Cash-for-access, “absurd” dismissals, and a panicked deregistration that solves nothing
Independent Senator David Pocock prised open a door Canberra would rather keep shut: a parliamentary “social” sports club taking money and “corporate memberships” from lobby groups; most notably the gambling industry’s Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA); while enjoying the imprimatur of having the Prime Minister as club president.
When Pocock objected, he was booted. Cue public blowback, cross bench resignations and, within days, a conveniently tidy fix: the Australian Parliament Sports Club (APSC) deregistered itself as a lobbyist. Problem solved, Prime Minister? Or just swept off the register and under the rug?
What Actually Happened (and When)
- 22 September 2025 – The APSC is added to the official Register of Lobbyists.
- 10 October 2025 – Pocock is expelled from the club. The PM dismisses concerns as “absurd.” Independents Sophie Scamps, Monique Ryan and Allegra Spender resign in protest.
- 13 October 2025 – Under fire, CEO Andy Turnbull deregisters the club, citing advice that it “would not have to register.”
Turnbull says members were told “on 40 occasions” that RWA was a corporate member and that its CEO even played soccer with MPs.
(Sources: Crikey, ABC, The Guardian, SBS)
“Drop it off the register” — Crisis Comms or Confirmation of the Problem?
At first glance, deregistration looks like a cynical, ham-fisted, attempt at damage control. If the club’s ties to lobbyists were above board, why register in the first place? And if it was all innocent social sport, why kick out the one senator asking questions?
The sequence; register, expel, backpedal, deregister is classic Yes Minister material:
“The Minister’s concern is absurd, Bernard—so naturally we’ve removed his concern from the register.”
The PM’s Absurd Dismissal
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s initial reaction; decrying the controversy as “absurd”, while insisting Pocock shouldn’t have been banned, adds an element of high farce. It suggests, if not reeks of a flap in the PMO. His minders panic, get themselves shit-faced and can only default to Canberra’s favourite fix: change the paper trail, not the practice.
Take the beer-goggles off, Team Albo. Lay off the Bolivian marching powder. De-registration changes nothing about the corporate memberships, sponsorships, or the locker-room access-for-sale culture that prompted the scrutiny. If yesterday warranted a lobbyist registration and today it doesn’t; what changed other than the optics?
What Pocock (and the Cross bench) Got Right
Pocock’s stand has been principled throughout. Right on the money. Albo will be fuming. Trust the bloody cross-bench to spawn a bastion of integrity. The former Wallabies captain makes a clear and reasonable objection: the problem isn’t the soccer or the rugger pitch, it’s the normalisation of proximity between lobbyists and lawmakers.
For some members to claim they didn’t even know RWA was a sponsor beggars belief. Ignorance is no excuse. But it does prove how broken the disclosure system is.
“The system is broken,” Pocock said. “This was a cash-for-access scheme.”
He’s refused to rejoin unless the club conducts a transparent membership review. Bravo, David. Who could blame him? In the future, to “Pocock” will mean to assert and maintain your integrity.
What Real Reform Would Look Like
- Full, continuous disclosure of all sponsorships and memberships.
- Firewalls preventing active lobby groups from sponsoring parliamentary clubs.
- Independent oversight; not insider self-policing.
- Cooling-off periods after any social contact between lobbyists and MPs.
Without these, “dropping off the register” just means dropping accountability.
The Bottom Line
Taking the APSC off the register tidies the headlines but leaves the rot untouched.
If anything, it entrenches a culture where access is bought with a ball and a beer rather than a brown paper bag. This isn’t reform; it’s the bureaucratic laundering of influence.
A neat Canberra disappearing act.
Coda
So, the Australian Parliament Sports Club has vanished from the register. Presto. Problem solved. But this isn’t a solution; it’s a sleight of hand that confirms every cynical assumption about how power operates in this town. The sequence of events is a masterclass in the capital’s unique brand of corruption; not the blatant brown-paper-bag, but the genteel, clubby, embedded kind that wears cleats and drinks pints after play.
The PM’s dismissal of serious concerns as “absurd” was the first tell. In Canberra, a question that threatens the established order is never met with an answer; it is met with a label. “Absurd” is the word the powerful use when they have no defence, a rhetorical shrug designed to shame the inquisitive into silence. It is the sound of a system that believes its own impunity is a natural law. That’s absurdity, PM, but it’s also wilful moral blindness.
The panicked deregistration is the second, and more damning, confession. It admits that the appearance of impropriety is the problem to be managed, not the impropriety itself. The club didn’t end its relationship with gambling lobbyists; it simply erased the receipt. This is pure solipsism: the bureaucratic equivalent of a child closing his or her eyes to become invisible. It solves nothing but proves everything: the entire lobbying regime is a voluntary honour system for the dishonourable, a flimsy stage curtain that can be drawn shut the moment the audience starts asking questions.
What Pocock exposes is the soft corruption of proximity, where influence is not purchased in a transaction but cultivated in a culture. It’s cash-for-access laundered through a jersey and a sponsorship banner. By focusing on the technicality of registration, the club and its defenders are praying we miss the larger, uglier picture: a culture so saturated with vested interests that it can no longer distinguish between a social match and a lobbying session. When the CEO of a gambling industry body is your teammate, the pitch is just an extension of the boardroom.
The true absurdity, then, is not Pocock’s objection but the response to it. It is a pantomime of accountability where the guilty party investigates itself, finds nothing, and then changes the rules of the investigation to ensure it never has to answer again. They haven’t fixed the problem; they’ve merely cancelled the audit.
The final, tragic joke is that this farce plays out while the nation grapples with the very real harms of the gambling industry Pocock’s expellers were so keen to host. This isn’t just a story about a sports club; it’s a diagnostic x-ray of a sickness at the heart of our politics. A system where responsibility is wagered away, and the only thing that ever gets de-registered is accountability itself.
Urban Wronski Writes 