Lobbyist Heaven

By The Lobbyists Of The Lobbyists, For The Lobbyists

It's been clear for some time that Tony Abbott is hardly what you call a statesman representing Australia in his capacity as Prime Minister. In fact he's the dead opposite; forever the partisan brawler, he's happy to blacken the name of the opposition to international audiences. He's been full of cheap shots in his addresses and interviews to the world so I don't think there's any dispute that his is a government that is decidedly not governing for all of us.

That, naturally begs the question, on whose behalf exactly is Tony Abbott governing?

The best answer just might be lobbyists. The difference between SPC and Cadbury genuinely seems to have come down to the closeness of the Cadbury company to the orbit of Tony Abbott, as evinced by the Cadbury logo on Tony Abbott's bicycle0riding shirt. Similarly, the business of winding back the reforms to the financial planning industry predicated on the alleged cost burdens imposed on the financial institutions. "300million!" thundered Arthur Sinodinis four times in Parliament as he presented his retched argument in favour of making it easier for financial instutions to rip off unsuspecting Australians. I was as if the whole Storm Financial thing never happened. You could of course easily and readily read through that 300million dollar figure that the lobbyists from the financial planning industry had somehow bent the ears of the government to make it go back to the crappy way it was before.

The disregard for the advice of ASIC as well as the unrepentant, brazen, one-eyed-ness as court rooms still pick over the bones of Storm Financial indicates that the Coalition really are in the pockets of the financial planning lobby and that's just that.

The more salient permutation o this problem seems to have erupted over the healthy food rating website that was taken down. It turns out that there is a staffer who is married to a board member of a company that makes junkfood, and it is this staffer who took down the website. Since then the Coalition has been trotting out Senator Fion Nash to answer questions except she's not answering. She is of course denying there's a conflict of interest when actually it's the very working model of a conflict of interest. Sometimes you wonder if politicians resort to this kind of rhetorical idiocy in the hopes of bluffing the public but as the saying goes even blind Freddie can see that it's a problem.

I guess that wouldn't be notable in of itself if it were an isolated incident in this government but it's not. They've taken an axe to anything that concerns itself with climate change or Green/renewable energy. Why? Because the fossil fuel lobby is in their faces about trying to shut down the Carbon Pricing and see if they can keep pushing for the same kinds of profits they've been milking from fossil fuels. In other words, the Coalition government is supporting and abetting uncompetitive, underhanded practices in a market in which it claims it doesn't interfere.

Yeah, right.

Pretty soon the alcohol lobby and the gambling lobby and the tobacco lobby are all going to crawl out of their lairs and start throwing their dollars around. It's only a matter of time; and all the progress we made in trying to control their influence will be curtailed by this cavalier, irresponsible and downright duplicitous government.

I guess this is what the best democracy money can buy looks like.