Corporates rush ALP cash-for-access plan

Corporate donors, including PricewaterhouseCoopers and lobbyists SAS Consulting, are already lining up to take advantage of Queensland Labor’s resurrected cash-for-access program.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk speaks during Question Time at Parliament House in Brisbane on Thursday. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

Corporate donors, including PricewaterhouseCoopers and lobbyists SAS Consulting, are already lining up to take advantage of Queensland Labor’s resurrected cash-for-access program, as Treasurer Cameron Dick launches a bizarre defence of the party’s broken integrity promise.

The Australian revealed on Thursday that the ALP had resurrected its cash-for-access corporate donation scheme, less than a year after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk banned her cabinet from attending the events.

Business donors have been invited to pay $10,000 plus GST for a year’s membership to the Queensland Labor Business Roundtable Program, buying intimate monthly “boardroom-style lunches and dinners” with government ministers.

The first event spruiked by the ALP is its traditional post-budget lunch, this year hosted and sponsored by EY.

Donation records show businesses are snapping up 10-person tables for the event, with Mr Dick, Ms Palaszczuk, and other cabinet ministers, for $2420.

Cryptoloc Technology, Vanguard Health, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s Queensland branch, PricewaterhouseCoopers and SAS Consulting Group have all already bought tables.

Access to the post-budget lunch is not included in the $10,000 a year fee for the business roundtable, though the cash-for-access fundraisers are being promoted together.

Ms Palaszczuk had promised for years that cash-for-access events would be banned from July last year. When that time came, she wrote to ALP state secretary Kate Flanders and said her ministers would no longer attend cash-for-access events, or any connected with the Queensland Labor Business Partnerships Network. Also in that month, then ­attorney-general Shannon Fentiman criticised the LNP over integrity, and challenged the opposition to stop holding cash-for-access events.

“Instead of playing politics, the LNP must commit to the same fundraising integrity measures, and stop its members from participating in big business cash-for-access meetings,” she said.

On Thursday, Mr Dick and Police Minister Mark Ryan both insisted the monthly boardroom meetings, attended only by ­donors to the Labor Party and government ministers, were not cash for access.

“It’s not cash-for-access, it’s a donation to a political party, and we attend events, we engage with business, both paid and unpaid,” Mr Dick said.

Mr Ryan said: “They’re not cash-for-access events. People pay money to go to all sorts of functions all the time.

“I’m going to a Rotary function this week, where people are paying for their meal – they can talk to me at that event.”

Ms Palaszczuk refused to answer questions, including why she changed her mind about cash-for-access events and if she still believed there were integrity risks inherent in hosting that type of fundraiser.

The LNP’s cash-for-access program, Solutions Queensland, is also attracting donors. Records show PwC, JJ Richards, the Local Government Association of Queensland, and Tabcorp have already bought membership.

The Premier revived the fundraising practice in 2015 after she was elected.

Corruption buster Tony Fitzgerald had warned in 2009 that Queensland was at risk of sliding back into its “dark past”.

“Access can now be purchased, patronage is dispensed, mates and supporters are appointed and retired politicians exploit their political connections to obtain success fees for deals between business and government,” Mr Fitzgerald said.