Phillip Dwyer was a builder with a bee in his bonnet about the way the Housing Industry Association organised a compulsory building insurance scheme in the wake of the HIH insurance collapse. The warranty scheme operating in most states, he thought, reasonably enough, was a rort on both homebuyers and builders, particularly in requiring claimants to exhaust all avenues before a claim could be made.
In 2005 he sought a meeting with federal housing minister Fran Bailey to put his point of view. He saw her chief-of-staff, Christopher Lamont, who listened to him politely enough and promised he would pass on his representations to the minister. Lamont did that and the minister wrote a letter to all state housing ministers, who have responsibilities for such things, but nothing much in the way of action happened.
Whether Dwyer was told of these letters is not quite clear but he claims he later met Bailey and mentioned his representations of about 10 months before. She seemed to him to know nothing about them.
About this time, Dwyer saw an HIA press statement announcing that Lamont was joining the HIA as its director of federal relations.
Dwyer came to think that his representations had been ''buried'' by Lamont, and that he had got the job with the HIA as some sort of reward. He wrote to the then prime minister, John Howard, referring to the ''capture of government and the bureaucracy by the HIA'', suggesting that Lamont at the time of his meeting with him was ''already fully captured ...'' and quite prepared to ignore our pleas in favour of his prospective employer.
''This Chris Lamont scenario points to nothing short of corruption of a government department for financial gain,'' his letter said.
What Dwyer was saying was nonsense. Lamont did brief his minister and his minister did take some action, even if it came to nothing. Lamont had no relationship with HIA at the time of the meeting, and was not offered a job until about nine months later.
Dwyer was, Justice Terry Higgins said yesterday in the Supreme Court, of a rather paranoid disposition, inclined to delusional thinking and far-fetched conspiracy theories when he failed to get his way.
Lamont had sued for defamation. Dwyer, by now a bankrupt, did not appear in court to defend the action, saying he lacked the resources to appear, even self-represented.
Yet, though the judgment of Higgins vindicated the honour of Lamont, and found Dwyer's allegations against him wrong, and unreasonable, he found for Dwyer.
Dwyer won on qualified privilege. His belief was wrong, perhaps even delusional, but it was genuinely held. It was a belief of a sort that a person could hold when they saw patterns of movement from ministerial offices to industry lobbies.
''[Lamont] himself acknowledged that for a person to go from employment in government to employment in a senior capacity in an industry interacting with that area of government might well give rise to the suspicion that the person in question was employed, not merely for their demonstrated capacity, but for their contacts in government, be they departmental or political,'' Higgins said.
''That is, under current arrangements, a perfectly lawful transition and a reasonable objective for an organisation like HIA to make its lobbying activities more effective. Of course it may be seen to be contrary to the public interest in that it raises a reasonable perception, as was embraced by [Dwyer] that officials or politicians may conduct themselves so as to attract lucrative offers beyond their then current employment in the public sector. It is a perception that gives rise to the suspicion that there may have been a conflict of interest in the person concerned.''
One of Lamont's witnesses was former industry minister Ian MacFarlane, who had an interesting view of Fran Bailey's ''difficult'' reputation. He conceded that there were different views about the propriety of ministers becoming lobbyists after politics, but claimed not to have been aware of people expressing similar reservations about ministerial staffers becoming lobbyists. (He's obviously led a sheltered life.)
I'm with Terry Higgins. I feel sorry for Lamont that some people developed false and hurtful perceptions about him when he shifted from being minder to lobbyist. But he can blame only himself for that. In matters of conflict of interest, appearances are as important as facts. That John Howard could never seem to see this was ever a serious problem in his government.
Howard let an array of senior Liberal ministers walk straight from politics into positions with very real potential for conflict of interest. Real or not, the conflict was obvious.
Their apparent indifference to these perceptions and Howard's failure to discourage them seemed to compound an impression of low standards, sleaze and privileged insiders.
In many cases, the appearance of conflict with some ministers was far more obvious than with the hapless Lamont. Peter Reith, Richard Alston, Larry Anthony and Michael Wooldridge went straight into areas involving matters of old portfolio responsibility, for example. When such perceptions of potential for conflict abound, they operate as a cancer on the reputation of government even if, in fact, those involved act with honesty. When prime ministers and former politicians cannot see this risk, let alone act to deal with it, they can hardly be surprised if the public, long given to cynicism about politicians, believes the worst.
Kevin Rudd and his integrity minister, John Faulkner, have demanded of Rudd ministers a lengthy interval before they can become lobbyists. The standard is not so strict for minders though it should be but some early problems of perception, not least the move to Qantas of David Epstein, former Rudd chief-of-staff, is leading towards this. Overseas, Britain, Canada and the United States have well-understood rules. A pity Labor governments in the states, and the bad example of a number of former premiers, lag even Howard in dealing with popular concerns about conflict of interest. For them, honours before honour any day.