Lobbyists
It is time Parliaments joined Governments to ensure all professional lobbyists are registered. All lobbyists should be required to adhere to a code of conduct. And interest groups and think tanks should be required to disclose who their members and donors are.

Recent developments in the debate about plain packaging of tobacco and carbon pricing have in turn kicked off a debate about the role of lobbyists, interest groups and think tanks. In particular, who influences the influencers?
Political parties have for many years been required to disclose significant donors. The current debate is about the threshold at which donations should be disclosed.
James Packer had better watch his back. He’s just hired the guy who helped knock off former NSW Premier Morris Iemma for Nathan Rees, then rolled Rees for Kristina Keneally, and played a key role in last year’s putsch which replaced Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard.

On the basis of recent performance, the appointment of former national ALP secretary Karl Bitar as Crown Casino government relations lobbyist could mean that the gambling empire will soon be run by Kerry Stokes from the Seven Network.
If there is such a thing as purgatory it may well be Melbourne’s Crown Casino. There is a story that at the Casino’s gala opening in 1997, dozens of white doves were released into the night sky, and were promptly incinerated in the balls of flame that blast from the braziers on the Yarra’s banks. It might be an apocryphal tale but it’s a nice bit of imagery for a place which wrongly presents gambling as nothing other than innocent fun.
Continue reading "Packer’s patsy sells his soul, and our intellectual property" »
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ant says:
I defy you to walk up to the average Australian voter and ask them who Bitar is. They don’t know who he is and they don’t care who he is. The only people who care about this are journalists and if Bitar was a Liberal and a wasp they wouldn’t… Read more »
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Harquebus says:
If he does then, he really is an idiot. Read more »
It would be handy, as a service for lazy journalists, if a special hotline called 1800-OFFENDED could be established whereby reporters looking for an easy headline can contact a centralised pool of permanently upset lobbyists.

One of the reasons Australia has weathered the global financial crisis is that there is a vibrant local growth industry where hundreds of people are waiting by the phone to be professionally outraged about pretty much anything.
An old media favourite is Harold Scruby who heads up the Pedestrian Council. Harold is the world’s nicest bloke but his irrational hatred of the motor car is such that he may well have been molested by an early-model Torana when he was a boy.
Continue reading "Dial 1800 OFFENDED: Your handy one-stop outrage shop" »
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Reg says:
I am outraged that I don’t understand what any of that means. Who should I blame? Olga down there seems to see things that I don’t as well. Thank goodness we have details like 10/10/10 to bring us back to normality. Read more »
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Chris says:
You write this article. Then your next article is about the outrage and offence from the fact that the eight men involved in the Brimble death dared to have a dinner eight years after? Pot, kettle? Read more »
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