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A number of the men will understand that, but this morning we had this fantastic men’s breakfast. After it, we were getting on these go-karts and going around on the dusty gravel.

I got really windblown with dust all over me. I had to go home and have a shower. I was finding dust in places I’ve never found it before after that.

Now, I was given the topic of “What is lobbying and why is it important today?” I was just sitting down there thinking, “How am I going to open this talk up?” And I realised we have an academic, a pastor, and a lobbyist. And I thought, “What do you get when you get an academic, a pastor, and a lobbyist walking into a bar?” I thought, the academic tells you what’s wrong with the world in a very articulate way. Hopefully the pastor makes you feel a whole lot more hopeful about it and heals your heart a bit.

And the lobbyist says, “I’ll pay the bill and we’re out of here.”

Now, depending on how much you laughed at that, I was going to say, is my job really necessary here today? Do we understand what a lobbyist is? Unfortunately, there is this caricature around lobbyists, which is that we just pay people off and that’s how we get things done. But I’m here to tell you today that that’s certainly not the case.

Lobbyists do far, far more than that. In fact, I might say something a little bit provocative and suggest that I think there’s a real biblical case for lobbying. In fact, I think it is a godly pursuit.

I think there are even biblical characters — and I’m going to touch on one of them — who lobby in a highly effective way and in a godly way with virtue and integrity. We’ll look at that a bit today. But first, it’s important that I look a little at what a lobbyist is and answer that question a bit more fully.

So I thought I would engage you guys as the audience and see if there are any understandings of what lobbyists do. So I’ll take three. If people just want to shout it out and say, “This is what I think a lobbyist does,” I’d appreciate gauging it.

Anyone got one for me?

[ Audience ] A voice?

Yes, very good. A voice to who?

[ Audience ]To power.

Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Power.

[ Audience ]Decision makers.

Yes.

Any other ones? Yes. Love it. Yes, yes.

[ Audience ]So taking something specific and representing it to the Parliament — that specifically is Jesus Christ and his good laws for life.

Yes, I love that. Okay. Any other ones? One more if we’ve got any.

[ Audience ] Reminding politicians what they said.

That’s a great way to put it. And it’s the best when you get it on camera too, because then you can pull it up and say, “Remember this one?” “We’ve got to get that done.”

So look, when you look at something, a little exercise that can be helpful is etymology. The word effectively means: what does a word or a thing mean at its beginning, and how has it changed over time? I thought I’d go through this process very briefly with “lobbying,” just to help us understand it. The word began being used, people say, in the early nineteenth century.

It referred to those who would move in the lobby — in the architectural sense — at the front of the UK House of Parliament, chancing a conversation or a drink or an opportunity to have that discussion with a decision maker, seeking to change their position on a piece of legislation. Now, the term stopped being used so colloquially and began to actually refer to a formal profession. It changed to us understanding lobbyists as people who are professionally employed to go and make decision makers make certain decisions on the basis of a particular client or a group of people.

Now, I thought without any patriotic shame I would quote the New South Wales Parliament, the Premier State here, and their definition. It says:

“By lobbying is meant the attempt to influence decision makers into choosing a course of action preferred by the lobbyist or his client.”

I might say “supporters” here in the case of ACL.

“It may be to pass [or] amend certain legislation, or to oppose its passage through Parliament.”

I think that’s quite an adequate definition of what a lobbyist is and what a lobbyist does. And in the context of the Australian Christian Lobby, what we’re doing is influencing decision makers on behalf of supporters — which are Christians in the community — to see laws passed, amended, or blocked according to their alignment or lack thereof with God’s good law for life, with Christian values, or even what we might just say is truth or natural law.

You can hear this spelled out in ACL’s vision, which is to see Christian principles influence the way that we are governed, do business, and relate to others in community. So that’s what we do. Broadly, you could probably sum this term up with the word “advocacy,” but certainly a huge subsection of it is lobbying the actual decision makers in Parliament.

A key word that I’ve been repeating here is “influencing.” And what we’ve got to think about is: how do we influence, and how do we achieve that influence? Because to be a successful lobbyist, you have to have some degree of influence. You can’t just expect things to happen as per how you want them to without any influence.

I think a lot of the misconceptions around lobbying — especially the stereotypes — arise when people believe it’s only through money that you can influence, to sort of pay someone off. And that’s not the case at all. In preparing this presentation, I was reading some academic literature, actually from this year, April 2025.

It was reviewing the evidence for how lobbying influences policymakers, and I actually found it quite helpful. So I’m going to read a short summary of the findings and then unpack that a little bit.

It says,

“In this review, we summarise three ways lobbying has an effect, as documented in this new literature. First, in line with public suspicions, lobbyists have transactional relationships with public officials in which they exchange money for political access or relationship.”

