Unimpressive as a minister, magnificent as a rainmaker

This is part three in a series. For the full series, go here.

Stuart Robert is a very modern politician. In fact, he’s nearly an archetype of what modern politics is all about.

The lifeblood of modern politics is money. And politicians who can raise money — the rainmakers — can enjoy access, influence and partyroom support, especially from MPs who have benefited from their largesse.

Robert has for years been the LNP’s biggest fundraiser, via his Fadden Forum and the many property developers that litter the Gold Coast. Robert may have struggled to impress as a minister during his time on the frontbench, but his real genius is in raising money.

He has made speeches in Parliament written by property developer lobbyists who would later give generously to the Fadden Forum. He had the brilliant idea of using an ostensibly non-partisan “seniors expo” to demand funding for the LNP from exhibitors, raising $300,000 for the LNP. As assistant treasurer, he headlined a fundraiser in 2018 that offered donors the chance “to learn more about what ramifications may arise for the finance industry from the royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry”.

As each of those examples indicates, Robert’s judgment about what properly constitutes public office versus partisan interest is somewhat askew, and has been for a long time — a key reason he lost his spot in the Turnbull ministry after having been found to have accompanied Liberal donor and friend Paul Marks to China to help launch a resources project. Despite his lack of judgment about the line between public office and partisan interest, however, Robert has emerged relatively unscathed from successive scandals, protected by his close friend, fellow Christian fundamentalist Scott Morrison.

Robert is not merely able to tap into the fundraising potential of representing some of the wealthiest suburbs in Queensland, where white shoes and yachts go hand in hand with hostility to restrictions on development, but into an extensive network of Pentecostal Christian groups in the state.

As both major parties have discovered, religious groups — in Labor’s case, from non-English-speaking backgrounds; in the Liberals’ case, from fundamentalist Christian groups and sects and other conservative religions like Mormonism — make for excellent footsoldiers in branch-stacking. Members of churches tend to self-select into politics far more than most Australians: they are already joiners, they likely have some kind of personal ideology and social views that reflect it, and they are easily reached even without social media.

Pentecostalism is particularly rich soil for conservative political parties to till, given the success of prosperity theology within the movement and its resistance to good works or social justice found in more mainstream Christianity that might encourage more progressive economic and social policies.

Religious groups can provide funding networks, branch members and electoral campaign workers to deploy in more marginal electorates — all things needed by hollowed-out political parties that lack mass memberships and need huge injections of money for polling and advertising.

It’s a system that allows relatively small groups of well-organised party activists to take control of branches, and encourages those willing to donate to seek to influence policy in their own interest, using access at fundraisers that no ordinary voter ever gets. It also explains why in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, religious conservatives have infiltrated the Liberal Party or LNP with varying degrees of success.

If Stuart Robert hadn’t come along, politics would have invented him. He’s a man of the system we’ve given ourselves.