There’s a simple question at the heart of the federal and Queensland governments’ $940 million investment in US firm PsiQuantum: if the deal resulted from an expression of interest process, as the governments claim, why did the company need lobbyists?
The answer to that — if there’s one the federal government is prepared to own — is lost in the ridiculous secrecy around a nearly $1 billion spend for a quantum computer that, if it’s ever built, we won’t even own.
As Crikey revealed last week, PsiQuantum has enlisted not one but two lobbying firms: Brookline Advisory, made up of two former senior Labor staffers Lidija Ivanovski and Gerard Richardson, and the doyen of Liberal-aligned lobbying firms, C|T Group. PsiQuantum hired Brookline in May 2023 but only brought C|T Group on board on April 4, ahead of the announcement that it had secured the monster handout.
PsiQuantum also engaged PR and government relations firm Akin Agency, which employs former Queensland Labor staffer Alex Dickson as a lobbyist. Dickson worked as an adviser for former Labor minister Kate Jones, who was a “specialist consultant” with Akin before leaving the firm following The Australian’s revelation she had set up meetings with former colleagues in the Queensland Labor ministry.
Hiring lobbyists with Labor connections makes sense given the federal and Queensland governments are both Labor, but why C|T Group? The answer to that is becoming clearer, as PsiQuantum struggles to overcome scepticism from the Coalition about the probity of the deal. Last week the company met with Sussan Ley, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and science spokesman Paul Fletcher in an effort to reverse Coalition opposition. The company also sat down with the Financial Review to try to explain that they have no Labor connections. C|T Group — embedded in the modern Liberal Party’s DNA — will be crucial to the firm obtaining some certainty that its $940 million funding won’t vanish next year if the Coalition wins.
But until the federal government reveals the details of how PsiQuantum ended up scoring $940 million ahead of local firms and what exactly the terms of the deal are, the smell of Labor mateship is going to linger over everything, and the Liberals are right to question it.
If there was any sort of competitive process involved in determining the funding, requirements relating to fair treatment of parties expressing interest must apply. That doesn’t mean officials and ministers can’t discuss details with potential participants in a competitive process, but the rule of thumb is the bigger the procurement, the stricter and more rigorous government officials need to be about what they share with all potential participants versus what they tell just one.
Was there a probity auditor involved in the secret process that led to PsiQuantum’s funding? What meetings were held with both PsiQuantum and its lobbyists (we can’t know because there are no meeting diaries for federal ministers)? What role, specifically, did Brookline Advisory and Akin Agency play in the process?
And does every firm now have to hire a Labor-aligned lobbyist if it wants to get access to the “Future Made In Australia” billions?
There’s nothing remotely illegal about any of this — and that’s the problem. There are various names for the exploitation of the political and governmental process such as political donations, lobbying, influence-peddling and revolving doors to the advantage of politically connected people and companies, and political parties and politicians. Soft corruption is sometimes used, as distinct from improper or illegal conduct; or state capture, or clientilism. It’s pervasive across Australian politics.
Here’s another example. Brookline registered a new client in November last year on the federal lobbyist register — another US firm, the gas company Tamboran Resources. Tamboran’s board includes former Coalition trade minister Andrew Robb. But Brookline had much to offer Tamboran on the Labor side: both Ivanovski and Richardson had been senior Labor staffers for Northern Territory Labor chief ministers. Two weeks ago, the NT government announced a nine-year deal to purchase gas from Tamboran Resources’ proposed fracking operation in the Beetaloo Basin. There’s no lobbyist register in the Northern Territory to show who else is representing the American company in Darwin.
To repeat, there’s nothing illegal about any of this. In fact, it’s completely normalised and regarded as standard practice in Australia on both sides of politics. As the PsiQuantum and Tamboran deals show, there’s a lot of money to be made from having the right lobbyists in the right place with the right party.
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