Introduction
In our previous lesson we learned about how Government is Cabinet and about how Parliament tries to hold the Government to account. We also followed the career path of a person to become a Cabinet member. We learned about some of the constraints that Parliamentarians live with. We also learned that the main achievement of our political system is stability.
We are now going to look at the art of influencing politicians. I recommend starting with your local MPs or else one that you think will be sympathetic to your cause.
Influencing Your Local Representatives
Your objective is to become part of your MP’s sphere of influence. You want to be a part of their world, and ideally you want to be someone they will listen to about at least one issue. This is a long term goal and will only happen over time. As with most people you will achieve more by cultivating relationship than by winning arguments. Cultivating relationships takes time and is best done by a community group or organisation. A single person out there in the electorate really doesn’t count for much.
Your first challenge is to get your MP’s attention.
A really good way to get attention is to say ‘thank you’. In public life you get a lot of blame, many demands and a certain amount of abuse, but it is very rare that anyone says ‘thank you’. In 15 years in public service I can count the times people have said ‘thank you’ and still have fingers left over. Research your target MP and find something good that they have done. If you can’t, send them some seasons greetings next Christmas and thank them in general terms for their service to the electorate. After writing to them and thanking them for something invite them and their staff to your next event. This is solely a meet and greet. You are not inviting them to make a speech (unless you want that). The MP may be too busy to attend but will likely send a staffer. That is good because staffers are part of the MPs sphere of influence.
It is even better if they send an advisor. Advisors and staffers filter who the MP meets with, what they listen to, and help them choose where to direct their efforts.
At some point you will want to meet to discuss a particular concern. Ideally this is with your target MP but will more likely be an electoral officer or advisor.
It is best if that is a local concern and you can work together with them in some way. Now instead of banging on their door you are cooperating.
Once a repartee has been established you can then approach them with bigger issues. There are lots of issues out there. You may have under 15 minutes to meet. You need to state clearly:
- What the issue is
- What your concern is
- What you want them to do
Making the Pitch
Working for a complaint agency I have heard many rants about some difficult situation someone is in. When they eventually stop talking I ask “so what do you want to happen?” At that point there is often a long pause because the person doesn’t actually know.
You must be very clear about what the issue is and what you want to see done about it.
Suppose for example you are concerned about foreign ownership. Are you concerned about critical infrastructure like ports, about productive farm land, about real estate, or about any form of foreign ownership?
What really is your concern? Is it lack of sovereignty? Is it that money is flowing out of the country not staying in the economy? Is it safety standards or something else?
Do you have evidence that your concern is valid? Can you refer to other sources such as academic studies or journalist reports?
What do you want to see happen? Do you want a ban on foreign ownership, greater scrutiny by the Foreign Investments Review Board, or do you want to nationalise our ports?
What do you want your MP to do about it? I can assure you that whoever you are talking to is thinking …”and what do they want me to do”.
At this point put yourself in their shoes. They are thinking about ten things:
- What is my party’s policy on this?
- What commitments have I or my party made about this issue?
- What public comments have been made by senior other members of the party?
- What is the attitude of my party faction on this issue?
- How does this affect my electorate?
- Where does this fit with my media/electoral strategy?
- Have I been lobbied by other people on this issue and what have they said?
- Are there any party donations from persons relevant to this issue, for example from the company that owns to port, or from the union that works the port?
- Is this a toxic issue I should avoid?
- What’s in this for me – is this a vote winner?
For reference; defence, abortion, prostitution, organised crime, the family court, tariffs, immigration and multiculturalism, are places where political careers go to die, and for that reason politicians usually avoid them at all costs. If you want to lobby on these issues you may need to employ more confrontational strategies.
Ideally you will already know the answer to at least some of these ten questions and address them in your pitch. You should at least know if there is a party position and what it is.
At the end of the pitch state clearly what you want the MP to do. Understand that they cannot and will not publicly go against party policy. However you can ask them to:
- raise the issue within the party
- work internally to change the party’s policy
- understand that the party’s position will lose votes
Also realise that they will not advocate a position that harms their credibility. No politician is going to publicly advocate nationalising banks, banning immigration, closing abortion clinics, or disbanding the military in favour of more foreign aid. However they may be open to, for example, restricting bank fees, having tighter criteria for immigration, providing more balanced counseling services for women and partners, bench marking our foreign aid against international standards, and buying more cost effective military equipment. Basically you need to sell them a proposal they can support.
