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When Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon realised he wasn't going
to get John Howard to do what he wanted the old-fashioned way - by
talking to him - he did the next best thing.
Dixon turned to the Liberal Party's former federal director
Lynton Crosby and its current
pollster Mark Textor - of
Canberra's hottest new government relations consultancy Crosby Textor - to help him refine his message
and make sure it hit the target.
What Dixon wants is the repeal of the Qantas Sale Act which
places strict controls on Qantas's level of foreign ownership.
But with foreign ownership of Australian corporate icons always a
sensitive political issue, Qantas has never managed to convince the
government on the merits of such a move.
Not exactly an outsider when it comes to parliament house - Dixon
has successfully lobbied Howard and Transport Minister John Anderson
on a number of issues from blocking the sale of Ansett to Singapore
Airlines in 2000, to preventing Emirates from getting greater access
to Australian skies earlier this year - Dixon's talent for
persuasion has nevertheless been exposed on the foreign ownership
issue.
What Crosby Textor offered Dixon was quantitative
and qualitative research - the raw material of modern politics - to
help politicians understand how the idea of increased foreign
ownership in Qantas could be presented to the public in a positive
way.
With the results of that research still being pored over, the
political class in Canberra has awaiting Dixon's next move.
Lobbyists used to be regarded as just "door openers", political
flunkies who inhabited a shadowy world in which a tidy sum could
facilitate a meeting with Canberra's powerbrokers.
Today's lobbyist however is a much more refined beast.
Armed with not only their contact books, they prowl the corridors
of power in their sharp suits spruiking many varied instruments of
manipulation and solutions to a hundred political headaches.
With fees of up to $500 an hour, they'd want to be setting up
more than just a tea and biscuit with the relevant minister.
In the past these self-proclaimed fixers have tended to come from
the journalistic ranks, but today they are much more likely to have
graduated from deep inside the political bunker of Parliament
House.
Ex-advisers who claim an intimate knowledge of the political,
legislative and regulatory processes - not to mention ministerial
foibles - promise to deliver real and effective results for their
clients.
They are, in fact, guns-for-hire who have parlayed their status
and expertise as former political insiders into a profit-making
proposition. The practitioners of this particular art of persuasion
don't like to reveal too much about their modus operandi and they
certainly won't tell all about their clients.
According to Canberra lobbying veteran Peter Sekuless, now a
part-time consultant with the government relations firm Gavin
Anderson, the nature of the lobbying game has changed fundamentally
since the Howard government came to power.
"Although in most respects the actual day-to-day work of lobbying
has not changed much over the years, since the election of the first
Howard government in 1996 there has been an appreciable shift in the
power equation from the bureaucracy to the ministry, from the public
service to the politicians and their advisers," says Sekuless.
"To a large extent the Howard government has been more successful
than its predecessors at keeping the reins of power in political
hands at the expense of the bureaucracy.
"As a result the strategies and tactics of lobbyists have had to
adapt accordingly."
That means spending more time physically inside Parliament House
talking to ministers and backbenchers, and less time talking to
bureaucrats.
"In hiring new staff, political experience now tends to outweigh
a bureaucratic background of specific policy knowledge," he
says.
If the word apparatchik didn't exist, it would have to have been
invented to describe Lynton Crosby.
The former Liberal Party boss who directed the party's last two
federal election victories, Crosby
is just the latest Coalition political insider to have opened a
government relations shop in Canberra - although Crosby estimates that political strategy
accounts for only 20 per cent of the business, with the other 80 per
cent focused on investor relations and corporate strategy.
Crosby Textor claim superiority over their
competitors on the grounds that they offer clients what today's
politician cannot do without - namely proven research skills.
But Crosby, as one of Howard's
closest friends in politics, also knows that he can dial the Prime
Minister's office at any time and confidently expect his call to be
answered.
Crosby insists that the secret
to getting your message heard on Capitol Hill should not be shrouded
in any particular mystery or reliant on connections - he says it's
mainly just plain speaking.
"Common sense," says Crosby.
"If you are a chief executive, or you represent any major
organisation here in Australia, then if you want to see someone here
in Canberra, then all you have to do is ring them up and they will
see you. There is no secret to that."
"Government is a process that must be followed, so people who
want to deliver a message to government have to ask: what is your
message, who are your targets?"
"That can be the hard part. Refining a competent message.
But would he represent anyone?
"Well I certainly wouldn't be taking on that workers' collective
that is the ABC as a client," says Crosby.
"I don't think in this business you can pretend to be something
that you aren't or else you have no credibility with the target
audience."
For Gavin Anderson chief executive Ian Smith, whose marriage to
Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja last week confirms his
status as a political insider, understanding context can be the most
important part of any campaign to lobby government - something that
people outside the unique environment of Canberra often miss.
"The power of context is critical when it comes to selling a
message," says Smith. "And the Qantas case is a perfect example of
that."
'It doesn't matter what the issue is, the context has to be right
if you are going to persuade any government to listen," says
Smith.
Andrew Parker had worked for former Liberal leader John Hewson as
a media adviser before establishing Parker & Partners as a
government relations business in 1998.
He says that simply presenting a problem to the government and
then asking them to fix it is unlikely to work in most cases these
days.
Representing a number of film industry bodies with concerns about
the impact of a potential free trade agreement with the United
States, Parker says the key to the campaign has not been to
criticise the FTA itself, but instead highlighting the importance of
the local industry to Australia and Australians.
"So that when this gets to cabinet, the ministers sitting around
that table will have a very positive image of the film industry in
their minds, and understand what is at stake if that industry is
exposed to unfair competition from the US film industry."
When Royal Dutch/Shell launched a takeover bid for Australian oil
and gas producer Woodside, managing the political dimensions of the
bid hardly seemed like the most important consideration.
Woodside, on the other hand, guessed the bid's Achilles heel and
hired Textor - who was then
running the Australian arm of the US-based Wirthlin Worldwide
polling group - to find out how sensitive a political issue the
Woodside takeover could be out in the electorate.
While the final decision to approve or reject the takeover rested
with Treasurer Peter Costello, Woodside employed ALP national
secretary and Gary Gray, to present Textor's research to Western Australia's
federal Liberal backbenchers and work them up into a lather.
Stoking their concerns and fears that Australia would be giving
away control of its energy resources to a foreign interest, the
campaign successfully worked without even having to touch Costello
directly.
Suddenly realising their bid was in trouble, Shell turned to
Gavin Anderson.
"It's hard to imagine that a company like Shell, which has a huge
presence in Australia, could be so relatively unknown to politicians
in the sense of what they did and contributed to Australia," says
Gavin Anderson's Smith.
"Even though many federal ministers had been guests of Shell at
the opera or other cultural events, in the end that did not
translate," he says.
"What it shows is that there is more to this just than sitting
down with someone and pitching your argument - you have to have a
long established presence not just with ministers, but with the
backbench and the bureaucracy as well."
And when it comes to proposed changes to things like media
ownership laws, the Opposition and Democrats have also become
important.
Which is where boutique consultants such as Steve Carney and John
O'Callaghan, who operate together as a kind of political odd-couple
(Carney is a former National Party staffer, and O'Callaghan a former
Labor staffer), come in handy.
"Government is about more than just the Coalition - you have to
understand the full picture. You don't usually go into court
unrepresented and you probably shouldn't come into this building
unrepresented either."
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