Some of the most likeable people in New Zealand politics are the lobbyists. They’re often the most insightful: they know what’s going on and why, but they’re more detached than the politicians and less tangled up in the day-to-day churn than many journalists.
These qualities make them excellent political commentators, and many of the nation’s most prominent media pundits are lobbyists. But with all that charm and insight, it’s a little easy for everyone to forget that these people are deeply political actors: that instead of trying to win elections so they can influence government policy, their job is to quietly influence policy no matter who wins.
RNZ investigative journalist Guyon Espiner has run a series of stories about political lobbying. He found that Pharmac, the agency tasked with funding medicines and pharmaceuticals for the public health system, had hired public relations firm Draper Cormack, whose managing partner David Cormack is a lobbyist and former Green Party media adviser who, in another life, helped advise New Zealand Steel and the Brazilian oil company Petrobras. Cormack advised Pharmac on how to evade questions and avoid media scrutiny while looking for opportunities to soften its image via chief executive Sarah Fitt. All of which is normal practice in private sector communications but questionable behaviour from a public, taxpayer-funded entity. The agency refused to disclose how much it had paid Cormack’s firm.
Espiner also discovered that other public bodies – notably the universities and Transpower – had employed lobbying firms, paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars in retainers and for work on “crisis projects”. These state-owned agencies are accountable to the government, so it isn’t clear why their executives or boards need to hire professional lobbyists to gather intelligence on, or influence, the politicians they report to.
Every year, the Speaker of the House publishes a list of pre-approved visitors to Parliament. These are people who have been sponsored by a sitting MP so they can enjoy swipe card access to the parliamentary buildings; they can enter without an appointment or security check. They are mostly lobbyists.
Porous borders
It’s hard to gauge the size of the industry, which is secretive by nature and totally unregulated, but it seems to have expanded in scale and influence over the past six years.
When Labour was voted into government, many of its most experienced political operatives promptly left Parliament and set themselves up as corporate lobbyists. Interim chief of staff for then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern was Gordon Jon “GJ” Thompson, who remained a director of government relations company Thompson Lewis while in the Beehive (though on unpaid leave).
In 2022, Justice Minister Kris Faafoi resigned from Parliament and joined a new lobbying company a few weeks later. Ardern’s successor Chris Hipkins’ new chief of staff, Andrew Kirton, is a lobbyist who resigned from his firm one day before he took up his new role in the Beehive.
All of this is illegal in many of the OECD nations we like to compare ourselves with. Most democracies enforce a cooling-off period between lobbying work and the public sector, temporarily shutting the door on the opportunity for politicians or officials to monetise information they’ve acquired in government on the outside, or minimise the risk that lobbyists might continue to represent their clients inside the beltway. There are public registers and codes of conduct. There are strict disclosure rules about lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, because of the obvious risk to the integrity of the nation’s foreign policy. New Zealand doesn’t do any of this.
When Espiner asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for its correspondence with the nine major lobbying firms over a two-year period, it refused his Official Information Act request on the grounds that the volume of communications was so vast it would require too much work to collate it all.
See no evil
Most of our politicians have a relaxed attitude towards lobbying — although in Stuart Nash’s case, he was so relaxed he was clearly a danger to both himself and others. Ardern insisted that we didn’t need to regulate the industry because her government was just so open and transparent there was no point, and Hipkins argues that lobbyists need to be able to make a living.
Most MPs claim lobbyists don’t really accomplish much, or change anything. Almost anyone can see their local MP or submit to a select committee, they argue, and some companies hire lobbyists to do it on their behalf. So what?
But the bulk of the communications Espiner obtained were between lobbyists and ministerial advisers. These are staff appointed by ministers, and they’re extremely influential. If you wanted to get draft legislation modified quickly and quietly, they’re the people you’d speak to. If you could.
The general public has no access to them. And most of the messages that were released were heavily redacted, so what was said remains confidential.
It is true that New Zealand consistently rates near the top of Transparency International’s global corruption perception index. But this perception of integrity is often used as an excuse for a lack of regulation.
There are many valid reasons for a company or industry to lobby the government, but the argument for the status quo – that there’s nothing untoward happening in this industry so it’s important it remain opaque and unaccountable – is nonsense.
It’s an old adage of politics that a small, organised group will always prevail over a large, disorganised one. Lobbyists are the ultimate small, organised group, and MPs are supposed to represent the interests of the public against such coalitions. Instead, they seem more interested in protecting the lobbyists.
Most of the people Espiner mentioned are prolific media commentators, who offer up their opinions on every subject imaginable. But on the subject of their own industry they were uncharacteristically silent. Instead, the Prime Minister went into bat on their behalf. It certainly pays to be likeable.
