The Catholic Lobby: Structures, Policy Styles and Religious Networks

Abstract

This article is about the place of lobbying by the Catholic Church in contemporary Australian federal politics. It builds on some previous attention by political scientists to Catholic political campaigning (eg,Hogan 1978, 1993; see alsoByrnes 1993), but it is more comprehensive. Discussion of such lobbying uses various terminology and, like much lobbying, it can be viewed in a normative sense either favourably or unfavourably, as democratic or undemocratic. During the parliamentary debate in December 1996 on the anti-euthanasia private members bill introduced by Kevin Andrews, for instance, Nick Dondas (Country Liberal, Northern Territory) alleged that ‘the debate has been driven by the Catholic community of this country’. To which his Catholic colleague Tony Abbott (Liberal, New South Wales), alleging that Dondas had blamed the bill on the ‘Catholic lobby’, responded that ‘those comments were beneath him’.1