Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On this bill, the Lobbying (Improving Government Honesty and Trust) Bill 2025: this is an issue that has been spoken about by many of my colleagues for some time now, in this chamber and also in the other place. And I find some of the commentary quite challenging. The assumptions that are built in to some of this commentary are, quite frankly, in my humble opinion, a bit misplaced.

When we talk about lobbyists—from my perspective and certainly from the government's perspective, lobbying is a legitimate activity. It is a legitimate activity undertaken by a whole range of different people. The assumption that is put forward by some of my colleagues is that lobbying is bad—that, on some interpretation, lobbying is only done by evil people and only ever done on behalf of bad companies. That's absolutely not my experience, and I personally have been in a position of lobbying—