Light Shy Lobbyists

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Andrew Parker, the head of the Australian PR and lobbying firm Parker & Partners -- a part of the Ogilvy PR Worldwide network -- is worried that the Australian government will re-introduce a system of regulating lobbyists. Calls for registering lobbyists have grown in the wake of a series of revelations over the lobbying activities of former West Australian Premier Brian Burke, who was later imprisoned after a Royal commission of Inquiry into business deals done by his government. After serving seven months of a two-year prison sentence, Burke re-invented himself as a lobbyist. "There is no denying the Brian Burkes of this world -- those lobbyists who rely on personal 'political mates' alone -- face extinction. But we need to speed up this process," Parker wrote in an opinion column. While Parker supports lobbyist registration, he has caveats. "Calls for complete financial disclosure are not only unprecedented for other professional service sectors but are designed to simply give these [anti-business] crusaders the ability to misrepresent and deceive," he complained. In the U.S., lobbyists are required to disclose clients and broad details of their work for them.