In your approach show that you are aware of contrary views, and counter them.
Direct the MP or their staffer to sources where they can get more in-depth information. For example, if you are talking about pro-life concerns leave them with some reading material that refers to studies showing post abortion trauma, and which support the position that many women would prefer to keep their baby if more support and more balanced counseling were available.
I have attached in your materials some correspondence with my local MP. I have not had time to cultivate a relationship with MP Eric Hutchinson and this was my first approach by email to his Office. The fact that he responded means that this is a ‘live’ issue for him which is good. Note that I did not ask him to go against party policy or ridicule his position. I did seek to engage him, and I did ask him to work within the party because I judged this to be a realistic request. I have included back grounding notes in your materials.
Finally, be prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer and be prepared to be wrong sometimes. Influence is a long term project. You need to study your issue, understand contrary views, and think strategically about how to further your agenda.
Donate, Volunteer, Join, Influence
There are two other ways to gain influence. One is to donate significant money to the party or to someone’s electoral campaign, or to offer other support. Even if you are not wealthy you can approach a sitting member or hopeful candidate and offer to support their campaign on the understanding that they will support a particular position. Big dollars buys big influence but be aware that a community group with 20 volunteers who can chip in $50 each and some weekends can be a huge boost to a struggling candidate in a marginal seat.
Another option is to join the party. The major parties are pretty similar and there is no reason (apart from time) not to join at least one political party. Being a party member entitles you to attend meetings, join factions and gain a better insight into the internal workings that will be so important to candidates. You can advocate your agenda as a person working within a party. For example, if you feel passionately that Australia should have an emissions trading scheme join the Liberal party and advocate that the party adopt their former policy under John Howard to introduce an ETS. This would be rational since both Labor and the Greens already support that position.
Whatever you decide to do, be aware that joining a party is not a big commitment but working within a party is.
By now you might have figured out that all this influencing is a part time job or at least a hobby. On the other hand political lobbying can be a very interesting and constructive hobby and it can be a great activity to do with children and teens.
The Committee System
Another way to influence politicians is to access the committee system. If you are concerned about an issue do some research and find out whether:
- a Parliamentary committee has previously considered the issue; or
- the issue is under active consideration by a Parliamentary committee right now.
If a Parliamentary committee is considering the issue you have an opportunity to make a submission. If the issue is not being considered, you can lobby members of a current standing committee to make an inquiry into the matter.
This strategy was pursued by independent defence think tank Air Power Australia (APA). I have worked with APA for over 10 years. APA are a group of independent defence engineers and scientists who were and are deeply concerned that the government was buying all the wrong planes for all the wrong reasons to replace the RAAF combat capability. At issue is our capacity to defend Australia, around $50 billion of public expenditure, and a system of decision making that is profoundly broken.
APA successfully persuaded a standing committee to open an inquiry into the issue. The committee is called the Joint Standing Committee of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. Having a committee inquiry had a number of benefits. It enabled APA to make public their research findings in a different forum. It protected them and other individuals from being sued by vested interests, and it enabled them and others to provide expert testimony. It helped build media interest in the issue. Potentially it could have embarrassed the government and the minister had the committee actually done their job and made recommendations, but they failed to do so. A more recent Senate committe Inquiry can be found here.
If you are going to engage with the committee system you need research and writing skills and it helps to have some credentials. You will also need to be prepared for your submissions to be made public.
If all of this is sounding a lot like hard work, be encouraged that you can scale all this back to a manageable effort. The simplest way to lobby politicians is to email their Parliamentary offices. You can google their email address or look up the State or Federal Parliamentary web site for details. You can also ring their electoral office and make a statement, or write to their PO box.
In your correspondence you need to follow the same formula. Say:
- who you are and your credentials
- what you are writing about
- what you want them to do
- where they can find out more about the issue
- how you can be contacted
Your correspondence will carry more weight if it shows that you have done some thinking and research into the issue. For example I once worked for the Premier’s Department on policy issues around human embryonic stem cell cloning. I recall receiving a number of standard letters stating that we should not be killing babies because life is sacred. It’s a reasonable sentiment but there was so little content in the letters that I could not say much about them to my superiors. If the letters had at least attempted to grapple with the science I could have said more about them and they would have carried more weight.
