Manufacturing the Ridout effect

In theory, Heather Ridout shouldn't be near the top of our lobbyist list. Manufacturing – her power base – is in decline, and her organisation is by no means the biggest or most representative employer group out there.

Yet, by sheer force of personality and bloody hard work, she's become the voice of business in Canberra. Politicians respect her, the media can't get enough of her and her fellow lobbyists talk about her as if she's a saint.

"As far as I can see, she's a paradigm of virtue," Bruce Hawker, founder of the lobbying firm Hawker Britton, tells The Power Index. "She's one of the most proper people I've ever met in my life."

Liberal Party adviser turned lobbyist Ian Smith describes her as "entirely successful" while Simon Banks, a chief of staff to three Labor leaders, singles her out as the country's "standout" third-party lobbyist.

Ridout has sat on more policy advisory committees than possibly anyone else since Labor came into office. She's currently on four influential panels dealing with skills training, infrastructure, manufacturing and workplace relations.

She was also a member of the Henry Tax Review, the Business Roundtable on Climate Change and the government's Population Strategy Task Force.

That's not the only reason she's been nicknamed ‘Heather Everywhere'. Come budget time, she's the only business leader journalists want to interview. Throughout the year, she's a regular on programs like Q&A, Meet the Press and Radio National Breakfast. Her byline often features on the opinion pages of the nation's most influential newspapers.

Remarkably, she's managed to present herself as above politics and above sectional interest. No-one dismisses her as 'Ridout the rent-seeker' even though her modus operandi is getting a better deal for her members, mostly manufacturing and construction companies.

So does she wield too much clout?

"I don't accept the argument that we have too much influence," Ridout tells The Power Index. "We exercise it in a very balanced and thoughtful way. We're a pretty significant organisation and we work very hard. We always turn up and we turn up with prepared submissions."

(Although Ridout oozes self-confidence, she almost never uses the word ‘I'. She's a team player and likes to be seen as one.)

Canberra insiders agree that Ridout and her AiG colleagues have put their once powerful rivals to shame. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as one top lobbyist put it, is "seen very much as a branch office of the Liberal Party", while the Business Council of Australia is widely perceived as carping and unconstructive.

Into this void has leapt Ridout, a stockbroker's daughter from Deniliquin, in south-western NSW. After graduating from an economics degree, her first job was working as a researcher for the NSW Liberal senator Milivoj Lajovic. Right-wing powerbroker Nick Minchin was so impressed that he offered her a job, but she decided to take an offer from the Metal Trades Industry Association (later to morph into the Ai Group). Aged 23, she was the only woman at the MTIA with a degree; the other women working there were secretaries. In 2004, the mother-of-two was appointed Ai Group CEO.

As the Howard era drew to a close, she faced one the biggest decisions of her career: whether or not to join a business funded pro-Work Choices advertising campaign. She chose not to – a call that worked wonders for her reputation with the ALP.

"I doubt she'd be a Labor supporter at all but she's engaged with the government because she saw it was in her members' best interests," says Garrie Gibson, a Labor MP in the Keating government who now works as a lobbyist.

"The Rudd and Gillard governments have listened to manufacturing and industry a whole lot more than any Labor government has before."

Just look at this year's budget. The government announced $3 billion in new spending on skills training, including $500 million for a National Workforce Development Fund. The fund – which was the Ai Group's idea – will support 130,000 new training places. The government also boosted funding for apprenticeships, workforce literacy and vocational education – all issues Ridout has lobbied hard on in public and behind the scenes.

"If you look at the government's productivity agenda around infrastructure and skills, she's absolutely entrenched at the heart of those debates," says Simon Banks.

"The AiG have invested heavily in developing their policy expertise; they put a lot of time and thought into their policy positions."

Ridout watchers also see her fingerprints all over the government's decision to cut the corporate tax rate, set up a manufacturing taskforce and toughen up its anti-dumping policy.

That's not to say she always gets her way.

There's no sign the government – or the Coalition for that matter – agrees with her argument that the Fair Work Act needs to be reformed urgently to increase flexibility in the workplace.

Nor has Labor heeded her warning that business needs a carbon tax like "a hole in the head".

Ridout was a vocal supporter of Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme, but Julia Gillard's carbon tax has left her "extremely disappointed". The $23 a tonne starting price, she says, is too high and the amount of industry compensation is too low.

As for Tony Abbott's plan to repeal the carbon price legislation, she's no fan of that either: "We don't need uncertainty on top of uncertainty."

But if the pugnacious opposition leader wins the keys to the lodge, there's no doubt she'll remain one of the most influential policy players in town.

"You've got to work with people from both sides of the fence," she says. "You need to do the hard work building relationships and the door will be open."

This article first appeared on The Power Index on December 1. Republished with permission.