Why We Signed: Australia Needs a National Lobbying Act
As MPs filed back into Parliament last week, a full-page ad ran in The Saturday Paper for a National Lobbying Act carrying 76 names, organisations representing millions of regular Australians, from health and environment groups to human rights networks.
AidWatch is one of them. The message was simple: Australia needs a National Lobbying Act, and it needs it now.
Here’s why that matters.
Australia’s current lobbying rules are close to decorative. They only capture paid consultant lobbyists, meaning more than half of ASX100 companies don’t show up on any register at all, because their government relations work is done in-house rather than farmed out to a contractor.
Australia’s current lobbying rules are close to decorative. They only capture paid consultant lobbyists, meaning more than half of ASX100 companies don’t show up on any register at all, because their government relations work is done in-house rather than farmed out to a contractor. Meanwhile, roughly two-thirds of the lobbyists who are registered in Canberra have previously worked inside state or federal government. The revolving door spins one way: out of ministerial offices and public services, into the firms and industries best placed to pay for the access built there.
We’ve watched what this buys. When a 2022 parliamentary inquiry unanimously recommended banning online gambling advertising (backed by 80% of the public) the industry’s lobbying muscle gutted the resulting legislation until Coalition members crossed the floor against their own government’s deal.
It’s the same playbook we track constantly in our own work: mining and critical minerals lobbyists shaping the policies meant to regulate them, defence contractors embedded in the AUKUS and Pacific “security” agenda they profit from, corporate voices drowning out the frontline communities actually living with the consequences.
The campaign, coordinated by the Australian Democracy Network, is calling for reforms that would actually have teeth: a universal register covering everyone who lobbies government, not just contracted consultants; mandatory publication of ministerial diaries; real cooling-off periods to slow the revolving door; and an independent regulator with the power to enforce penalties, not just note them down.
None of the fights AidWatch takes on including extractivism, militarisation, and the hollowing-out of Australia’s aid program, happen in a vacuum. They happen because corporate and defence interests have privileged, often invisible access to the people writing the rules.
A National Lobbying Act won’t fix everything, but it’s a lever worth pulling. That’s why we signed.
Read the full campaign and add your organisation’s voice