A simple definition of state capture is “the domination of policy making by private, often corporate, power”. It encapsulates how “public bureaucracies become dominated by strong and powerful interest groups”.

There are varieties of this phenomenon but the one we are most interested in is systemic state capture, which according to The Conversation, “refers to “institutions” that affect the internal and external sovereignty of the state and limit its policy options to those that favour powerful sectors, which stand to benefit”.

The BBC puts meat on these definitional bones when it says “state capture describes a form of corruption in which businesses and politicians conspire to influence a country's decision-making process to advance their own interests. As most democracies have laws to make sure this does not happen, state capture also involves weakening those laws, and neutralising any agencies that enforce them.”

They quote Abby Innes, Assistant Professor of Political Economy at the London School of Economics, who said “state capture is not just about biasing public policy so that it systematically favours some corporations over others. It's also about strategically weakening that part of the state's law enforcement mechanism that might crackdown on corruption."

According to Dr Innes, "Full-on state capture is where corporations can influence the nature of the legislative process, and political actors allow them to do so for private gain. The whole policy-making structure of the state becomes commodified - something that politicians are willing to sell."

We could probably leave the article there because it’s patently obvious that the concept maps horrifyingly well onto the Australian political landscape.