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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Lobbyist breaches go unsanctioned as critics call for Australia's rules to be strengthened
Not a single lobbyist has been sanctioned under the federal government's code of conduct and transparency rules for almost three years despite more than a dozen breaches, with critics arguing the scheme is 'as weak as a cup of cold milky tea'. And in Victoria, no lobbyist has been sanctioned since the establishment of the current regulator more than a decade ago, with the state government acknowledging there is a need for reform after warnings from the anti-corruption commission. Professional third-party lobbyists must comply with a federal code of conduct and disclose details to a transparency register, which is designed to strengthen public confidence in how politicians and their staff interact with vested interest groups. Lobbyists who work without being listed on a register or who fail to act honestly and fairly can be investigated for breaches of conduct. This includes lobbyists who do not disclose links to foreign companies and governments. But Guardian Australia can reveal no one involved in the 14 breaches substantiated by the federal attorney general's department since January 2023 has been formally sanctioned. Sign up: AU Breaking News email A departmental spokesperson said each breach was administrative in nature and 'resolved through engagement between the department and relevant lobbyists'. 'In most cases where breaches are substantiated, they are administrative in nature and remediated through communication with the responsible officers within lobbying organisations,' the spokesperson said. 'There were no reported breaches referred to the secretary for consideration during the relevant period.' Transparency International Australia's chief executive, Clancy Moore, said federal lobbyists breaking the rules 'do so with impunity'. 'Put simply, the federal lobbying code of conduct is as weak as a cup of cold milky tea,' Moore said. 'The commonwealth needs a big stick to sanction lobbyists who break the rules.' Crossbench MPs and the Greens have flagged pushing Labor to toughen the rules in the new term of parliament. One element of the rules persistently identified as a shortcoming is that the code of conduct only covers paid third-party lobbyists and their clients. Lobbyists employed internally by corporations and interest groups are not required to sign up. Currently about 360 lobbying organisations and more than 700 individual lobbyists are included on the transparency register. They represent a combined 2,400 clients. More than 40% of registered lobbyists are identified former government representatives, including former staffers, former government ministers and other ex-office holders. In Victoria, no lobbyist has been sanctioned by the state authority since the latest code of conduct was introduced by the Napthine government in 2013. Under current rules, the only sanction available in Victoria is the removal of a lobbyist from the register. The state's public sector commissioner, Brigid Monagle, said six potential breaches of the lobbying code had been investigated in the past five years. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'None of these potential breaches met the full requirements for removal under the terms of the code,' Monagle said. 'There may of course be other breaches that the commission has not been made aware of, and we encourage anyone with knowledge of a breach to make a report.' The Centre for Public Integrity's executive director, Catherine Williams, said Victorian regulation was not fit for purpose and regulators should have a broad range of sanctions to ensure smaller but significant breaches of the code do not go unpunished. 'Clearly, a uniform law would be optimal as it would simplify compliance for lobbying firms and individuals operating across multiple jurisdictions,' Williams said. 'Unfortunately, however, with the current regulatory patchwork across the country – and federally, a government yet to acknowledge that lobbying reform must be on the agenda – a uniform law is a very long way off.' In October 2022, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (Ibac) raised concerns about potential corruption risks posed by lobbying. The Victorian government has accepted Ibac's recommendations, in principle, and is now consulting on possible changes. In New South Wales, six lobbyists were suspended from operating last month after failing to provide a regular update on which government officials they had met and on whose behalf. The NSW Electoral Commission, which regulates the lobbying industry, required this information to be updated every three months. Lobbyists must update the list even if they have been inactive during this period. There is no such requirement for lobbyists meeting with federal government officials.
