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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

When our politicians are making decisions, they’re often lobbied.

These lobbyists arrange meetings, and make the case why the company that they represent would do a good job, or why a certain policy would be a good one or a bad one – they represent vested interests.

There are supposed to be rules to make this kind of activity public. But what happens when the rules don’t apply? What happens when the people who are talking to our politicians simply say that they aren’t ‘lobbyists’?

Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Mike Seccombe on former Minister Stuart Robert and when personal relationships cross into the public interest.

It’s Tuesday, December 13.

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RUBY:

So Mike, we've had a new government since May, but for the last few months, scandals and improprieties that have happened under the previous government, under the Morrison government, have continued to come out and the latest one involves former minister Stuart Robert. So could you tell me a bit about who Stuart Robert is and what the nature is of these allegations?

Mike:

Right. Well, Stuart, Robert, immediately before the change of government was assistant treasurer, but he had held a variety of portfolios before that. He'd been in Parliament for 15 years and during that time I think we could honestly say he was one of the more scandal prone members of the previous government. He'd been the subject of a number of controversies, you know, relating to his personal behaviour and particularly his personal business interests during that time. But those all came out, you know, while the government was in office. This latest one, we only found out about a fortnight ago, and that was due to reporting in the nine newspapers. And it came about because they came into possession of a cache of emails relating to the activities of a consultancy firm with consultancy in inverted commas, for reasons we'll get to called Synergy 360.

And it is owned by two good mates of Stuart Robert, a former business partner and a long term friend. And basically Synergy 360 was working for this massive Indian IT company, Infosys, between 2018 and 2020, and it had apparently struck a deal, according to these leaked documents, where Infosys had agreed to pay Synergy 360, a $15,000 monthly retainer and at least 1% of every government contract it won. And while there's no suggestion that Stuart Robert himself received any money, it's pretty clear on the evidence to date that he was advising his mates in Synergy 360 as they went about the business of trying to win government contracts for their clients. So anyway, that's what came out in this leaked a lot of emails and it's provided quite a detailed timeline of the contracts between Robert and his friends at Synergy 360 and Infosys showing that at crucial points before contract negotiations, Stuart Robert had meetings with people and it showed a bunch of other things too that make it look a little dodgy. For example, at one stage, Synergy 360 was looking at joining a fundraising body, being run by another senior Liberal, Angus Taylor, another very scandal plagued former minister, I might add. And they were looking at joining up and giving some money. And Stuart Robert emailed them to say, don't do it. And to quote his email, it will be declared and it will hurt you. So he was very keen that these people stayed under the radar, obviously. The bottom line to this of course is that in November 2019 Stuart Robert, then the minister for Government services announced that the company had won the tender for a Centrelink tool referred to as the Entitlement Calculation Engine, and that deal was worth millions.

RUBY:

Right. Okay. So you've got Stuart, Robert publicly announcing that this company has won this very large tender. But privately, we know that actually it's his friends who run this company and he's been advising them on how to get contracts for their clients. So what does Stuart Robert say about that? How does he characterise what's going on here?

Mike:

Well, nothing to see here, folks. I mean, that's essentially what he's saying. He got the chance to respond live on television on Q&A where he was coincidentally, you know, a guest the night the story broke.

Archival tape -- Stuart Robert:

“Well, surprise, surprise, Stan. Every time I turn up, there's always a gotcha moment. Let's start with the facts, because we had a good outing on this in Question Time today. So the papers reported that six years ago, while I was on the backbench that I, as I do normally and all politicians do, engage with meeting with stakeholders, I'm not paid for it. I don't get anything for it. I assist people. I wasn't responsible for anything, and I continue to meet with stakeholders, as all MPs do.”

Mike:

Basically said nothing to worry about.

Archival tape -- Stan Grant:

“You're being a bit disingenuous, aren't you? They're not stakeholders. They are personal friends, people you'd have business association with. And the emails revealed that you would not just had connection with them, association with them, but you'd also recommended them to clients and given references for them. That's more than what you just said.”

Archival tape – Stuart Robert:

“Oh, if people ask for advice of whose good or bad or otherwise, I'll absolutely give an opinion. The emails also show when they asked, should they donate to the Liberal Party, I said no. So it's very clear what the boundaries are, very clear what the lines are.”

Mike:

And in a separate statement, he rejected the and I'm quoting here, implied imputation. That he had influenced in any way the awarding of the contracts. And, you know, he insisted the process was conducted at the highest levels of probity and basically run by the department, not by him. That's his line. So Bill Shorten, who's the current minister for Government Services, has been looking into this as well.