So unfortunately, that is a reality.

Second, lobbyists persuade public officials by providing information that changes the position taken by policymakers. Now, that is helpful.

And third, successful mobilisation of citizen support or lobbying coalitions helps lobbyists attain policy aims.

So our suspicion is confirmed that a reality about lobbying is that a certain subset of people do pay off officials. But there are these other two really important ones, which are: one, persuasion through reason and argumentation; and two, the effective mobilisation of grassroots or a community of people.

Those are important. In fact, I think if we apply both of those as we’re thinking about what is maybe a healthy view of lobbying, and then actually redefine the other one from “transactional relationship” to “transformational relationship,” it’s actually quite a helpful quote in full. In Christian lobbying — so with ACL and the work that we do — our influence comes from God, obviously, but practically that is outworked through: one, genuine relationships with decision makers, building relationship with them; two, credibility through good reasoning, and this good reasoning needs to be based in truth — we achieve that credibility and we make that representation; and thirdly, numbers on the ground — people in the community who are engaged.

Ideally, this is the church and this is you: Christians who are willing to stand up for what is right, to speak the truth, and to not rescind backwards, but in fact commit to the conversation about what’s happening publicly, as Church and State is encouraging us to do.

And I say this is a good thing too, because the truth is, Christian charities ain’t got no money for a bribe, so we need these other measures. So the next question that my mind comes to is: well, is that biblically justifiable — getting engaged in that way? I think it absolutely is. I think it is a really good pursuit.

I think if done with integrity and with good virtue, lobbying is something that we can engage in. I obviously engage in it professionally, but we can also engage in it from the community level, as advocates in the community, as well as Christians. And I think that’s a good pursuit.

I wanted to consider this briefly by looking at Joseph in the Old Testament, the son of Israel. I’m going to read from a passage in Genesis 41 in a second. But firstly, I’ll just say I think Joseph, through wisdom, through faith, and through fidelity to Christ’s lordship, finds himself in this amazing position in the empire of Egypt.

Obviously, there are some different circumstances. Very providentially, he’s led to this position of power, but he uses it in a very profound way because he actually lobbies, in a sense, for an economic policy that saves Egypt economically for years and generations. I want to read from Genesis 41:33–41 and then look at how this spells out.

So let me read it to you. Just listen along, and then we’ll unpack a bit of it and look at how he was, in fact, a lobbyist. It says in verse thirty-three — now therefore, this is Joseph speaking after he has just interpreted the dream, just to pick you up on the context there, with the dream-reader baker and the cupbearer:

“Now therefore let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plentiful years. Let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to occur in the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine.
*“This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you.”
“And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.’”

What a profound position for Joseph to be in, and for what we might call a secular or godless man to say,

“Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?”

What an amazing witness. Now, Joseph, based on the word of the Lord and speaking the truth, establishes himself here before the emperor as a credible voice.

He offers himself as an overseer, as a thinker, as someone who can use this wisdom that God has given him to secure the future of this empire. And at that moment, he proposes a policy, in fact, which is that for these seven plentiful years, they are going to take a certain portion aside. They are going to be wise with their stewardship — economically — of the grain and the food that they have, so that when they enter into this time of famine, they have resources left over and abounding for the people. In this way, they govern and manage this city well over the coming fourteen years.

What I love is that Joseph’s efforts in advocacy not only benefit the longevity of Egypt and the empire, but in fact benefit God’s people as well. They end up benefiting Israel. And this is a reality of our advocacy: we do not do it with an insular focus of only securing and protecting our rights.

We actually do it for what we call the common good as well — for the flourishing of the community around us. We do it for justice in our cities and in the community in which we find ourselves. And that is very important.

A final comment here — which is more of an encouragement to you all — is that Pharaoh says this: “Only as regards the throne am I greater than you, Joseph.” And we know where Joseph has come from. He has come from prison at this point, from the lowest place in the empire to being second only to the king.

What an amazing position that God has placed him in due to his obedience with what God has put right in front of him. I wanted to say that because no matter where we find ourselves — be it location, age, position in life — God can use us. God can use our voice.

He can use our advocacy. He can use our courage when we are willing to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. He can use it in powerful and profound ways to change the course of maybe a community, maybe a city, maybe a state, maybe a nation.

But we all, in a small way, have a responsibility to play in being faithful and obedient to him and allowing him providentially to bless that and provide the increase. And I want to levy that encouragement to you: that your voice is valuable in this journey and in this story.

Now, if you do not believe me, I want to tell you a story of an everyday man. His name is Adrian Longo. He is my volunteer leader for the state electorate of Canterbury. It is an electorate run by a Labor MP named Sophie Cotsis.

