrested, but this time under newly introduced laws that carry $13,000 fines or two years’ imprisonment for protests on a forestry site. The same laws also impose $45,000 fines on organisations, such as the Bob Brown Foundation, which lend support to such protests.

Far from heralding a new dawn for environmental justice, Brown said, the Franklin campaign had proved something of an aberration.

“We now have a situation across Australia where environmentalists are jailed and environmental exploiters are protected and subsidised,” he said of his arrest a few weeks ago.

“Instead of increasing environmental protection, we have laws that do the reverse — laws which foster the self-made environmental tragedy of this planet.”…..

Criminalising climate activism

The larger and more pressing dilemma, Brown said, — and one which belongs to the current age — is the growing tendency of government to criminalise peaceful protest, while climate breakdown and mass extinction envelop the world, forever sealing its fate.

In August, Victoria’s opposition united with the Andrews government to pass laws comparable to Tasmania’s, running roughshod over a chorus of concerns voiced by civil liberties groups, unions and environmentalists.

Three years earlier, in 2019, the Queensland government rushed through sweeping limits on the right to protest, underpinned by unsubstantiated claims of “extremist” conduct by environmentalists. The resulting legislation expanded police search powers and criminalised “dangerous locking devices” — such as superglue or anything activists might use to secure themselves to pavement or buildings — as a means to silence dissent.

And in New South Wales, concerns about traffic disruption were similarly seized upon following climate protests in Sydney and Port Botany earlier this year to hurry the introduction of two-year jail terms and $22,000 fines for “illegal protests”.

The laws, which criminalise “illegal protests” on rail lines, bridges, tunnels and — most contentiously — public roads, were passed within two days with the unqualified support of the Labor opposition mere weeks after the government flagged a crackdown on environmentalists.

Though seemingly aimed at “anarchist protesters”, as NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman put it, the breadth of the provisions suggests otherwise.

“Because the provisions are so loosely drafted, so imprecise, the laws can apply to almost any situation of people being on a road,” said Coco’s lawyer, Mark Davis.

“The Roads Minister Natalie Ward didn’t know herself if ‘public road’ meant ‘major road’ or any and every road. It’s a disgrace. It gives police an unlimited, utterly arbitrary discretion to arrest anyone on a road protesting about anything, not just climate.

“Short of some prominent dictatorships, we are world leaders with this kind of legislation. And the courts, or at least one court, has shown us the gun is loaded and they’re willing to fire it.”

Disruption and democracy

Against the backdrop of this legislation, now the subject of constitutional challenge, environmental demonstrators across Australia have regularly been denied bail or otherwise forced to contend with disproportionate bail conditions, while those residing in New South Wales have had espionage activities undertaken against them by a new police unit, Strike Force Guard.

In a statement to Crikey on Wednesday, New South Wales Deputy Premier and Minister for Police Paul Toole defended the laws.

“Illegal protests that disrupt everyday life, whether it’s transport networks, freight chains, production lines or commuters trying to get to work or school, will not be tolerated,” he said.

It was a sentiment shared by Premier Dominic Perrottet, who days earlier labelled Coco’s 15-month prison sentence “pleasing to see”, adding “if protesters want to put our way of life at risk, then they should have the book thrown at them”.

In answer, the famous physicist and climate scientist Bill Hare said, via Twitter, that the inconvenience occasioned by “protest is not comparable to [the] catastrophic risk to [the] environment and serious damage to our way of life caused by fossil fuel emissions”.

Hare — the lead author for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, for which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — added that Perrottet’s statement was one of the “most regressive, anti-democratic statements” he could recall in Australia “for a long time”. [my yellow highlighting]

It’s a view which throws the shifting definition of what is deemed lawful dissent into sharp relief, Ray Yoshida of the Australian Democracy Network told Crikey.

“It’s doublespeak for the NSW government to say they support protests as long as they don’t break the law, and then pass new laws that shrink the space for people to act,” he said.

“The jailing of peaceful protesters is chilling for anyone who cares about our democracy — we need to restore and protect the right to protest before it’s too late.”

Had such laws existed at the time of many of Australia’s historic environmental wins — from the Franklin River to the Kakadu and Jabiluka blockades — many, perhaps all, would have met with failure.

“There’s no doubt these laws would certainly have had an adverse impact on bringing to the public’s attention the Franklin Dam issue and, for that matter, a range of issues that have been brought to prominence in the public’s mind because of protests,” Greg Barns SC of the Australian Lawyers Alliance said.