Do Your Research
So how do you find out about an issue?
Well you may already know enough to voice your concerns, particularly if it is a local rather than a national issue. However you may also need to do some research.
Here are some really useful sources for you to consider:
- ABC Fact Check. These are normally balanced, a-political and well researched reviews. Find them on the ABC website.
- Advocacy organisations websites. Be sure to look at information from organisations that advocate for and against your position. Follow the links. Be aware of the biases and read across the whole spectrum of opinion.
- Parliamentary committee inquiries are a gold mine of information but you can get lost in there. You may also find submissions from like-minded people and organisations. Get in touch with them and in this way become part of a bigger network.
- Then there are think tanks. Think tanks publish papers and opinion pieces. These are sometimes picked up by journalists and re-produced. Be aware that some think tanks have close political associations and are funded by people with a particular world view so do not take what you read as gospel. Many push a climate change denial and privitisation agenda which reflects closely the interests of their donors and ignores expert evidence to the contrary. The best known think-tanks are:
- The Australia Institute (http://www.tai.org.au/ )
- The Centre for Independent Studies (http://www.cis.org.au/ )
- The Institute of Public Affairs (http://www.ipa.org.au/ )
- For persons of faith I know of two Christian public policy think tanks:
- Centre for Public Christianity (https://publicchristianity.org/ )
- The Australian Christian Lobby (http://www.acl.org.au/ )
- There is also Family Voice (http://www.fava.org.au/ )
- There is an Islamic think tank but it does not consider broader policy issues (http://fair.org.au/think-tank/tank/ )
- However if you google any topic you will find think tanks and advocacy organisations that cluster around that topic from all perspectives. The most powerful and popular (by membership) lobbying organisation in Australia that is independent of corporate funding or political parties is Getup! They are an excellent source of real news about what political agendas are running. They represent the social left. https://www.getup.org.au/campaigns
For an overview of think tanks see here: http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/02/cahill.html
- Wikipedia is a useful source for basic background/historical information.
- Google scholar (http://scholar.google.com.au/ ) is a good source for university level teaching and research papers.
- You can do an on-line Australian thesis search here http://trove.nla.gov.au/ or more specifically see here http://www.caul.edu.au/caul-programs/australasian-digital-theses/finding-theses This requires some perseverance but you can find thesis on almost any topic. Check the date and scope of the thesis to see if it is relevant to your inquiry.
- Be careful what you quote but do not be afraid of alternative blogs and media such as New Matilda https://newmatilda.com/ or Independent Australia https://independentaustralia.net/ or Eureka Street http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/Search.aspx?sid=52#
- The bloggersphere is vast. Check the credentials of the person who runs the blog and see their links to assess their credibility. This is an example of a blog that I follow: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/category/articles/ Use these for background information but it is best to rely on primary sources when quoting.
Once you begin researching a topic you may find yourself struggling to assess competing contradictory claims. It is difficult to get across complex topics and you are probably not a subject matter expert. However, even if you are not an expert there is a short hand way to assess the reliability of the source you are reading, particularly if it is on the web. A credible reference:
- Is up-front about its values and agenda
- Does not have a financial or political stake in the issue
- Is not funded by bodies with a financial or political stake in the issue
- Gives some historical background to the issue to put it in context
- Refers to expert sources and studies to support its claims, that is, references primary sources
- Cites evidence including what has happened when similar policies were adopted elsewhere or in the past
- Acknowledges pros and cons (not just pros and not just cons)
In your materials I have included links and content on the Trans Pacific Partnership. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade website tells one story – essentially an advertorial for the agreement. A community organisation, the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network Ltd tells a different story and explains why. With the above template in mind you can compare the two information sources and decide which is the most reliable.
