Australia's capacity to tackle important public issues – such as climate change, growing inequality, tax avoidance, budget repair, an ageing population, lifting our productivity and our treatment of asylum seekers – is diminishing because of the power of vested interests, with their lobbying power to influence governments in a quite disproportionate way.

Lobbying has grown dramatically in recent years, particularly in Canberra. It now represents a serious corruption of good governance and the development of sound public policy.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.

In referring to the so-called public debate on climate change, Professor Ross Garnaut highlighted the "diabolical problem" that vested interests brought to bear. Ken Henry, a former secretary of Treasury, says he "can't remember a time in the last 25 years when the quality of public policy debate has been as bad as it is right now". He was followed as secretary of Treasury by Martin Parkinson, who has warned about "vested interests" who seek concessions from government at the expense of ordinary citizens. The former ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel, has cautioned that "A new conga line of rent-seekers is lining up to take the place of those that have fallen out of favour". And in referring to opposition to company tax and carbon pollution reform policies, Fairfax columnist Ross Gittins says: "Industry lobby groups have become less inhibited in pressing private interests at the expense of the wider public interest. They are ferociously resistant to reform proposals."

These problems are widespread and growing.