He added people too often overlooked the hundreds of arrests which occurred during the Franklin River campaign, but under ordinary trespass laws that impose lesser penalties.

“The reason [the new laws] are unnecessary is because there are already ample laws on the statute books, such as laws relating to trespass, criminal damage, that deal with these types of situations if people break the law,” he said.

“What [Coco’s] sentence shows is that these new laws are draconian. Her sentence is a draconian penalty allowed for by a draconian law.”

Why now?

Given ours is the age of looming, if not inevitable, climate disaster, all of this poses the inevitable question: why the crackdown on environmentalists?

In Brown’s view, it’s no accident of history the techniques used by campaigners in the past are being targeted by government. It’s a phenomenon, he said, which conversely owes its existence to “state capture” by the fossil fuel and logging industries.

“The extractive industries, who want to convert nature into profits, can no longer win the argument with the public on the environment, so they have to ‘take out’ the environmentalists,” he said.

“These laws are meant to kill environmental activism and frighten people into silence.”

In this connection, there’s little denying climate anxiety, and concomitant calls for climate action pose a risk to such corporations.

A recent analysis of World Bank data undertaken by Belgian energy and environmental economist Aviel Verbruggen, a former lead author of an IPCC report, found the oil and gas industry had delivered more than $4 billion in profit every day for the past 50 years.

Following the report’s release, Verbruggen said: “You can buy every politician, every system with all this money, and I think this happened here. It protects [polluters] from political interference that may limit their activities.”

While Brown doesn’t believe any Australian politicians have been bribed or “bought”, so to speak, he said the lobbying power of the industry was obvious, both on a domestic and global level.

“By and large, [our politicians] are just suborned by this lobbying tour de force, which is not being matched by the non-governmental sector, which is the guardian of the environment,” he said.

“The striking similarity between Australian [anti-protest] legislation and the UK’s legislation is a clue which indicates we’ve got a global corporate governance.”

To buttress this view, Brown pointed to the $700 billion in taxpayer subsidies received by oil and gas companies globally in 2021.

Viewed in this context, he said, the anti-protest laws were self-evidently designed to shatter the unity underpinning the rise of collective, society-wide pressure to move on climate action.

Environmental Justice Australia ecosystems lawyer Natalie Hogan agreed the laws were a “politically motivated crackdown on legitimate political expression”, and ones that illustrated the efficacy of environmental campaigns.

“These protests provide very important community oversight,” she said in reference to the illegal logging in Victorian forests exposed by environmental demonstrators and citizen science groups in recent years.

“It seems very inconsistent to [tell Victorians] native logging will end by 2030, and then introduce laws that disproportionately criminalise or penalise people engaged in legitimate protests or citizen science in forests.”

Others, however, believe the anti-protest laws represent yet another skirmish on the law-and-order politics theme.

“Banging the law-and-order drum has been fashionable for over 20 years,” Greg Barns said. “I think that’s the issue at play here — it just so happens to be climate change in this instance.”

“The irony is that it will probably have the impact of emboldening protesters to take more extreme action because they see the laws as unjust.”

The future of protests

Not everyone has cast doubt on the deterrent effect of the laws, though. Coco’s lawyer Davis said the laws — which he defined as a “knee-jerk response to tabloid media” — would achieve their desired result.

“Of course it will work — who would be insane enough to organise any sort of free protest? You can go to jail for a long time. It’s nuts,” he said.

Either way, Davis added, it’s clear such laws were placing the limits of Australia’s reputation as a liberal democracy under extraordinary pressure.

“You cannot be a fully functional democracy if you cannot voice dissent to the government power,” he said. “It’s simply impossible.”

“To be on a road, to use a road, is intrinsic to the right to protest and the fact that’s now seen as somehow radical tells you about the cultural shift we’re witnessing.”

Brown, for his part, believes it would be foolish to bet on a decline in environmental protest, notwithstanding the laws, given the climate predicament confronting the globe.....

“But ultimately responsibility for [change will] fall to voters..... 

“These laws will only continue to get worse if people don’t vote for the environment.”

After all, he said, dealing with global warming and the extinction crisis is, and always has been, about the balance of power.

BACKGROUND

North Coast Voices, Monday, 2 January 2023,

Who is undermining Australia’s climate change mitigation goals? Listing lobbyists contracted to act on behalf of fossil fuel industries.

If you have ever wondered how Scott Morrison forms his opinions on everything from climate change & coal mining to taxation & punishing the poor......

