There’s been lots of concentrate on the position of lobbying within the choice of the Commonwealth and Queensland governments at hand greater than $900 million to US firm PsiQuantum — a deal the auditor-general could now check out. PsiQuantum has two lobbyists: long-term Liberal strategists-cum-lobbyists C|T Group, and Brookline Advisory, the Labor-aligned lobbying agency led by veteran Labor advisers Lidija Ivanovski and Gerard Richardson.
Brookline was solely established final yr and PsiQuantum was — based on the federal lobbyist register — its second consumer after the College of Tasmania. One other consumer Brookline gained final yr was US fuel firm Tamboran Assets, which plans an LNG plant on the Center Arm “Sustainable” Precinct in Darwin — to which, throughout the 2022 federal election, Labor dedicated $1.5 billion. That brings us again to Ivanovski who, like Richardson, has been a senior Labor adviser on the highest state and federal ranges.
The Australian Greens take up the story of their “Extra Feedback” for the current Senate Atmosphere and Communications Committee’s report on Center Arm:
Brookline was co-founded in 2023 by Lidija Ivanovski, who had beforehand labored for the NT chief minister Paul Henderson and within the final federal Parliament, was the chief of workers to shadow defence minister Richard Marles.
Between March and Could 2022, Ms Ivanovski took outing of this parliamentary position to be the chief of workers working Labor’s federal election marketing campaign. On the exact time that Ms Ivanovski was working Labor’s election marketing campaign, then shadow infrastructure minister Catherine King introduced {that a} Labor authorities would fund the Center Arm mission with $1.5 billion of public cash.
The most important beneficiary of Labor’s funding is the fuel firm Tamboran Assets, who would go on to grow to be Ms Ivanovoski’s consumer.
Because the Greens go on to confess, that is merely circumstantial proof. Ivanovski didn’t reply to Crikey’s questions on what position, if any, she performed in Labor’s marketing campaign choice to fund Center Arm — in spite of everything, it’s not as if Labor wants any assist committing taxpayer funding to fossil gasoline tasks. Not like C|T Group or two different well-known Labor strategists and lobbyists, Evan Moorhead and Cameron Milner in Queensland — each now banned from lobbying in that state, however nonetheless energetic on the federal stage — Ivanovski wasn’t a lobbyist each earlier than and after she was a marketing campaign strategist.
And Brookline isn’t Tamboran Assets’ solely representatives in Canberra. On the finish of Could, the corporate signed up Pacific Companions Strategic Advocacy — owned by Joe Hockey’s Bondi Companions. Like PsiQuantum, Tamboran Assets clearly likes having lobbyists linked to either side of politics. That appears like a really good transfer now that the Nation Liberals have smashed NT Labor and returned to energy within the High Finish.
They might have been busy at Brookline with the federal government’s international scholar caps. One of many few winners from the federal authorities’s cap on international scholar numbers occurred to be… Brookline’s first consumer College of Tasmania. However earlier than anybody will get too carried away, one among Brookline’s more moderen purchasers, Western Sydney College, copped what it says was a 23% minimize on its projected 2025 consumption. Can’t win ’em all.
