Vested-interest lobbying in Aotearoa New Zealand

Professor Lisa Marriott and Max Rashbrooke’s research report, Swimming In a Sea of It, explores the experiences of people on the receiving end of vested-interest lobbying.

Swimming in a sea of it

Lobbying is a normal part of a healthy democracy. Vested-interest lobbying is not. What distinguishes the latter is that its practitioners have the power to shift decision-making “in directions that would favour themselves and do injury to the social interest” (Duncan & Chapple, 2021). Such highly resourced lobbying warrants greater scrutiny, given its potential to unfairly elevate some perspectives above others. In extreme situations, it can even capture the policy-making process.

The problem

This report opens up a new perspective on the issue by canvassing the views of those targeted by lobbying campaigns. It draws on 36 anonymous interviews with current and former ministers, MPs, ministerial staffers and public servants, drawn from across the political spectrum. The report’s title, Swimming in a Sea of It, reflects the pervasiveness of vested-interest lobbying but also the challenges involved in trying to accurately observe its effects.

The interviewees’ testimony reveals concerns about the large imbalances in the resources different groups can expend on lobbying, the rapidity with which individuals move between politics and lobbying, and the extent to which some government agencies depend on lobbyists as sources of information. This report also suggests that lobbying early in policy processes, before ordinary citizens are even aware that an issue has arisen, can sway decisions against the public interest.

The point that this report presses is not that lobbying itself is the problem. Indeed, as one former ministerial staffer argued: “The only way decision-makers can do their work is if they are hearing from people.” Lobbyists can articulate the views of neglected groups and bring much-needed information into the political system. But when lobbying is opaque, self-interested, or reflecting large imbalances in resources, it can run counter to the public good. As one former public servant put it: “The lobbying is intense and the capture is rife.”

Solutions

New Zealand has essentially no regulations on lobbying, making us very much an outlier among similarly developed OECD countries. One recent study ranked us as the worst of 50 major economies in terms of the transparency of our lobbying industry.

This report recommends a number of reforms, including a Regulation of Lobbying Act, a Lobbying Register so that the public can see who is meeting whom, and ‘cooling-off’ periods during which former political actors cannot go straight into lobbying. More broadly, it recommends reforms to ensure that ordinary citizens are better able to influence policy-making and that the public service’s depth of knowledge and advisory functions are strengthened.