This piece on the Rudd Government’s relationship with lobbyists and industry bodies says a lot about politics in Australia. As Katherine Murphy points out, Labor came to government with a desire to make lobbyists more transparent (which, presumably, would lead to their influence being less, or at least less pernicious).

But while they have made some moves in the direction of transparency (and will perhaps make further moves with the Faulkner Inquiry into electoral reform), by its policy actions and policy development processes, the new government has made lobbying vastly more important and more desirable than it was a year ago. As I wrote in a article early in December,

Big Australian companies will be quickly learning how important their Canberra lobbyists are under the Rudd Government: with a resurgent industry policy, an emissions trading scheme with more exceptions than consistencies, and a steady program of commercial bail-outs, it has been a long time since having the ear of a minister has been so important.

The Government can’t claim to be concerned about the influence of lobbyists in the halls of Parliament while making it impossible for companies to do business without them.

It isn’t the capacity to donate anonymously that encourages lobbying and money in politics. Corporations and special interest groups will only donate and lobby when they perceive a benefit from doing so. While such opportunities, money will flow into political parties by any means possible.

And by instituting the sort of policies above - the emissions trading scheme, elaborate industry policy, and corporate bailouts - the Rudd Government has only increased the opportunities firms have to gain from politics.

The end result is to make government more arbitrary. There is no consistent rule governing what sectors will be the recipients of government largess - “too big to fail” does not work with childcare organisations, and “too important to fail” surely does not apply to car dealers, no matter how elaborate their leasing arrangements might be. And the structure and exemptions of the ETS seems to be entirely without any rhyme or reason.

In the absence of such general rules, what benefits firms might be able to get from the government are governed instead by the particularities of the case - and it is lobbyists and donors who are there to argue those particularities.

Now, obviously, governance which is more particular than general is obviously not the invention of the Labor Party - there is absolutely no consistency that governs the regulation of the media sector, for example. But it is notable that the Howard Government often did decline to make “exceptions” - the Commonwealth never did bail out Ansett, for example, despite what was no doubt intense pressure to do so.

One wonders what the Rudd Government would have done when faced by the collapse of Australia’s second airline. (The Labor Party at the time was a bit confused.) It is that sort of wondering that makes lobbyists so important - the new government is arbitrary enough to make it worth opening a Canberra office and trying your luck.

No changes to the electoral act will be able to mitigate this incentive to donate and lobby political parties.