BBC News
4 hours ago
- Sport
- BBC News
'He's got no fear' - Australia pin hopes on hometown hero Valetini
Australia v British and Irish Lions, second TestVenue: Melbourne Cricket Ground Date: Saturday, 26 July Time: 11.00 BSTCoverage: Live text commentary on the BBC Sport website and app with post-match analysis on BBC iPlayer, Radio 5 Live and the Rugby Union Weekly podcast. On the back row of an old team photo, chest puffed out with pride, stands Sione a Lion, back then Tuipulotu, born and brought up in Melbourne, was representing Victoria's Under-12 state ready smile and hefty build make him easy to pick out more than 15 years boy standing in front of him is less readily recognisable hair is shorter, the frame is slimmer, but Rob Valetini, the Wallabies' great second-Test hope, stares out of the same a few sliding doors lined up, Valetini and Tuipulotu could have been on the same side this side of Valetini's family, like Tuipulotu's, has Scottish ancestry. Captain William Sinclair, a diplomat, was dispatched to Fiji in the 19th century and is his his father's side, a route to Britain and Ireland opened up more recently though."I was supposed to come to England to play for Bath," Valetini's father Manueli tells BBC was a fast, strong runner, capable of playing in both the back row and centres, long before Levani Botia pulled the same had played against the Wallabies for one of Fiji's regional teams and was on the fringes of the national team when, in 1985, Bath offered to sponsor a move to the other side of the world."It was very close to happening, but my dad told me 'no, England is too far, you had better go to Australia or New Zealand'."I think I made the right choice to come to Melbourne." Instead of Bath, Manueli turned out for Harlequins - a team who play in the famous quartered shirt but in south east Melbourne, rather than south west was the start of a family dynasty. Rob is the youngest of Manueli and Finau's eight children, their sixth son. Every weekend, all the boys would play rugby for Harlequins."He was always very strong for his age," says Manueli of his youngest."He's got no fear of anybody, Robert."Aged five, Valetini would come home from school on a Friday and change straight into his Harlequins kit, sleeping in it that night so he was ready for action on Saturday 12, tasked with writing about his ambitions for his future, Valetini still had rugby first and foremost in his mind."When I grow up I want to play for Australia in rugby," he beganJohn Carey was one of Valetini's coaches during his time at Melbourne Harlequins."You think of him as being very physical now, but that was true even at a very young age," Carey says."At under eight level, we played touch - a tackle was if you got two hands on the hips."But at the end of the season, you'd always get the tackle bags out so that the kids who were moving up to full contact could start to practice."You'd get volunteers from the parents to hold the tackle bags, and normally you've got these little kids who would just bounce off."But none of the parents wanted to hold the tackle bags for Rob. He hit the tackle bags really hard even then."The family would go in the backyard every night and play rugby - full-on tackle, so at a young age he got used to being tackled by much bigger kids."When he went out on the field on a Saturday he wasn't scared of anyone." Valetini's brother Kemu, four years older than Rob, plays fly-half for Super Rugby's Fijian Drua, while wing Bill, three years older, had a season with French Pro D2 side Colomiers before injury ended his it is Rob who has risen highest in the missed the Wallabies' first-Test defeat by the Lions in Brisbane last weekend with a minor calf strain.A winner of the John Eales medal - awarded to Australia's best player - for the past two seasons, his return is key if the hosts are to force their way back into the knows the feeling."Rob was always the most important player in our team," he remembers."But because he was the youngest, if someone in the family wasn't going to get to a game on the weekend, it was going to be Rob."So every mid-week training, I'd always go to Fi and Manu and offer to give him a lift, just to make sure he'd get there on Saturday."Scouted by NRL side Melbourne Storm, Valetini opted to stay in union and signed for the Brumbies in Canberra at 17. He was only the second forward to sign a full contract with an Australian Super Rugby side while still in days after his 21st birthday, he made his Wallabies debut. This Saturday, back in his hometown, will be the biggest of his 53 caps so will be 15 members of his family in the stands, returning the support that an infant Valetini used to shout from the sidelines of their games."We are all going to watch it - all the brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews," says mother Finau."It will be a proud moment for the family watching him play at the game at the MCG [Melbourne Cricket Ground]."But I believe most of all a proud moment for Rob - playing against the British and Irish Lions, it comes up every 12 years and has always been one of his goals I think."He loves Test matches, he loves playing for the Wallabies."It won't just be a family of 15 cheering him on Australian rugby fan knows they need their prizefighter back rower at his hard-hitting best to have a chance of taking this contest to a final round.
