Lobbying A Contact Sport For 'heather Everywhere'
The Age
Saturday May 24, 2008
The head of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, speaks with an independent voice and has the ear of the Prime Minister.
SOMEONE joked to Heather Ridout, who has just collected yet another Rudd Government appointment, that she should clone herself. "I said, 'I've already done that - I have an identical twin sister,' " chuckles the Australian Industry Group chief executive. The business lobbyist has an amazing "in" with the Government. In February, Ridout was appointed to its business advisory group on workplace relations; in April to Skills Australia; this month to the taxation review and this week to Infrastructure Australia. No wonder Crikey dubbed her "the 21st member of Rudd's cabinet". How will she juggle all this? "I know it sounds extraordinary. But I've managed an awful lot of things for a long time. I'm very good at taking one thing at a time, focusing intensely on things. I seem to be able to get a day's work into a couple of hours."Ridout, 54, has a strong policy brain, loads of experience, excellent networking skills and a high media profile. She is also very politically savvy, partly explaining how she is where she is, which is absolutely everywhere. During the last federal election campaign, when other business organisations nailed their colours to the mast, Ridout maximised the political power of the Australian Industry Group by casting it as non-political. At the April 2007 ALP national conference the party released an industrial relations policy that didn't just propose rolling back WorkChoices but doing so in a way that would make life very hard for business. Ridout let fly, describing the policy as "loaded against business". Subsequently, in response to a barrage of corporate criticism, Kevin Rudd made some changes. Ridout's instant, tough intervention was both substantive and strategic, giving her credibility to subsequently take an independent stance. Later in the year she came under pressure to join a business advertising campaign, backed by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Business Council of Australia and other business organisations, and targeted at Labor's IR policy. But despite arm-twisting from the highest levels of the Coalition government, AiG stayed out. During the pre-election argy-bargy, Ridout endured some heavying from the Liberals, however she maintained good relations with John Howard. Recently, AiG gave an intimate dinner for him. The girl from Deniliquin, a dusty town on the edge of the Riverina in NSW, inherited a business interest from her accountant father, now 93. "He was intensely interested in finance and politics," she says. When she won a school prize she bought shares with the money. She went on a scholarship to Sydney University and took an honours degree in economics. Her first job was with right-wing NSW Liberal senator Milivoj Lajovic. She was then offered two jobs - one with the Liberal federal secretariat and the other with the Metal Trades Industry Association. She took the latter. The MTIA (which morphed into the AiG in 1998) was centred on industrial relations issues but also moving into other policy interests, which suited Ridout, who established its first tax group. She was in the MTIA/AiG 25 years before taking over as chief executive in 2004. The AiG, primarily drawn from manufacturing in its MTIA days, had better relations with the union movement than other business groups, and Ridout built good contacts in the unions. Bill Shorten, in Parliament now but formerly national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, says: "She read the play better than some of the hardline ideologues".Ridout's elevation has made the AiG the business organisation with far and away the best access to Government ears. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry was the group of choice for the former government; it is now trying to reposition itself, as its mild comments on the budget indicate. The Business Council of Australia, representing the nation's largest companies, falls somewhere between the ACCI's attempts to come in from the cold and AiG's place at the fireside. It was courted by Rudd last year but is not exactly cutting it with the Government now. One can understand why the Government has taken the AiG to its bosom. There are risks for Canberra, however - the BCA in particular is important to long-term Labor-business relations. Between Government meetings Ridout will still have to manage a huge lobbying and policy-generating outfit: AiG has 280 staff (70 working in the IR area alone). Ridout has experts on everything from tax to training, and she is bringing on more policy staff. For a woman in the Government loop, it's like being backed by a mini-department. Ridout might have been co-opted to government but, she insists: "I'm not in any way captured. Organisations like ours have to transcend party politics." Michelle Grattan is political editor.
© 2008 The Age
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