Scott John Morrison does not appear to be a man with an abundance of intellectual curiosity, his employment history* is lacklustre with most of positions he held lasting less than 3 years and, his work ethic is not strong given he granted himself three holiday breaks in the first full year of his primeministership.

So to whom (besides the Institute of Public Affairs) does Morrison turn to when he is deciding his policy positions?

A clue might be found here......

 Michael West Media, Hon Scott Morrison MP, excerpt, 2020:

Mining Connections

John Kunkel, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff: before his appointment to his current position by Morrison in 2018, Kunkle served as Rio Tinto’s chief advisor for Government Relations, working as a lobbyist for the multinational mining firm. Rio is one of Australia’s top coal miners. Before this Kunkel was Deputy CEO of the Mineral Council of Australia for over six years.

Brendan Pearson, Senior Advisor for International Trade and Investment for the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) 2019 to present. Pearson was the CEO of the MCA from 2014 untl 2017, where BHP Billiton pressured the MCA over Pearson’s radically pro-coal stances and insistance on government-subsidised coal projects.

Lobbying Connections

Former mining lobbyists who now hold key positions within Morrison’s staff include The Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, the former CEO of Crosby Textor (now C|T) a multinational lobbying firm with close ties to the Liberal Party and the mining industry. Other C|T alumni include Liberal Party campaign director, Andrew Hirst and his deputy, Isaac Levido, as well as James McGrath, LNP Senator for Queensland and prominent public advocate for Adani’s Carmichael coal mine.

A further pro-mining lobbyist connection is Stephanie Wawn. Wawn is a

senior advisor to Morrison and was previously employed as a manager for CapitalHill Advisory. CapitalHill’s clients included coal miner Glencore and pro-coal think tank, the Menzies Research Centre.

Media Connections

​Another way in which the mining lobby exerts influence is via the Prime Minister’s communications team. Many of Morrison’s senior communications team have long-held ties to the Murdoch press. News Corporation is pro-coal and anti climate change.

Positions taken by News Corp staffers in the Prime Minster’s office include Matthew Fynes-Clinton’s role as speech-writer. Fynes-Clinton was former deputy chief of staff and editor of The Courier Mail. Press Secretary, Andrew Carswell, formerly chief of staff at The Daily Telegraph and advisor Thomas Adolph, formerly with The Australian.

NOTES

* Jobs held since 1989:

National Manager, Policy and Research Property Council of Australia 1989-95. 
Deputy Chief Executive, Australian Tourism Task Force 1995-96. 
General Manager, Tourism Council 1996-98. 
Director, NZ Office of Tourism and Sport 1998-2000. 
State Director, Liberal Party (NSW) 2000-04. 
Managing Director, Tourism Australia 2004-06. 
Principal, MSAS Pty Ltd 2006-07.
Member iof the Australian Parliament 2007- present.

This is the Singleton Argus article that either the NSW Deputy-Premier or his office alleges is "seditious"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'the offence [sedition] is one if the person urges by force or violence the overthrowing of a government, or interfering with an election, or encouraging other people to use – or groups of people – to use force or violence against other groups' [The Attorney-General, Hon Philip Ruddock MP, Alan Jones Radio Programme, 14 November 2005, quoted in Australian Parliamentary Library, "In Good Faith:Sedition Law in Australia", 23 August 2010]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It appears that NSW Deputy-Premier, Minister for Regional New South Wales, Industry and Trade & Liberal MP for Monaro, John Barilaro, is unhappy with journalists having an opinion about the mining industry, state government agencies or the region in which they live and work......

This statement from the NSW Deputy Premier's office on this week's opinion piece 'There were some arresting remarks made in the article that were as inaccurate as they were seditious.'#RightToKnow

— The Singleton Argus (@SingletonArgus) October 24, 2019

There were two articles published online by The Singleton Argus on 22 October 2019 which dealt with the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption's current review of lobbying activities, access and influence in this state.

The first was a local news article and the second an opinion piece by the same journalist on the same subject.

It was this second piece which is the allegedly "seditious" item that either the Deputy-Premier or his staff apparently decided included content intended to incite violence, public disorder or a public offence:

"Here we go again - the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is hearing evidence about mining approvals - what, haven't we learnt our lessons from the Doyles Creek and Mt Penny inquiries all those years ago?

This time ICAC's Operation Eclipse is not investigating actual corrupt conduct by individuals but rather it is seeking' to examine particular aspects of lobbying activities and the corruption risks involved in the lobbying of public authorities and officials.'

