Uh, Catherine, is Murray Watt right? What do you think about, uh, the, the level of transparency that, uh, he's talking about?

My view is that the level of disclosure and transparency that's currently achieved by the federal lobbying regime is grossly inadequate.

Really, the only form of disclosure and transparency that we have is that we know who is registered as a third-party lobbyist, and we know the clients that they represent.

Now, this is already a limited form of disclosure, but because it only captures third-party lobbyists, it doesn't capture significant numbers we know exist of in-house lobbyists.

And we know of course nothing about what those lobbyists are talking about when and with whom, and that's information that really in any state running down the east coast of Australia we'd know, albeit, uh, to varying degrees because of the quality variation in diary disclosures.

Can the Parliament reasonably get in the way of former politicians or bureaucrats, uh, earning a living in similar fields after they leave office?

The revolving door conversation is a really complex one, and I don't want to undo- unduly simplify it.

But I would say that if the purpose of, uh, what we've got in place at the moment, these post-public official, um, career cooling off periods that federally at the moment sit at 12 and 18 months.

And along the way she also shared some of the fascinating history of St Machar Cathedral and its close connection with neighboring Seaton Park.

So here at the east end of the cathedral, um, there is a lovely long grass area where at the moment we've got the lovely bluebells coming up amongst the yellow of the dandelions and the, and the daisies.

And you look out and you just see the, uh, the trees of the park beyond.

Uh, and you really feel as if you're in the countryside, and yet we're in the middle of the town really.

Although obviously old Aberdeen is a separate, or was a separate town from new Aberdeen, with its own river.

And you can hear the birds enjoying the, the area as well.

[birds chirping] We hopefully are trying to enhance the biodiversity by planting native wildflowers that are getting quite scarce really now in the northeast of Scotland.

And as Catherine explains, it's a place where history, stories, and legends all come together, with some of them stretching beyond the cathedral walls into neighboring Seaton Park.

And so before we talk about some poets from the period, can you tell us just a little bit of background info on poetry in England? When does it kind of arrive? When does it become popular?

So the first poem in English is called Cadenbaum's Hymn.

It was written in the late 7th century and it survives among copies of Beattie or Saint Beattie because he became a saint later on.

It is Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

It is nine lines and it praises God.

So it's a bit of a liturgical poem, but it was the first poem in English.

And unlike the first poems of the continent, it was not Islamophobic whatsoever.

So do we have any idea about who was influencing Thomas Wyatt's poetry then?

But yeah, do you, do you think that besides the technical stuff, do you think that there are, there are, there are aspects, intellectual habits from v- all the rigor that you had in your education, in the postdocs that has proved useful, uh, in industry since?

Yeah.

I have two, I guess, two examples and then maybe even, like, a counter example.

Um, so one, of course, is yes, rigor.

Like, I think w- when one does a PhD in math, you stop being scared of hard technical subjects or going deep.

And so I am m- mathematically fluent.

I can...

But, um, anyway, yeah, so ca- I, I think I've completely r- uh, taken your, your conversation off the tracks where you were kind of going through early stages, AppNexus, growth there, and then how data science has evolved in the past decade to where it is today, but how that lines up with your career.

But could you maybe just explain what is the current state of play? How does it stack up internationally? And, and why, why is it a problem?

So the current state of play in Australia is an interesting question because the state of play federally is different from the state of play in different states and territories.

I always think when we're talking about lobbying that it's important to acknowledge that it does have a really important role to play in the policymaking process because we can't expect government to retain within it on a permanent basis all the kinds of deep expertise that are needed for policymaking.

We also need government to want to engage with people with lived experience when they're making policy.

So it's a really important part of the policymaking process.

The challenge arises in circumstances where there's not sufficient transparency and accountability, as your work in this space really recognizes, and it's in that context that what our board member, a man per- called Professor Ju-zhong Tan from Melbourne University, he's one of the leading thinkers around the regulation of lobbying in Australia and internationally, says about this.

He says that in the absence of sufficient transparency and accountability, you end up with this trinity of vices that he calls secrecy, unfairness, and corruption.

No, of course

Mm

... worst outcomes.

Those poor students did not learn those concepts.

[laughs] Experiment five, we made different changes to the stimuli.

Again, just sort of trying to outline what is different between those cells and what is different between those triangles other than being cells and being triangles.

And that one worked beautifully.

We got results that were a lot more similar to what we'd got with the cells, which was really cool because it showed, like, it's not just inherently that these are real and these aren't, and things that are real are easier to learn than things that are fake.

So, you know, when it comes down to if you knowing what information is out there now, you were asked to, based on these sort of pillars of these are gonna be the, the, the key concepts, what would you say if you wanted to develop a lesson that was gonna be a slam dunk, everyone learns a conceptual lesson, what do we sort of know right now has to be a part of it? And what do we feel our vibes based instructor maybe tells us, "You might wanna put some of this stuff in." Like, what do we kind of know should be a part of those slam dunk lessons, but maybe not fully know?

Do you think that there should be a stopgap measure put in place ahead of this coming election, state election, and maybe would you want to see sort of a, a deeper dive into what is the best system going forward?

That's exactly right, Damien.

We, of course, accept that the circumstances in which the state finds itself means that there does need to be an urgent interim response because Victorians deserve to have, at an absolute minimum, transparency in respect of who is trying to support which candidates and which parties in the lead up to this election.

And we need there to also be certainty around public funding, because if there isn't, it will disincentivize and potentially prevent candidates who are not wealthy candidates from participating, and we absolutely don't want to see that happen.

So certain minimum elements of the previous Part 12 do need to be returned, and in my view, those minimum elements are the transparency requirements and the public funding requirements.

There's an opportunity now for Victoria to put in place a really robust and importantly independent process to take place after the election when there's time to have really this ground-up rethink of what a holistic and optimally designed political finance regime could look like that deals with the problem of undue influence, the real and perceived problem, and also deals with the fairness issues that the previous scheme created.

And briefly, do you think a similar conversation needs to take place at a federal level?

I certainly think that a similar conversation needs to take place at federal level.