There is a great deal written, and rightly so, about the revolving door between Parliament and the private sector. We’d say we’d lost count of the number of politicians who wait roughly 15 minutes to start a lucrative career lobbying on behalf of industries they were recently charged with regulating, but it’s kind of our job to keep count.
However, less attention falls on the staffers who leave politics. Skipping some of the more obvious ones — we can’t imagine Crikey readers need a primer on how Sean Kelly, Peta Credlin or Chris Kenny fill their hours these days — here’s our list of where some influential former political staffers have ended up.
Four former advisers to former Victorian premier Dan Andrews — Lissie Ratcliff, Jessie McCrone, Ben Foster and Adam Sims launched the strategic advice firm Foster McCrone Ratcliff & Sims earlier this month.
Sean Sammon was a staffer for then Labor senator Kate Lundy, until 2013 when he became the CEO of Bastion S&GO, a government strategy and community engagement consulting firm, a role he held until 2019. In 2020 he founded political and business advisory firm York Park Group with fellow Labor veteran Geoff Walsh.
David De Garis most famously advised then employment minister Michaelia Cash, and was the person to jump on the grenade that was the saga of the raid on the Australian Workers’ Union. In January this year he became the general manager of government relations and industry affairs for Crown Resorts after six years at the Australian Hotels Association WA branch.
Between 1996 and 2006 Kieran Schneemann held a number of staffer roles in the Howard government, including as chief of staff to former Liberal senator Nick Minchin and former Coalition MP Peter McGauran before becoming head of government affairs at the Australian arm of pharma giant AstraZeneca.
Mark Reed, the strategic director for WA’s COVID-era emperor premier Mark McGowan starting in 2017, quit in 2022 to head up Labor-aligned lobby group Anacta’s newly opened Perth office.
Kai Cantwell advised then social services minister Anne Ruston on, among other things, online wagering laws until the 2022 federal election made her a minister no more. The next year he became chief executive of online gambling industry body Responsible Wagering Australia.
After the change of government in the state, former NSW digital minister Victor Dominello’s senior adviser, Jerome Boutelet, took a job as public affairs manager with electronic property settlement company Sympli, noting it was a “great opportunity pushing for reform, competition and innovation in the digital space, most of which benefited from the hard work and leadership of Victor Dominello”.
Hey, why wait until you’re actually out of office? Late last year Northern Territory chief minister Natasha Fyles’ office had to defend senior political adviser Gerard Richardson’s dual roles as an adviser to the NT Labor government and as a co-owner of Brookline Advisory, a company that lobbies for Tamboran Resources, a gas company with huge interests in the Beetaloo Basin. The matter has been referred to the NT’s anti-corruption commission.
And it doesn’t have to be a shift into the private sector. Some extremely high-ranking public servants started as staffers: Phil Gaetjens was a former chief of staff to Peter Costello and Scott Morrison before being appointed, very much in keeping with the vibe of the time, with Morrison appointing Gaetjens Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary, essentially the top public servant role, in 2019.
Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment secretary (until his retirement in 2023) Andrew Metcalfe was chief of staff to Philip Ruddock in the late 1990s, and Department of Defence secretary Greg Moriarty was chief of staff to then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources secretary David Fredericks was a former staffer to a range of Labor MPs, including Kevin Rudd, Kim Beazley and Penny Wong, and before his time as Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development secretary, Simon Atkinson was then finance minister Mathias Cormann’s chief of staff.
