York Park Group’s Managing Partner Sean Sammon recently joined Susanna Montrone for an Advoc8 webinar on navigating parliament and building relationships that matter. Here we share some of the insights they discussed.

Relationships

Government

A relationship with Government has many layers, reflecting the broad nature of the Government’s agenda and the vast number of stakeholders. Relationships can be defined as:

1. Reputation relationship – this is how Government and voters feel about your organisation.
2. Policy relationship – how do your advocacy needs align with the Government of the day?
3. Politician relationship – the direct relationship, either at a Ministerial level or with backbench MPs and Senators.
4. Advisor relationship – the point of contact in the Minister’s office that can support with day-to-day advocacy matters.

The best relationships with Government have an element of all of the above.

Opposition

While it’s quite soon after the election and the Opposition has lower numbers, they are still an important part of your stakeholder engagement.

They still play a role in setting the media agenda, still sit on Committees and at some point, they will be in Government again. If you have existing relationships – keep them warm. If you have an opportunity to build a new relationship, it’s worth taking advantage of.

Crossbench

It’s always important to remember that the crossbench is busy, so any engagement needs to be relevant to them. As such, it’s likely that engagement would centre around legislation and parliamentary processes (such as Committees).

The crossbench can be a powerful internal champion for your issue, leveraging their profile and policy expertise.

Bureaucrats

It’s important to engage with bureaucrats in parallel with political advocacy. Regardless of the issue, there is always a bureaucracy behind the scenes doing the policy deep work.

If the bureaucracy doesn’t support your idea, it is less likely to happen. Once you have indicative support from the Ministers office, it is well worth investing in building a relationship with the relevant department to understand what they need from you to push the issue forward.

Meetings

How to secure a meeting with key decision makers

There needs to be clarity as to why you want to meet and an understanding of how your objective aligns with the Government’s agenda – or why it doesn’t.

In terms of arranging the meeting, there is no fool-proof way. Here are some options:

• Advisor meeting – finding out the advisor, cold email or calling and explaining the purpose of the meeting. Remember, it needs to be a good use of time for them as well, so make sure your ask isn’t all about you.
• Going through a MP or Senator – A politician is always more likely to call back another politician than they are a stakeholder they haven’t met. If this issue is important for a MP or Senator, they can become a powerful internal advocate for you.
• Letters and follow ups - a well-crafted letter, then going through the process, getting an initial rejection, following up and continuing to do so until things align. The Minister might be in your area, or you might be in Canberra in the right window where they have a gap in their diary.

Preparing for and attending a meeting

Time will always be limited in meeting with a politician or bureaucrat, so you need to make the most of it.

Ahead of the meeting, have a clear objective for that meeting – it could be to get a second meeting, or something else. When preparing a meeting brief, ensure that everyone has a role. With limited time, it’s best if messages are not repeated, so each person says something slightly different but equally relevant to your meeting objective.

Then lastly, it’s important to finish the meeting with clarity. This could be to request an introduction to a contact in the department or asking who the best person in the Minister’s office is to follow up with.

Conclusion

Advocacy and engagement are different for each organisation. York Park Group helps organisations define their advocacy objective, prepare a strategy for engagement and provide support and political intelligence to work with politicians and the bureaucracy.

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