Information obtained from Commonwealth Government Department websites should not be considered authoritative. For example:
- For the last decade the Department of Defence has published statements about the predicted performance of the Joint Strike Fighter. All of these claims have been thoroughly and publicly debunked by subject matter experts for ten years. These statements are copied and pasted from the Lockheed Martin publicity office press releases but are presented as being from the Department. Lockheed Martin is the primary contractor for the Joint Strike Fighter. Former Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson has stated publicly his ambition to work for Lockheed Martin.
- In the 1990’s the Commonwealth Government sought public submissions on policy related to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO crops). None of their information acknowledged any risks associated with GMO’s and all of it was essentially an advertorial for the (then) emerging technology. It was evident that the persons conducting the consultation had no understanding of the issue.
- The Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities has for some years been developing ocean marine reserves in Commonwealth waters. The impression given on their website is of a network of reserves in which damaging fishing practices (such as bottom trawling) are prohibited in order to protect species and breeding grounds. In reality many of these activities are allowed in critical habitats, but vast amounts of deep ocean abyssal plain is “protected” although little activity occurs there. Under pressure from industry the Government allowed destructive fishing on the South Eastern seaboard but it gained positive publicity by declaring the world’s biggest reserves in deep water. ‘Protecting’ vast areas of abyssal plain was of no concern to fishers but has little proven conservation value.
- When the Commonwealth undertook the first regional forests agreement (RFA) process in Tasmania they accepted the advice of a partisan player (Forestry Tasmania) uncritically, then applied a non-scientific weighting to community values with the result that conservation goals mandated by the Government were not achieved. This was presented as being a scientific outcome that complied with Government policy.
In my brief experience with the Commonwealth Department of Environment (in its various incarnations) I encountered a culture that was process driven, and which actively discouraged critical thinking and the upward movement of controversial or unwanted news. This Department was responsible for the Pink Batts scheme.
In our conversation so far about influence we have really talked about friendly influence. There are less friendly ways to influence politicians as well. One is to conduct electoral surveys, publicise them, and deliver them to MP’s. Running credible surveys costs money and requires that a survey firm be engaged. Also, a genuine survey may not give you the results you want. However if you feel that your MP is well out of step with local sentiment it can be worth running a survey, publicising the survey, and seeking a meeting the MP to discuss.
The alternative to friendly influence is to protest against politicians whose positions you oppose. In this way you can leverage their opposition to gain publicity for your cause. I am not advocating that you do this. I am simply observing that community groups have used the following tactics:
- Protesting outside MP electoral offices
- Holding vigils outside MP electorial offices
- Praying inside MP electoral office
- Running advertisements against their position
- Letter boxing with leaflets against their position
- Running alternative political candidates against them in order to provide a platform to advocate your cause
- Protesting at party fund raising events and other public venues
This is seldom a strategy to make friends but can be effective when coordinated and directed against a marginal seat. These campaigns can be crowd funded. GetUp! runs these type of campaigns as part of its operational model.
This kind of campaign is more about a media strategy and will not build links with your local MPs but may be worth pursuing if you feel you have nothing to lose by being angry, and if you cannot otherwise get traction on an issue.
Run for Office
Last but not least, consider forming a political part of your own and running candidates, or backing someone to run as an independent. You will not get elected but that does not matter. What you want to do is create a platform to advocate your cause. I did this in 1996 when I, Chris Kelly, and a number of others formed a new political party and ran as candidates.
At that time Labor and Liberal had united to reduce the number of MPs in Parliament. Ostensibly this was a cost saving measure but in reality it was an attempt to squeeze out the third party (the Greens). At that time the State was struggling and the government was refusing pay parity to public servants who were paid less than in other States. However the Liberal and Labor politicians decided that they should have pay parity for themselves and voted themselves a 40 per cent pay rise.
In response, Chris Kelly, myself and a number of others, formed the Extremely Greedy 40 Per Cent Extra Party. We registered the party, got 300 members and ran candidates in each electorate. Although we had a serious reform agenda and good legal advice our approach was comedic. We lampooned the politicians and gained considerable media coverage. In one electorate we out polled the National Party.
In my view celebration and comedy are greatly under utilised as political tools. The homosexual lobby has mastered the art of using public celebration to further its cause but others seem reluctant to do so.
I hope this overview has been useful to you. Influence is a creative process. If you are prepared to step up and have a go and keep having a go you may be surprised at what can be achieved.