Home affairs and cybersecurity minister Clare O’Neil’s chief of staff has taken a job with the cybersecurity contractor and arms manufacturer Thales, the Senate has heard.
Experienced Labor adviser Andrew Downes has served as chief of staff in O’Neil’s office since mid-last year, but was reported last week to be leaving for the private sector.
The Greens senator David Shoebridge told the Senate on Thursday that Downes had accepted a job with French multinational Thales, an arms manufacturer seeking to expand its cybersecurity operations with its proposed acquisition of Australia’s largest ASX-listed cybersecurity company, Tesserent.
There are no rules governing the movement of government advisers to private industry, even in related fields, unless they seek to become registered third-party lobbyists or in some areas of defence.
Guardian Australia is not suggesting Downes has breached any rule or is not entitled to accept a job with Thales.
Shoebridge questioned how someone in a position of such power could move into a related industry with no cooling off period to guard against the use of information gained while in office.
Shoebridge made the comments while supporting a motion by David Pocock calling for greater transparency around lobbying and a stronger code of conduct for lobbyists.
“There’s a matter that’s literally unfolding as this debate is unfolding and that’s in the office for the minister of home affairs, where the chief of staff for the minister for home affairs is in the process of moving … from that powerful position as a senior adviser to taking a government relations job with the international arms manufacturer Thales,” Shoebridge told the Senate.
“No cooling off period, literally walking out of being chief of staff one day, and being straight into being a government relations adviser for a major multinational arms manufacturer the next day.”
“It’s actually worse than that because Thales is in the process, and going through the foreign investment review board process, of taking over one of Australia’s only soverign cybersecurity firms, Tesserent, and there’s been silence from the Australian government to resist that foreign takeover by Thales.”
Thales were approached for a response.
A spokesperson for O’Neil said: “All probity processes have been followed.”
The majority of registered lobbyists working for third-party lobbyist firms are known to come from government, a fact borne out by a 2018 Guardian investigation. Third-party lobbyists do face some restrictions on immediately moving directly from government, a measure designed to stop them and their clients from privately benefiting from information obtained while in government. The lobbying code of conduct contains cooling-off periods to prevent such a situation, though they are not enforced and contain no real punishment.
But in-house lobbyists who work in government relations teams for companies such as Qantas or BHP, for example, face no such restrictions. They are not required to place themselves on the lobbyist register and are not subject to any rules, including cooling-off periods.
Shoebridge said the former government was “woeful, dreadful” but said the Albanese government had promised to do better.
“I say to the Albanese government, you came in with all these promises. You came in with all these statements about transparency, and you said things would be different. Well if that’s true, I’ve got a French arms deal to sell you.”
