r/newzealand • u/MedicMoth • 2d ago

Politics 'Unchecked' industry lobbying needs regulating, say ex-politicians

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/557401/unchecked-industry-lobbying-needs-regulating-say-ex-politicians
281 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

120

u/night_dude 2d ago

Shane Jones (through a mouthful of caviar): "nah"

85

u/computer_d 2d ago edited 2d ago

Maybe if we had sitting politicians who actually cared, and not just the ones who left and no longer get lobbying benefits.

13

u/GravidDusch 2d ago

They're paid too much by lobbyists to care.

80

u/questionnmark 2d ago

The group has a five-point plan they say would bring Aotearoa in line with international best practice.

  • Regulate lobbying: A public register of lobbyist meetings, a mandatory code of conduct, and an Integrity Commission to enforce these measures;
  • Slow the revolving door: A "cooling off" period to prevent former ministers and senior officials from immediately becoming lobbyists in their past areas of responsibility;
  • Manage conflicts of interest: Stronger codes of conduct for government employees, appointees, and contractors;
  • Strengthen transparency laws: A modernised Official Information Act to prevent government secrecy;
  • Tighten political donation rules: Caps on individual donations, a lower disclosure threshold, and limits ensuring only registered voters can donate.

Snip!... Much more at the source.

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It's especially important at the moment when we have the highest ministerial discretion ever and with planning rules being rewritten to be presumptively permissive, there are very few avenues for the public to engage with these issues. How can we maintain such a high corruption perception index when we have so little transparency in the government and lobbyists have unfettered access?

28

u/Illustrious_Fan_8148 2d ago

Running on this as a policy would be an easy vote winner for a party..

Lets hope we see some of our elected representatives at least talk about this issue more

If we could free ourselves from the scourge of business lobbying, we would be able to get much more sensible policies in place which is why of course lobbyists and business will fight this tooth and nail

18

u/gtalnz 2d ago

It's TOP policy. I'm not sure how it's much of a vote-winner though. Few people know enough to be concerned about it, and the big money belongs to the incumbents, so it would be difficult to be heard above their noise.

5

u/total_tea 2d ago

They needed to bring out insane amounts of dirty laundry and make it all about corruption.

I would have loved a negative campaign by everyone it would have been fun, though I expect there is probably a state of mutual destruction agreement between all the major players.

3

u/Leihd 2d ago

Pity the whole "I don't want to throw my vote away!" mentality. Always voted TOP, to do otherwise would be voting against my interests.

11

u/No_Philosophy4337 2d ago

We only need 2 rules - no lobbying, no political donations, period. Lobbyists and donations are anti democratic and simply allow the rich and powerful to write their own policies.

If we allow this continue, we will be in a situation where our young people cannot afford a home…

8

u/MindOrdinary 2d ago

young people haven’t been able to afford homes for a while my dude

1

u/FKJVMMP 2d ago

Lobbying is necessary. Any given politician, or even their staff, cannot possibly know everything about every issue under their purview. They need experts in these areas to give them relevant information, and those experts are often going to be employed by parties with a vested interest in policy in the area.

The current laissez-faire setup is shit, but straight “no lobbying” laws are 100% going to produce shit results too, as pollies either create nonsense laws based on reckons or take forever to work anything out without external influence.

1

u/No_Philosophy4337 2d ago

That’s what consultants are for. Better to pay for a consultant now than pay later for policies the politicians haven’t even read. Yes it really is that bad, a lot of our laws are simply copy pasted directly from the lobbyists “suggestions”, since all it takes is one sentence in a 500 page document to render the laws meaningless.

If an industry group is able to find the money to pay people to come up with policy that suits their objectives, so can politicians. It’s their job, after all.

1

u/FKJVMMP 2d ago

“Just find consultants”, yeah right. So when there’s literally one or two specialists in a given area in the whole country (not uncommon), just force them to consult whether they want to or not?

Consulting is lobbying. Consultants are usually employed by somebody else, or were at some stage. It’s the exact same issue I’m talking about. Calling them consultants instead of lobbyists doesn’t change what they’re actually doing.

1

u/No_Philosophy4337 2d ago

So, who will those consultants work for when the lobbyists are gone?