SBS Australia
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
‘no title' – A story of lost and OCD
LISTEN TO SBS Indonesian 25/07/2025 15:59 Indonesian Victoria Winata is an award-winning emerging theatre maker (La Mama 2022). Her play 'no title' is currently being staged at Butterfly Club in Melbourne, 24 – 26 July 2025. To SBS Indonesian Victoria revealed that 'no title' is based on her experience as an OCD person. She teams up with Bryan Cooper who performs her three characters. Victoria also discussed the development of characters and how Bryan Cooper negotiates the complex inner world of reality of OCD and of differing characters. Listen to SBS Indonesian every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday at 3 pm. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and listen to our podcasts .
Times
10 hours ago
- Business
- Times
How China may save us all — Xi's power play to end emissions
In the year to March 2024, China emitted a staggering amount of carbon. Twelve billion tonnes. It was more than the rest of Asia combined. Twice that of the United States. Just slightly less than Britain belched out through the entire reign of Queen Victoria. In the year that followed, China also released a staggering amount of carbon. The total was easily equivalent to a coal power plant running continuously since the Norman conquest. But that year's staggering amount was in one very crucial aspect unexpected: it was, just, smaller than 2023's staggering amount. This might in turn end up being the most staggering statistic of the year. Because for the first time, analysis suggests China's energy use has increased but its carbon emissions have not. 'We are seeing the beginning of a decoupling,' said Ma Jun, from the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a non-profit Chinese research organisation. 'The deployment of solar is massive.' Ever since much of the world pledged to aim for net-zero carbon emissions, ever since the economies of Europe set out to do something unprecedented in the history of humanity — move from a dense and easy source of energy to a diffuse, difficult and variable source — there has been a niggling argument facing environmentalists. What is the point of doing this, sceptics would ask, when China is adding more emissions in a year than entire countries? What can Britain do, when China's carbon footprint is about 30 times as big and getting bigger? Now, though, it is not getting bigger. It is, as one environmentalist put it, the end of the 'But China' argument. But is it? 'There are lots of environmentalists saying, 'I told you so,'' said Sir Dieter Helm, a professor of economics at Oxford University. ''It's all working,' they say. 'Isn't it wonderful the Chinese have turned the tide, and are building all these renewables and are going to peak their emissions?'' Indeed it is, he said, compared with the alternative — but we should also look closely at what is going to happen to the many dozens of coal plants they are still building. 'If China's emissions plateau at the current level, that's a climate disaster. That's not a great success. That is horrendous.' In terms of emissions per capita, China is still less than the US — but comfortably exceeds the EU and UK. There are two narratives about China and net zero. For the first, go to the Northern Shaanxi Mine. There, in China's biggest coalmine, a mountain's worth of carbon has been pulled out of a scarred, dusty, black hellscape. It is still being pulled out. Last year, China started construction of 94 gigawatts of coal-fuelled power plants. To put that in scale, it is enough to power Britain's grid twice over. In this first narrative, while the West frets about wind turbines and veganism, here trucks the size of houses shift dirty fuel for a superpower still going all in on coal. For the second narrative, go to the Kubuqi desert of Inner Mongolia, China. There, across an area the size of New York, all you can see is solar panels. They sit, silent, turning sunshine on worthless ground into valuable clean energy to be sent south. Last year, China had 500GW of wind and solar projects under construction. While the West argues about the cost of renewables, in this narrative China is building more than the rest of the world combined. It is monopolising silicon and lithium. It is electrifying everything it can electrify. Cars. Industry. Trains. It is winning the next great industrial revolution: to become the world's first electrostate. Which narrative is true? Both. It is indeed building a coal station a week — give or take. But its biggest bet by far is on renewables. The proximal reason its emissions are falling, despite coal capacity going up, is in part because of something else entirely. Construction is falling too. A real estate crash means less carbon-intensive cement is being poured into the foundations of apartment blocks. But, there is hope this is more than a blip. Ma said it would be wrong to view the coal plants as a traditional part of the grid. 'China is going through a very difficult, but crucial, transition,' he said. 