At the same time as ICAC is seeking information about the influence of lobbying on government decision making Planning Minister Rob Stokes announced the terms of reference for the review into the operations of the Independent Planning Commission.

Included in the terms of reference is a question about whether the IPC should exist at all.

Scary when one considers that the former ICAC commissioner David Ipp, QC was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald saying such a move was 'a recipe for corruption'.

The more things change the more they stay the same it would appear when it comes to planning state significant mining projects in NSW.

As an invited witness to this week's Operation Eclipse hearings NSW Minerals Council, chief executive officer Stephen Galilee voiced his strong opinions about the current state of mine approvals in NSW.

He is not happy that Bylong Coal Project was refused, that Dartbrook Underground was only half approved and that United Wambo and Rix's Creek were approved but it took too long so he was still very unhappy.

Mr Galilee is welcome is hold these opinions he works to promote mineral extraction in NSW but his opinions should not over ride due process.

We have seen what happens when mining licences are granted behind closed doors, people made millions often corruptly and the community is treated poorly or not considered at all.

No way should we go back to the bad old days in mine approvals.

We should be planning for our future where we have clean air to breath and new industries for our current mining workforce.

Instead of wasting time and money on the IPC review lets get started with planning for a just transition for our region.

The longer we put off the inevitable transition the harder it will hit our region - want to be part of that Mr Galilee?"

For the life of me I cannot see this as a journalistic call for citizens to man the barricades armed to the teeth and ready to do violence.

Perhaps in the future whichever of the Deputy-Premier's minions crafted that particular email should pause, open a dictionary and a copy of the Crimes Act before choosing his adjectives.

Then when he next rushes to the defence of his minister's 'mates' he won't rashly accuse a journalist of a grave unlawful act.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'as long as the various sedition offences remain, governments will inevitably be tempted to use them improperly, especially when highly unpopular opinions are expressed' [Sydney Law Review,  (1992) Maher, L.W.,"The Use and Abuse of Sedition"]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption investigating regulation of lobbying, access and influence in state government circles

In New South Wales state governments have attempted to regulate political and commercial lobbying of members of parliament and public servants under provisions contained in Lobbying of Government Officials Act 2011 , Lobbying of Government Officials (Lobbyists Code of Conduct) Regulation 2014, Lobbying of Government Officials (Lobbyists Code of Conduct) Amendment Regulation 2019, Premier’s Memorandum M2015-13 ‘NSW Lobbyists Code of Conduct’, Premier’s Memorandum M2015-05 ‘Publication of Ministerial Diaries and Release of Overseas Travel Information’. 

To date this approach has obviously been working so well that on 5 August 2019 the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) began public hearings into the regulation of lobbying, access and influence in NSW (Operation Eclipse). 

Three hearing days occurred in August and the next public hearing date is not scheduled until 21 October 2019.

 According to ICAC; “Like the Commission’s previous examination of lobbying practices in 2010 (Operation Halifax), this investigation is not concerned with examining whether any particular individual may have engaged in corrupt conduct, but rather seeks to examine particular aspects of lobbying activities and the corruption risks involved in the lobbying of public authorities and officials.” 

Interestingly on 30 August 2019 The Australian gave this explanation of the possible genesis of Operation Eclipse: 

The NSW corruption commission will examine the “revolving door” where politicians and public servants leave their careers to move into jobs with private sector lobbyists, warning that the trend has whittled away public trust. 

Heidrun Blackwood, a senior corruption prevention officer for the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, said the crisis of public trust in government risked cascading towards “doomsday” levels in the near future. 

She said the integrity body would soon investigate the access granted to special interest groups by MPs and public servants. 

Ms Blackwood flagged the investigation after Christopher Pyne — a former federal defence minister — took up a defence consulting job with EY, and former federal foreign minister Julie Bishop landed a gig as a board director with development contractor Palladium. 

Both have denied wrongdoing and have been cleared by outgoing public service boss Martin Parkinson, who is appearing before a parliamentary committee today to take questions on the matter….. 

According to the Grattan Institute, since 1990 more than one-quarter of all federal ministers or assistant ministers have taken up roles in lobbying outfits or special interest groups since leaving parliament. 

“The revolving door is an issue that we are going to look at,” Ms Blackwood said. “It is true that, on the one hand, it is part of democracy to have that conversation. 

“On the other hand, there is also the impression that some people are getting more access than others. That has prompted our commissioner to look at that issue more closely.”