Given yesterday’s very disappointing news that a senior banker will be running the new Wallis Inquiry and the stoush that has broken out between Max “the Axe” Moore Wilton and Anthony Albanese about whether or not the CEO of the Sydney airport had conflicts of interest when he passed from the public to the private sector, it is important that we give the issue some more airtime. Thankfully, Professor Ross Garnaut’s new book, Dog Days: Australia After the Boom, looks at the growing issue in some depth. The following extract is courtesy of Black Inc.
Most holders of high office and their close advisers through most of our democratic history have sought their reward in the satisfaction of performing well a role that is important to the community. In the apt words of Tony Abbott on taking office, a life in high policy is a vocation.
It is an honour to serve the people of your country in a way that improves their lives.
Some people close to the exercise of power have always had other motives. Some have seen the attainment of high office or influence as a largely commercial activity have succeeded as a nation because few of our most senior leaders have involved themselves in politics and policy with pecuniary motives. For example, our three long-serving post-war Coalition prime ministers, Menzies, Fraser and Howard, have been exemplary in their living of their vocations.
The revelation of corruption in the NSW state government’s administration of mineral leases has shocked us.
Yet this terrible case is in a sense reassuring, because the crimes will attract an appropriate punishment.
Less blatant but nonetheless seriously damaging uses of official office for the advancement of business interests are now accepted as normal. It is now normal for people to move directly and without delay from senior government roles into positions in which their intimate knowledge of personnel and processes has high commercial value. It is now normal for people to move directly from positions of confidential influence in the offices of heads of government and ministers into lobbying roles for companies in which their access to decision-makers and presumed influence over them is a valuable asset.
Do we really think it is right for a minister of the Crown with a portfolio related to gambling, who is also a recent state secretary of the governing party, to move directly to work for a company in the gambling business that has huge private interests in issues before the federal and state governments? Or for federal and state ministers to move straight into lobbying businesses, or positions with investment banks, in which at least part of their value derives from their influence over decisions of relevance to their new employers?
The revolving door was an important factor in the political contests over resource taxation and carbon pricing. It is a serious counterweight to the public interest in shaping contemporary policy.As the influence of money grows, we need to defend the integrity of the democratic process with a sensitivity that may have seemed unnecessary in earlier generations. We have to be clear and straightforward in our management of conflict of interest and the use of public office to advance private pecuniary ends.
The Commonwealth Public Service has a well-earned reputation for integrity. To preserve that integrity, we must defend its best traditions when they are breached. It is unfortunate that strong and prompt action was not taken on two 21st-century revelations of corrupt behaviour in areas of commonwealth responsibility: the Australian Wheat Board’s relationship with the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq; and the payment of bribes by the Reserve Bank’s note-printing subsidiaries. Justice was not seen to be done in relation to people who may have had responsi bility in various ways for serious corruption.
The election of three Palmer United Party senators at the 2013 election requires us to think through how we manage conflict-of-interest issues in our Parliament. The leader of the party, Clive Palmer, has major mining interests, including in Queensland coal, that would be affected by the removal of carbon pricing. (They would also be affected by the removal of the MRRT; while quantitatively of less importance, the principle is the same.) Palmer has made it clear that the three senators will be subject to party discipline under his leadership in using their votes within the Senate.
Palmer has been asked whether he would withdraw from his mining investments if elected to the Parliament. He responded that he would handle the conflict in the way that would be appropriate on the board of a public company: by removing himself from discussions affecting his interests. Palmer’s expressed concern about the role of lobbyists in our political life is a positive and welcome contribution to a debate that should go much further. His statement that he would recuse himself from decisions affecting his own private interests is welcome and appropriate. It is important that the leader of the Palmer United Party advise senators who have acknowledged his leadership recuse themselves from decisions in which their leader has a material pecuniary interest. The democratic legitimacy of a Senate decision to abolish carbon pricing that depended on votes from the Palmer United Party would be tainted.
The early twenty- first century has seen a major change in the role of private interests in the policymaking process that has made reform in the public interest more difficult. This has placed a smog over the policymaking process, rather than an impenetrable wall. It has created an environment in which governments can lose their nerve and do the bidding of private interests. However, the evidence so far indicates that private interests are still not able to block a government with a clear idea of its objectives and which seeks to appeal to the electorate in the name of the public interest.
The book is available to MB members at a special discount here. Today is the final day of the offer.
