This is a much more scandalous headline than it appears. Why would the Australian people need a lobby? They have a government to look after their interests.
Except they don’t.
Canberra is a snake pit of lobbies for rent-seekers against the interests of the Australian people.
And the lobbies win.
Allow me to provide an example. During the war-profiteering energy shock of 2022, the east coast gas cartel mercilessly rorted every business and household. Directlyvia has prices and quadruply via the National Electricity Market (NEM) because gas sets the marginal cost of power.
This resulted in the Albanese Government belatedly putting a fixed price on gas. In particular, I thought they had put a fixed price on gas in the spot market because that is the market that the NEM prices off.
But it didn’t. It only put a price cap on gas contracts, not the spot market. I had it wrong because I stupidly followed AFR reporting for the answer (lesson learned).
This means that the gas cartel was free to hike prices in the spot market that governs electricity prices, and it did just that through the last few months, creating a second-round price shock.
Now, you are probably asking yourself why any government would do this. Why would it regulate the one part of the market that did not matter to its electoral prospects while allowing the gouging of the one market that did?
Put another way, why would the government betray those that it represents while looking after those that it does not?
The answer is simple: lobbies.
- The gas lobby demanded no regulation for the spot market because that’s where its highest margin returns are.
- The power company lobby didn’t care because it wants the cover of higher wholesale prices to muscle out retail margins.
- The manufacturing lobby demanded price caps for contracted gas, where most of its volumes come from.
In short, every lobby got what it wanted.
And what did you get? There are federal/state government rebates to offset some of your energy bill shocks. And I urge you to find yours.
But these depend upon your initiative. Many folks are never even going to know that they exist, let alone access them.
So, the people’s dividend from the policy process is a half-arsed scattergun that will miss many, perhaps most households, while the lobbies got iron-clad profit boosts for their members.
If you apply this model of corrupt policymaking more widely to Canberra, every betrayal and seemingly irrational move by federal (and state, local) governments make sense.
All they are doing is saying yes to lobbies they will later work for.
Absurdly, the Australian people need a lobby to represent them against their own government.
Either that or ban the dirty cnuts.
