Yahoo Finance Christopher Pyne's firm hired by defence contractor awarded $98m in government work while he was minister
Christopher Pyne’s lobbyist firm has been engaged by a private defence contractor that was awarded tens of millions of dollars of government work while he was defence minister.
Pyne, through his firm Pyne and Partners, began working in December for Elbit Systems of Australia, a major supplier of military technology to the Australian Defence Force.
Elbit won a series of contracts with defence while Pyne was defence minister between August 2018 and May 2019. An analysis of publicly-available tender data suggests the technology company was awarded about 20 contracts worth $98m during Pyne’s time as defence minister, including a lucrative contract to provide a new cyber range training platform to boost the ADF’s cyber capabilities, which was announced by Pyne publicly.
Related: Firm advised by Christopher Pyne wins federal government grants worth almost $7m
It also won work while Pyne was minister for defence industry, including in 2017 when he said Elbit would help work on a new $1.4bn battlefield command system for the army.
Ministers are prohibited from lobbying in relation to anything they had official dealings with for 18 months after they leave office.
Pyne’s exclusion period ended on 29 November 2020. His firm began lobbying for Elbit in December, according to Pyne and Partners managing director Adam Howard, who was previously Pyne’s former chief of staff.
“Pyne and Partners looks forward to working with Australian defence companies to help grow Australia’s economy and our national security,” Howard said.
Elbit Systems of Australia said the firm was helping to “publicise the business’s transformation”. That transformation involved growing the Australian business and delivering more Australian jobs, it said.
“Pyne and Partners began providing services to publicise the business’s transformation after the expiration of the exclusion date,” a spokeswoman said.
There is no suggestion that Pyne broke any rule by taking on Elbit as a client. The engagement of the firm clearly took place after the 18-month prohibition period. But it is the latest in a string of post-politics roles Pyne has taken in his former portfolio area.
His other firm, GC Advisory, took on defence contractor Saber Astronautics as a client in 2019, prompting a letter from the attorney general’s department to warn him of his responsibilities.
The head of the department’s integrity and security division, Andrew Walter, wrote to Pyne’s firm to warn it to abide by the lobbying code of conduct.
“We understand that Saber currently holds a number of contracts with the Department of Defence, some of which were obtained while Mr Pyne held the position of minister for defence,” Walter wrote at the time. “As such, Mr Pyne is prohibited from engaging in lobbying activities on behalf of Saber until 11 October 2020.”
Pyne said that he was aware of his responsibilities and was taking care not to conduct lobbying work for Saber.
Related: Christopher Pyne formally warned he is banned from lobbying for defence contractor
Pyne’s job with consulting giant EY attracted the most public scrutiny of any of his post-politics roles. In 2019, his acceptance of the job prompted an inquiry into ministerial standards, which heard he discussed defence business consulting jobs with EY while he was still in cabinet and accepted the job just nine days after leaving politics.
His firm GC Advisory has also conducted work for the Ethan Group, an IT contractor that works regularly for defence. Ethan Group said it was only using GC Advisory for general consulting work.
Pyne was cleared of any breach of the standards by the former Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Martin Parkinson.