Adrian is a family man. He is a Christian, and he works in construction. When we were campaigning earlier in the year against the New South Wales Greens abortion bill, he felt very strongly that he had to do something about this.

The bill itself sought to expand access to abortion throughout the state of New South Wales. Now again, with question time later, we can go into the actual levers that that bill was pulling policy-wise to make that happen. But for now, I’ll just say that that expansion was something that made Adrian feel very strongly about pushing back against it in his community.

And he said to me, “Joshua, I don’t know what to do. What do I do?” And I said, “Well, one of the things you can do, mate, is just go and talk to your local MP.” He said to me, “I don’t really know when I’m going to be able to get into her.”

And I said, “Look, follow her social media and see if you might be able to chance a conversation here or there with her.” And sure enough, he followed her on social media, and she was having this little meet-the-community event down at a shopping centre. So he knocked off slightly early from work, he went down, and he struck up a conversation with Sophie Cotsis.

They were talking about infrastructure projects and general things that were happening in the community of Canterbury. And then, right at the end, he said,

“Hey Sophie, I’m really concerned about this New South Wales Greens abortion bill. My family are concerned about it. My church is concerned about it. We believe in the sanctity of life. We believe that life is sacred, created by God. And we don’t want to see babies’ lives taken through abortion. We would actually like you to vote against this legislation and represent us by taking a principled and moral stand against it.”

And she respected him enough to say,

“Look, I really appreciate that. Here’s my mobile number.”

A couple of weeks later, when the campaign was ramping up, Adrian Longo’s pastor happened to be preaching on church and state — in fact, on submission to the state and prayer for the state, and the like. And Adrian thought, “This is a great opportunity. I’m going to go up to my pastor and say, you know what you were saying about praying for our representatives and talking with them? Well, our member happens to be out for a mobile office this afternoon. Will you come with me and talk to her about the Greens abortion bill?”

And his church pastor, I think, was feeling a bit obliged after the sermon he’d preached — I would have been.

And so he actually came along, and they had this conversation. And Sophie Cotsis said,

“Well, I appreciate you coming to me. How about we set up an online meeting? We’ll talk about this more, and bring some Christian leaders along.”

And sure enough, Adrian did this. And at this meeting, Sophie Cotsis made the commitment to vote against that bill. She was one of the few Labor women who voted against not just part of that bill — which we did wind back significantly — but all of that bill, right the way through in the lower house.

And they went back and thanked her and prayed with her. When I caught up with her in Parliament next — which is my job — I also thanked her for listening to the community and engaging in that way. So here is a story of an everyday man in Canterbury who made a significant difference for life by being courageous enough to use his voice.

That is very powerful. We cannot underestimate the power of this courageous voice of truth, sown in faith.

Now, I just wanted to talk a bit practically about how we can be effective. And I had — oh no, it’s kind of cut off. Here we go. This is what we ideally want. This is an MP.

You can see on his briefcase there he’s chasing the Christian vote. We’re all running away. Praise the Lord. I think they’re all Pentecostals, to be honest.

Look, the board chair of ACL, Jim Wallace, often says to me, “Politics is paranoid.” What does he mean by that? Well, its antennae are always up and sensitive towards change in political opinion, change in the media, and what’s going on.

Now, this can be a real disadvantage for us if we’re not perceived to have a strong voice. But if we use this astutely, we can actually create quite effective change through it. And there’s no exception here with our local representatives. We need them to perceive that the Christian vote is strong and that we’re engaged in the public conversation.

This, coupled with building a positive relationship with an MP, can really lend a sensitive ear from the MP to us. And with that, again, that reasoned argument, and with prayer as we go into it, we can build up quite a strong concoction for influence. I’ve seen that happen across New South Wales.

My strategy in New South Wales with ACL is to build influential Christian communities in all of the state electorates. They’re run by what are called volunteer leaders. There are ninety-three electorates across the state.

What we are seeking is volunteer leaders who carry a sense of burden for their community. They can be ACL’s hands and feet, eyes and ears in the community. They know what’s going on.

They can localise the issue because they’re present and they know what’s happening in the area. And they build that constituency concern — ideally building relationships with church pastors in the area as well as the MP.

This forms one side of what I like to call a political pincer of pressure. What’s happening ideally there is that one side of political pressure is coming from the lobbyists, top-down, through the bigger organisation of ACL onto an MP. The other pincer of pressure is coming up from the community.

Both are in unison, saying the same thing — maybe in a slightly different tone — but creating that pressure from the constituents who can actually vote this MP out, so they have some leverage over them, and from the lobbyist group coming from top-down with good, reasonable arguments about how they could amend a bill or why they should block the legislation altogether.

