Time to lock the revolving door

Stuff reports that former National Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson has become a lobbyist within months of quitting. He's the second high profile public official to do this recently, with former Labour Chief of Staff Neale Jones joining Australian lobbyists Hawker Britton in November. In both cases, these former public officials are seeking to leverage the knowledge and contacts they built up in their highly paid public careers for private profit.

Why do we allow this? Many other democracies don't. Australia, Canada, the USA and the European Union all have cooling off periods for public officials, preventing MPs and senior public servants from seeking to use their networks for private gain for up to five years. Such cooling off periods can be specific to issues in which the official worked (e.g. generals can't go and work for defence contractors, but can work for tobacco companies), or a general prohibition. The justification is to prevent the distortion of democracy, to prevent conflicts of interest and the abuse of knowledge and networks gained in public service for private gain, and to prevent post-retirement payoffs. All of which seem like something we need here.

(In fact, we have one provision: s15(2) of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007 prohibits former Immigration Ministers and officials from working as immigration advisors for 12 months after leaving office. So we recognise that there is a need)

Regulation of lobbyists was another key demand of the Open Government Partnership consultation which was ignored by the government. They're supposed to be working on a new OGP action plan this year, so this is an opportunity to get them to commit to it.