'How we adapt to a high penetration of renewable energy is a new challenge.' As Britain knows, when it is cloudy and the wind does not blow, you need a backup. Batteries and other storage are not ready at scale yet. This is why, in the UK, we still have so many gas plants — which a lot of the time sit unused. 'So, yes, there are more coal plants, but we can see quite rapid reduction of coal generation hours,' Ma said. 'We are paying a high price for energy security — building all this redundancy.' Can we believe the statistics, about those generation levels — and emissions in general? They are compiled from official sources, by Lauri Myllyvirta, from Finland's Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Rich Collett-White, from Carbon Tracker Initiative, a think tank that analyses the energy transition, said that while there were always questions about how much we can trust Chinese statistics, he and other analysts thought the trajectory made sense. He said: 'A lot of the data that's out there is based on customs, and tracking commodity flows. That's fairly straightforward to verify, and I think would be quite difficult to fake.' It also fits with their policies. That Chinese emissions would peak around now should not be a surprise. It is exactly what President Xi promised. The country pledged to start reducing emissions before 2030, and reach net zero by 2060. Some observers expect the Chinese leader to announce a new target for 2035 at the UN general assembly in September. Richard Folland, also from Carbon Tracker, said that we often ignored this in the UK debates. He added: 'The approach the Chinese government take on targets is that they tend to underpromise and overdeliver.' For him, being five years ahead of schedule makes sense. 'It is important. It is a pivotal moment when China starts bending that curve downwards.' Is this job done, then? Globally, said Helm, the situation is dire. The concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere — ultimately the only statistic that matters, and the only one you can absolutely trust — keeps on going up regardless. But, he conceded, 'this is better than if China was going the other way'. And for Ma there is a message too to the rest of the world. He said: 'Now is a very important moment. We hope there will be recognition that actions are being made in China.' If, sometimes, the rest of the world has used supposed Chinese inaction as an argument for their own inaction, he said, the reverse would not be true. He added: 'We will keep on doing this by ourselves. But if there's a chance to work together, with those who care about this issue, hopefully we can.' Change will not be fast. Over the next year, China will once again emit a staggering amount of carbon. Of every three carbon dioxide molecules put into the atmosphere, one will be Chinese. There is, critics point out, enough coal power being built that that could easily remain unchanged. Yet there is another China too. In the deserts of Inner Mongolia, endless solar farms catch the light. Stand on the shoreline of the Yellow Sea, and the sunrise that once scattered red in the air pollution glows red on the spinning blades of turbines. It is the biggest bet by far that a different kind of power is possible, and with it a riposte in steel and silicon to the argument, 'But China …'.
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
Services subsectors to see easy mobility
India has pledged to open up to British firms 108 sub-sectors of services, including accounting, environmental services and auxiliary financial services, while the UK will grant Indian companies access to 137 sub-sectors covering nearly all of New Delhi's current services exports. All key areas of India's interest, such as IT, management consultancy, advisory, accountancy, engineering, telecom, financial services, education and health are covered. "Both in terms of width and depth of coverage the UK's commitments (to India) are much deeper," according to an Indian commerce ministry note. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Artificial Intelligence Others MCA Cybersecurity Design Thinking Product Management PGDM Data Science others Operations Management Management Finance Healthcare Public Policy CXO Degree Leadership Technology healthcare MBA Project Management Data Science Digital Marketing Skills you'll gain: Duration: 7 Months S P Jain Institute of Management and Research CERT-SPJIMR Exec Cert Prog in AI for Biz India Starts on undefined Get Details As per the pact, British companies can offer telecom and construction services in India without having a local presence, and will be treated on a par with Indian firms. India will also recognise UK professional qualifications in a few fields, such as law and accounting, although legal services remain closed. Both parties have decided to engage on Mutual Recognition of Qualifications in a time-bound manner. India has a trade surplus of over $5 billion with the UK in professional services and has the scope to boost it further. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Victoria Principal Is Almost 75, See Her Now Reportingly Undo Segments, such as nursing, accounting, architecture, dental and other services, will gain significantly from this engagement, the ministry's note added.
