Michael McCormack sees no conflict of interest in lobbying firm chief attending Nationals meetings
The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, has defended allowing a director of a lobbying firm into his party room meetings, with a spokesman saying it was “not a conflict of interest”.
Larry Anthony occupies dual roles as the Nationals party president and the director and owner of the SAS Consulting Group, a lobbyist firm. Anthony has previously represented clients such as energy giant Santos and coal corporate Delta Electricity.
Lobbying rules strictly prohibit senior party officials from simultaneously acting as registered lobbyists, but Anthony removed himself from the register upon being voted Nationals president, thereby meeting his obligations, despite continuing to own and direct SAS Consulting Group.
The Australian revealed on Thursday that Anthony was attending meetings of the Nationals party, where government business is discussed, prompting some disquiet among unnamed MPs.
Asked to justify Anthony’s attendance at the meetings, a spokesman for McCormack told Guardian Australia it was “longstanding protocol” that party officials attend such meetings.
This was so that “party matters can be considered by parliamentarians as needed”, he said.
“This ensures an important link to our membership when parliamentarians are discussing policies to advance the interests of regional and rural Australians.”
The spokesman said Anthony’s background was well-known and “not a conflict of interest”.
“If there is a sensitive matter relating to one of his clients to be discussed, the deputy prime minister would ask him to recuse himself from any meeting.”
Anthony is not the only senior Nationals party official to have controversial links to lobbyist firms.
In 2018, Guardian Australia revealed that Katrina Hodgkinson was both the party’s vice-president and an employee of lobbyist firm Barton Deakin.
It meant that, at that time, both the Nationals president and vice-president simultaneously held roles with lobbyist firms that were working to influence government on behalf of paying clients.
Hodgkinson is no longer in either role. Both claimed they did not engage directly in any lobbying activities.
Anthony told the Australian he had acted with total propriety in the role.
“I talk to cabinet ministers a lot of the time about party stuff, it’s not uncommon,” he said. “I think I’ve displayed myself and have acted totally in the highest propriety in this role, for a very long time, in a lot of conflicting issues within the party. There’s no rocket science or anything ulterior here.”
The federal lobbying code requires that third-party lobbyists must not sit on a “state or federal political party executive, state executive or administrative committee”.
Experts say lobbyists need only remove themselves from the lobbyist register to comply with the rule.
The issue is not unique to the Nationals.
Both Labor and the Liberals have had senior party officeholders who were simultaneously acting as lobbyists.
Experts have frequently warned that Australia’s lobbying system is flawed and opaque, and that the rules governing lobbyists are weak and largely unenforced.
Groups such as Transparency International and the Centre for Public Integrity have called for significant reforms to improve transparency and lobbyist oversight.
Those reforms, integrity campaigners say, should be introduced in parallel with a strong federal anticorruption commission to investigate issues of government integrity.
In 2013, former prime minister Tony Abbott called for rule changes to end any real or perceived conflicts of interest posed by having lobbyists on party executives.
Abbott said he was “determined to ensure that you can either be a powerbroker or a lobbyist, but you can’t be both”.
The Liberal party amended their rules in line with Abbott’s recommendations at the time. Political lobbyists Joe Tannous and Michael Photios later quit their roles on the Liberal party’s New South Wales executive.
The Nationals have adopted similar party rules. Santos and Delta Electricity are no longer listed as clients of SAS Group.