‘You can either be a political powerbroker or a lobbyist, but you cannot be both’ said newly elected PM Tony Abbott when he and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell sought to end political lobbying’s clear conflicts of interest. They applied a code of conduct that banned lobbyists, paid by business to influence politicians, from being involved in the running of political parties that pre-select endorsed candidates to stand for parliament. To end what the leaders saw as a classic conflict of interest, they sought to prevent a lobbyist from being involved in the selection of a potential member of parliament. After being elected, such an MP could be lobbied on behalf of paying clients and would be only too well aware of the political debt owed to the lobbyist/faction leader to whom his/her election was due – and on whose continued support re-election may well depend. The Abbott-O’Farrell rule (backed by Liberal icon John Howard with his anti-faction reforms) resulted in lobbyists having to give up powerful and factional-leader roles in the Liberal party organisation. But recent events indicate an urgent need for the replacement leaders, Malcolm Turnbull and Mike Baird, to endorse and enforce this principled stance so that the Liberal Party can approach the coming federal election with clean hands.

Last week’s report in the Australian of the weekend’s ‘farcical’ Liberal Senate pre-selection indicates that lobbyist/faction leader activity is alive and sufficiently powerful in NSW to affect important party decisions. Yet there has been no evident withdrawal of the Abbott ban (‘to be seen to be clean and fair’) and of O’Farrell’s changes to the NSW Lobbyist Code of Conduct ‘to improve transparency and remove any perception or potential for conflicts of interest’, which meant that ‘people who occupy or act in a position concerned with the management of a registered political party, will not be eligible to engage in lobbying activities in NSW… Those who think that they can get the key to getting a meeting or a favourable decision by employing a lobbyist are wasting their time and… money.’

In deciding he would rather remain a fee-earning lobbyist than overtly exercise factional power, self-styled ‘factional warlord’ Michael Photios acknowledged at the time that ‘I agree with the PM that potential conflicts of interest, either real or perceived, need to align with community expectation.’ At a time when political parties of all persuasions are regarded with mounting suspicion by a disenchanted electorate, there is a heightened need for parties to live up to community expectations, not to treat them with contempt.

But according to the Australian, ‘In a test of money and power, party officials allowed lobbyists Michael Photios and Nick Campbell to step in at the last minute to help decide the NSW Liberal candidates for the Senate at the next election, sparking claims of corruption in the process’. And it claimed ‘the result would have been completely different’ if the state executive had not agreed that proxies be allowed for state executive members following a late request from its president, Trent Zimmerman, a Photios factional ally and new MP for North Sydney (who also participated in the vote despite a prohibition on MPs doing so). The newspaper reported that to accommodate Photios and Campbell, Julian Leeser, a Liberal pre-selection candidate for a House of Representatives seat that was yet to be decided, ‘stood aside’ as did Michelle Bishop. The paper also questioned the integrity of the Senate ballots (run by the new state director, a former Photios employee) that ‘defied Malcolm Turnbull’s request by seeking to undermine one of his ministers, and costing retired general Jim Molan (creator of the brilliantly successful Sovereign Borders program) a seat’. Either the Abbott-O’Farrell rules no longer apply, undermining the high moral ground they sensibly sought to occupy after the dishonesty and corruption of NSW state Labor’s former regime, or it is up to the changed leadership of Turnbull and Baird, to enforce them. And correct misbegotten outcomes?