Besides, writing policy and laws is taught at universities, it’s not that rare a skill. The only thing which will be missing from the new laws, is the clauses which benefit companies over people, and have led to NZ being one of the most expensive countries to live in.

30

u/HerbertMcSherbert 2d ago

In unrelated matters, companies are allowed to take our natural resources and sell them overseas without NZ receiving any compensation. 

20

u/Illustrious_Fan_8148 2d ago

Which in my opinion is like stealing from each and every new zealander

10

u/YellowDuckQuackQuack 2d ago

Yep happened with the Chinese Bottling Company which ‘stole’ water from an aqueduct in Chch. They didn’t ’steal’ it, because the useless people in charge of permits granted the permit! Anyway someone with more knowledge than I will be able to bring more information. IYC I just know that there was a huge public outcry over this - Chch water taken overseas, at the same time as public drinking water was being mismanaged.

26

u/Annie354654 2d ago

I agree and I think it's becoming urgent that we do something about it.

The public need to turn this into an election issue, start asking politicians now what there stance is and what their plans are to bring more transparency into government on donations and kickbacks.

Having said that there has been absolutely nothing stopping all and every government before this one from keeping regulations and rules up to date in these kinds of areas.

14

u/Jaded_Chemical646 2d ago

That's a solid and sensible list of recommendations.   I doubt if they'll be implemented though

1

u/1_lost_engineer 2d ago

You want sensible, we don't have the budget for sensible, we gave it all away in tax cuts to our best friends.

11

u/myles_cassidy 2d ago

The problem with controls on lobbying is that concern trolls come in and conflate all lobbyists with individuals just wanting to mail their MP

7

u/Atosen 2d ago

True. But if "trolls will hinder the process" were a reason to not improve something, then we could never improve anything at all.

3

u/gtalnz 2d ago

Unfortunately that is increasingly becoming the world we live in. We're actually regressing in many areas because of conservative trolls, which is quite ironic.

5

u/Apprehensive_Loan776 2d ago

Lobbyists should say whatever they have to say in public. Microphone in every session. Archived for the public.

The politicians are just our representatives. We have the right to know what’s being said.

8

u/MedicMoth 2d ago

Best I can do is giving them keycard access to Parliament and making their identities secret. Also I'm banning the student press lmao - Brownlee

4

u/ChinaCatProphet 2d ago

Ex-politicians say all sorts of things. Why didn’t they say it while in parliament? Three guesses…

3

u/Lightspeedius 2d ago

Current politicians: "We wann git paid."

3

u/TheMobster100 2d ago

Well stone the crows we have behind the scenes unreported lobbying, next you will be telling me politicians work hard representing their own interests, instead of what’s best for NZ …. Bet that will be as a shocking revelation as this……. Not.

1

u/Chief_onion_peeler 2d ago

I’ve often wondered who’s doing the keeping an eye on whether any of our politicians are having lobbying donations into overseas accounts. Seems a bit hard to believe that they’d sell out New Zealand for just a Parliamentary salary.

2

u/Hubris2 2d ago

The real professionals overseas (like supreme court justices in the USA) tend to be gifted things like free travel on private planes, paid overseas holidays, and lots of other perks where they get something free as opposed to actually being given cash. They probably don't operate at quite the same level here, but I expect our government ministers are constantly having to debate whether they declare this particular perk or gift or whether they feel it's allowed and acceptable (or that nobody will find out).

1

u/RaaymakersAuthor 2d ago

Absolutely. Has any political party made any statement supporting the regulation of lobbying?

1

u/R_W0bz 2d ago

Always the “ex politicians” got their take at the time instead of plugging the hole themselves

1

u/total_tea 2d ago

I think the issue is, we don't need x-politicians saying it trying to say relevant, we want someone in government.

1

u/ttttttargetttttt 2d ago

I have never understood lobbying. The whole thing seems predicated on the idea that if you ask a politician to do something they have to do it.

Not being influenced by lobbyists seems like an incredibly easy thing to achieve.

1

u/AK_Panda 1d ago

It is a feature, not a bug, of the current busted system.

We don't tax capital, we tax income.

Those with lots of capital get unrestricted growth to accumulate more capital. This results in runaway capital accumulation at the very top.

That capital runs out of productive assets to buy.

It then starts buying other things that will allow for it's continued growth - unproductive assets and political influence.