Archival tape -- Bill Shorten:

“The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have today reported that the member for Fadden used his status as a federal MP in 2017 and 2018 to help the lobbying consulting firm Synergy 360.”

Mike:

After the documents became public. And he told Parliament about a week ago that this Infosys deal wound up being worth a total of $274 million, so a quarter of $1,000,000,000.

Archival tape -- Bill Shorten:

“Strangely, though, a search of the federal lobbyist register reveals, however, that Synergy 360 is not a registered lobbyist.”

Mike:

And he has announced now that there will be an investigation into what he calls the Synergy 360 lobbying scandal.

Archival tape -- Bill Shorten:

“Therefore, this morning I have asked the CEO of Services Australia and the CEO of the National Disability Insurance Agency to immediately and thoroughly investigate any of the contracts awarded to these companies and individuals named in these reports to assure me and the Australian people that the process was entirely above board and appropriate.”

Mike:

We're yet to see the terms of reference. We're yet to understand who will head the investigation. But it will be interesting. I think we can say.

RUBY:

Definitely. Okay it seems like we're going to learn a lot more, Mike, about Synergy and Infosys and what their relationship was exactly with Stuart Robert, so do we have a sense of what might come to light?

Mike:

It's still in the early stages, quite apart from the sort of specific case of Robert and Co. I think it will give us a sort of insight into the wider context of the rather murky relationships between government and lobbyists and corporate bidders for government contracts who hire the lobbyists to influence the government. And also the rather blurry line, I would suggest, between the official ministerial duties and personal and party business, because this seems to go there as well.

And Stuart Robert. His own previous history involves a scandal, of which remarkable similarities. You know, it's not the first time these issues have come up in his personal case.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Mike you said that this isn't the first time that Stuart Robert has been involved in a scandal like this, a scandal around the relationships between stakeholders and politicians and what’s personal or private versus what’s professional, so tell me more about what Stuart Robert has been accused of in the past?

Mike:

There have been a number of scandals involving Stuart Robert. But the most relevant one to this, I think the most similar goes back to August 2014 when he was the Assistant Minister for Defence.

And he embarked on a trip to China in support of a business venture by a mining company, Nimrod Resources. Nimrod’s Executive Chairman, was a bloke named Paul Marks and he was a close associate of Robert and also a major Liberal Party donor. Robert had investments indeed in both Nimrod and another Marques company. So, you know, there was there was personal relationship, there was a business relationship. Anyway, during this purportedly private trip to China, Robert met with a Chinese vice minister. He attended a signing ceremony for the agreement between Nimrod and a Chinese company called Minmetals. And in the statement that it released after the after the signing, Minmetals said Robert had congratulated the company on the deal on behalf of the Defence Department. Now this is not a good look. You know, this was allegedly a private visit, but pretty clearly the Chinese at least were cognisant of the fact that they were dealing with a with a senior minister in the Australian Government. Initially Robert was defended by some of his colleagues, particularly Scott Morrison. And the subtext of this is that Scott Morrison and Stuart Robert were very close. Brother Stewie, as Morrison calls him, was probably his closest friend in politics. They were part of the same prayer group in Parliament. So he was being staunchly defended by Morrison. But the then Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, eventually ordered an investigation and in February 2016 that investigation found that Robert had acted inconsistently was the way they put it, with ministerial standards of behaviour. And Turnbull forced his resignation. To quote from the media release that the Turnbull put out at the time. He said Mr. Robert recognised that this connexion would create the impression that at the time he went to Beijing he had something personally to gain from the Nimrod Resources Project. So that was it. He was out and was out for a little while, then came back.

RUBY:

Right. Okay. So it sounds like a similar situation, Mike, this kind of blurring of the lines between private relationships and public office. So how is it that after that happened back in 2014, after Stuart Robert was forced to leave the frontbench, that he managed to come back and find himself in a ministerial position all over again.

Mike:

You know, he was sent to the sin bin. He wasn't he wasn't sent, you know, permanently from the field of play, as it were. The way it happened was kind of interesting because Robert is, as I said, he's close to Scott Morrison, also close to Alex Hawke, who's another Morrison ally, another part of the same parliamentary prayer group, you know, fellow Pentecostals. Both of them, both Hawke and Robert were deeply involved in plotting the August 2018 coup that saw Turnbull replaced as Prime Minister and eventually elevated Morrison to the prime ministership. The contest was actually called on by Peter Dutton, but through pretty cunning manoeuvring Morrison wound up coming out on top and that was very largely due to the work of Brother Stewie and Alex Hawke. So he was in the good graces with the incoming PM. I think it was a couple of days after the prime ministership changed. Stuart Robert back in the ministry, you know, so he was on the outer with the former prime minister, but he was on the in with the new Prime Minister straight back into the ministry. Within months though there was another scandal. Robert was again mired in controversy and this time it was over, revelations that he was racking up enormous bills for his home Internet at his Gold Coast house in May that year alone, the bill was almost $3,000 and it was averaging, I think, over $2,000 a month. So it was huge.

