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Keywords: Lobbyist

  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2022: When the lobbyist makes the laws: Victoria and the sex industry

    • Juliette Hughes, Kathy Chambers
    • 05 January 2023

    With very little public debate or consultation, Victoria has repealed almost all laws relating to prostitution. Alone among all recreational activities, sex for payment is now unrestricted, even regarding health and safety. If we really care what happens to people, what place does sex work have in our society?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When the lobbyist makes the laws: Victoria and the sex industry

    • Juliette Hughes, Kathy Chambers
    • 20 October 2022
    10 Comments

    With very little public debate or consultation, Victoria has repealed almost all laws relating to prostitution. Alone among all recreational activities, sex for payment is now unrestricted, even regarding health and safety. If we really care what happens to people, what place does sex work have in our society?

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  • CARTOON

    Taking care of business

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 06 November 2019
    1 Comment

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why does citizenship matter?

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 09 November 2017
    8 Comments

    Instead of assuming dual citizens risk becoming traitors unless they rescind their citizenship, we should rather ask questions about the other third parties to whom MPs are beholden: donors , lobbyists, consultants, businesspeople and others keen to influence the political process.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Corruption and atonement in NSW

    • John Warhurst
    • 26 August 2014
    5 Comments

    Both sides of NSW politics claim to have turned over a new leaf and support tough new lobbying regulations, separating paid lobbyists from party office-holding, and increased transparency surrounding all dealings with ministers. But at the heart of the shambles are not commercial lobbyists but personal and institutional ethical failure, often driven by the lure of self-interest and advantage whether it is in getting elected or in feathering their own nest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sympathy for Barry O'Farrell

    • Moira Rayner
    • 22 April 2014
    15 Comments

    Occupants of public office are expected to act in accordance with their oaths. An anti-corruption commissioner, for example, should be someone whose own conduct is not just seen to be, but is demonstrably, judicious, ethical and proper. Even a minor failure in that was the reason that, several years ago, I resigned as an acting corruption and crime commissioner in another state. In my case, it didn't end there. But in O'Farrell's it should.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In the half-light of insider politics

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 March 2014
    3 Comments

    The general lessons from the conflict of interest that claimed Alastair Furnival, chief of staff to Assistant Health Minister Senator Fiona Nash, are about the often-hidden world of political insiders. The numbers of Coalition aligned lobbyists has grown greatly, and include many former senior Howard Government ministers. But Labor supporters should not feel smug. There are plenty of examples on that side of politics, too.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    US gun lobbyists miss the logic of feeling

    • Fatima Measham
    • 13 December 2013
    14 Comments

    I woke up to the news on a Saturday morning. One year ago tomorrow, a man walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and opened fire. In the aftermath, gun lobbyists seethed with high indignation that President Barack Obama was politicising a tragedy. It goes to show that the ones who complain about the politicisation of tragedy tend to be the ones who do not want to do anything about it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott's night of the short knives

    • Tony Kevin
    • 20 September 2013
    6 Comments

    Under the US revolving door model, top public service jobs are held by staff who are openly politically affiliated. When government changes, they go back to their jobs as special interest Washington lobbyists. Australians have made clear we don't like that system. It is open to corruption, and when our governments flirt with it, they usually come to regret it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Downer and Costello's murky world of political lobbying

    • John Warhurst
    • 02 April 2013
    8 Comments

    In days past the 'consultancy' activity of former senior politicians was cloaked in respectability and not perceived as being at the hands-on end of lobbying. That pretence has now ended and Alexander Downer and Peter Costello are good examples. It is an unhealthy development with plenty of room for conflicts of interest.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2012: Who is the loudest and ugliest religious donkey?

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 10 January 2013
    2 Comments

    Donkeys are gorgeous but make an ugly sound. Sadly, religious discussion in Australia too often sounds like donkeys competing to see whose braying is the loudest and ugliest. Recently Christian lobbyists spread misinformed messages about sexual orientation. Loud braying was heard on Saturday too when a group of louts hijacked what should have been a peaceful Muslim protest. Tuesday 18 September 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Debunking the global financial con job

    • David James
    • 12 November 2012
    12 Comments

    Even after the most dangerous financial crises ever seen, finance industry lobbyists still argue that the sector should not be too heavily regulated as that would be counterproductive. This is nonsense. Money is rules. It is a question of who sets the rules and what kind of rules they should should be.

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