Katharine Murphy (fairfax journalist) has rung alarm bells about the amount of money some interest groups are willing to spend to influence government policy outcomes. She suggests that big budget campaigns pose a real threat to our political system, including by setting agendas, and that we should consider full funding of elections (to leave politics to the politicians) and truth in political advertising. She bases her case on three recent campaigns: the ACTU's against Workchoices; the miners against the mining tax, and the clubs against the proposed regulation of poker machines. All involved, or in the clubs example will involve, the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars.
There are some initial points to make.
- First, obviously 'leaving politics to the politicians' is neither desirable nor feasible in a democracy. Among other things, it would require restrictions on freedom of speech, including in the media.
- Second, none of these campaigns were agenda-setting. They were responses to government proposals, which they believed would adversely affect their members. They did try to frame the debate in ways favourable to their arguments, but that is not agenda-setting.
- Third, most campaigns of this sort are only partially successful, or not successful at all. Murphy's analysis would have been more interesting if she had given some sense of the success rate, as it stands she suggests that any campaign with a big enough budget will succeed. Unsurprisingly, successful campaigns are long remember while unsuccessful campaigns are quickly forgotten.
- Fourth, no matter how big the budgets of the interest groups involved, they are easily surpassed by government. Leaving their capacity to buy advertising to one side, politicians have far greater access to media platforms than any interest group, and far greater resources for generating evidence-based content to fuel their side of the debate.
- Fifth, these big campaigns work by 'representing' the interests of many ordinary people be they the ACTU's 1.9 million unionists; or the mining industries investors, suppliers and employees. If you limit the capacity of these organisations to campaign, you are also limiting the right of these Australians to put their views.
We need to look at why some lobbying campaigns succeed more than others. We don't yet know whether the clubs campaign will ultimately succeed. But there are similarities between the other two. The success of the ACTU and mining campaigns owed a lot to policy and communication failures by government. In both cases, governments failed to establish a clear rationale for reform before announcing it. No-one knew why we needed more labour market reform or why the mining industry royalties needed to be replaced by a much larger tax. The Howard Government did not have a prior consultation process. The Rudd Government sat on the Henry report for months and then released it at the same time it announced the mining tax. Both policies were very complex, and that meant that weaknesses could be found and exploited. The governments that announced these policies were weakened by internal ructions over the leaderships of Howard and Rudd. In both cases, the government ministers charged with selling the policy reforms proved to be ineffective. Kevin Andrews, Andrew Robb, Joe Hockey, Wayne Swan and Martin Ferguson are not going to make it on to lists of great Australian political communicators.
My view is that big budget political campaigns are most likely to work off the back of bad policies, poorly communicated. There's a lot more to it than deep pockets. Short-term advertsing doesn't change underlying political attitudes and values. Framing helps, but there still has to be something there to exploit. Framing can also be seen as spin. Governments spin their policies the way that suits them, and an important function of public lobbying campaigns is to challenge that government spin.
Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that there isn't a problem and that we shouldn't do something about it. It just means we need to be cautious before we advocate restrictions on freedom of speech, or further expenditures of taxpayer funds on election campaigns. Nor is it feasible to achieve some equality in access to lobbying resources. We would have to put undesirable restrictions on the freedom of speech of some people, and / or use taxpayer funds to support the lobbying efforts of others. Truth in political advertising is another idea that falls away a lot when you think about implementation. After all, who decides the 'truth' of a claim in a political ad. There may be some sensible measures to rein in excessive lobbying. It's just hard to think of something that would work and not impinge unduly on the freedoms of ordinary citizens.
All lobbying is intended to influence policy-making. That after all is the point. And in a democracy, everyone has the right to try and influence policy-making. And a lot of people do. From writing letters, ringing radio stations, writing blogs, marching in protests to donating money to GetUp for a TV ad or two, or conducting academic research. Its always been there and always will be. We all get upset about the lobbying of our opponents, while many of us regularly engage in it.
The real problem here is weak government, not strong lobbying campaigns. We've had some weak, ineffective governments over the last decade and that has both provoked and rewarded a few high profile campaigns.
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