RUBY:

How do you run up a $3,000 Internet bill Mike?

Mike:

Well, I don't know. And it's never really been explained. What we do know is that the Department of Finance, which was picking up the bill, had repeatedly written to Robert about his excessive Internet usage. And it continued. And I should add here that Robert holds a master's degree in information technology. So presumably he would be pretty well educated on using the Internet and how to get the best Internet plan. Anyway, publicity forced another investigation, and this time it was run by his friend Alex Hawke. And eventually Robert had to pay back a lot of money and the excuse was offered on his behalf by Hawke that the excess data costs were due to the fact that he had limited broadband availability at his home. And he was about to go into a new plan and there wouldn't be a problem in the future. So, you know, he paid some money back, but there was no further sanction.

RUBY:

Okay. But the point is, I suppose that there is history here. There's a pattern. Do you think when it comes to the latest revelations, that we're going to see any consequences either for Stuart Robert himself or for his friends at this consultancy group that helped secure the government contract?

Mike:

Well, this goes to the wider problem that I was talking about earlier, which is that there aren't actually any really firm rules around lobbying the government. Synergy 360 you know, this company that Robert was advising, they weren't actually registered as lobbyists. And even if they were, it's not clear if there would have been any significant penalties for what appears to be favourable treatment from Stuart Robert. It's a bizarre situation really. It's left to people lobbying to actually declare that they're lobbying. If they just say they're not lobbyists, well, then for all intents and purposes, they're not lobbyists. So when I asked the Attorney-General's Department about what sanctions apply to those who act as lobbyists but are not registered as such. The reply that came back this long emailed reply suggested essentially that there were none. The only punishment that really exists for breaking lobbying rules is to be struck off the official lobbying register. But if you're not registered on it in the first place, that appears to be, you know, not much of a penalty. Nonetheless, it's definitely the case that the AG's office is taking an interest in the activities of Synergy 360. In their email they said that the department was, quote, considering further information provided by Synergy 360. And any further steps that might be required in this matter. So, you know, it was a pretty vague, sort of vague statement, but it indicates that maybe some action will be taken. There's no indication what action might be able to be taken.

RUBY:

Okay. So it sounds like, Mike, there’s this situation at play where a company appears to be acting very similarly to a lobbyist they're speaking to a politician. They're presumably recommending that their client be awarded a particular contract. So what they're doing is that they're wielding influence, but they aren't registered as a lobbyist. So the rules around that don't really apply to them. And if this one company is behaving in this way, then we can probably assume that there are others that could also be doing the same thing. So in this situation where companies just don't want to call themselves lobbyists, is there anything that can be done?

Mike:

Well, yes, obviously, there could, they can tighten it up a lot. I mean, I spoke to some experts on this and they were saying that in some overseas jurisdictions, there are much tighter lobbying rules, you know, including, I might add, civil and criminal sanctions, you know, large fines and even criminal convictions for doing the wrong thing. Particularly, it would seem that the most effective regimes require that the lobbyists themselves disclose how much they're being paid, who they are meeting with and on whose behalf. And unfortunately, there seems to be no appetite for that in Australia, at least to date. You know, whenever tightening of the rules does get proposed and it does from time to time, there's a lot of pushback. And interestingly enough, the strongest pushback is not from the lobbyists themselves, although clearly they wouldn't be keen. But it's from the people who are being lobbied. It's from the politicians. And the reason for this, I would suggest, is that they don't want to be embarrassed by there being a public register to show who they're meeting with. And I would also point out also that a lot of politicians and political staffers move into lobbying at the end of their political careers, as do quite a number of journalists, I'm embarrassed to say. So there's definite self-interest involved in making sure that we don't have a stronger regime for monitoring these things.

RUBY:

Mike, thank you so much for your time.

Mike:

Thank you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

From January 1st next year, you will need a referral to get a free PCR test for COVID-19.

The change was announced yesterday by Federal Health Minister Mark Butler and Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly.

Kelly warned we are likely to experience regular waves of increased infections for at least the next two years.

And Fiona Patten has conceded defeat in her Victorian upper-house race, to disgraced former Labor minister Adem Somyurek.

Patten was the first and only member elected to a state parliament as a member of the Sex Party, and was an advocate for voluntary assisted dying, the decriminalisation of sex work and access to abortion.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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