I like to say that we are ineffective at gaining any cut-through in lobbying without both sides of this political pincer. I think about it like scissors. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had a pair of scissors when one side breaks, but that thing is pretty useless for cut-through once you’ve only got one side.

But if you have two sides, with pressure pushing down on both, you get great cut-through. And that’s what we need. We need people in the community like Adrian Longo.

And then we need someone who is also a friend of the MP on top and can leverage that political pressure and the numbers in the community to get a good change. We’ve seen this model’s effectiveness with ACL — not just with Adrian, but in Wollondilly, really well in Orange, New South Wales, and also in Mount Druitt, up in Coffs Harbour. We’re building up there.

I’ve got about twenty-five volunteer leaders, and I’m wanting to continue to build that team. It’s really important to me that I do. So I say, why not Moree? Why not Moree? And I thought, let’s talk about Moree for a little bit.

I want to gauge people’s knowledge, so I might get a raise of hands, all right? Who knows what the name of the state electorate is that we are in here? Put your hand up. Okay.

Should I test someone as I’m going? Yes, that’s the federal electorate. We’re talking state electorate.

So a little bit different — there are three levels of government there. Anyone else have a go at the state electorate here? There we go.
Bang. Northern Tablelands.

Who is the current sitting member? Put your hand up first. Do you know? Yes, we’ve got a few. Who is it? Brendan Moylan.
Yes, I’ve got the student of the class. All right, I’m getting progressively harder here.

Who knows how Brendan Moylan voted on the Greens abortion bill? There you go. Okay. That’s an interesting point, and that’s helpful.
No one knows? Okay. He voted in favour of it in the lower house. Now, who knows his position on the bill? Well, I’m going to suggest that because no one knows how he voted, you probably don’t know his position either.

Interestingly enough, I thought, you know, Brendan Moylan’s quite new. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here. He was elected at a by-election.

It was November 2024, I believe — maybe some locals can correct me if I’m wrong. Adam Marshall stepped down, and he was elected at the by-election.

And I thought, I’ll contact him and tell him that I’m coming to an event in Moree, and I’m going to be speaking to numerous churches here. I would like to do justice to his position on this abortion bill. Will you please write me a statement? And he also did not respond to me.
Now, you can take that a few ways, but there are a couple of things going on here.

I think, firstly, we can get really angry at him and go, “Well, you should be voting against that, and you’re not responding to us because you want to avoid us because you don’t agree.” But also, we have a responsibility to put this issue on the map, and we have a responsibility to ensure that he has to have a position on it, okay? Because it’s people within the community — it’s constituents — that often drive someone’s position on matters like this.

If he’s not willing to speak about it, and if he doesn’t even really want to tell me about his position, and he’s not concerned about any of the votes in this room here, then we have a problem. We need to put that issue more on the map and say it is something we’re concerned about and we do want to see change in that area.

We want to see abortion laws wound back. We want to see liberal abortion laws killed in this country so that we can promote life. This is something that we have to take responsibility for as well.

It’s not just putting the blame onto the member — although we’re disappointed — but we have a responsibility to speak up and to know what’s going on, to know that he has voted in favour of that, and to be challenging him about that as his constituents and voters.

The truth is that I need a local leader in the Northern Tablelands so that every single one of you next time are informed about that reality. And when I say, “What did Brendan Moylan vote on?” everyone goes, “I know.”

We need someone in the community here who is willing to lead in that way — to help resource the churches, equip us, make us aware of what’s going on — so that we are an engaged voice and so that we push the politics in the direction we want it to go: towards life, towards truth, towards justice. I’m looking for a leader. I’m looking for a volunteer team of about five or ten people who are willing to commit to helping out in that process: serving the church in that way, connecting with the MP, being aware of what’s happening.

Now, I just want to reiterate one last time before I close that we must not underestimate how big an impact that can have. How much of an impact it can have for me, when I’m lobbying in New South Wales Parliament, bumping into Brendan Moylan — and I do regularly; I bump into all of them regularly — to have a community that is active and engaged, speaking the truth prophetically into the life of the community is all the difference for my advocacy.

It strengthens my knees, and my legs aren’t cut out from under me when I advocate on these issues in the Parliament. So please consider that. I’ll give you this quote.

I’ve been reading The Hobbit again recently. No matter what you think about The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, there’s a great line from Gandalf to Bilbo. He says:

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk — acts of kindness and love — that keep the darkness at bay.”

What a powerful quote. I think there’s a common wisdom in that — that we have to, with what we’ve been given in our hands, with the patch that God has given us, serve him obediently and faithfully. And he will use the faithful few to accomplish much for his kingdom.

So I’m going to leave you with that. And finally — this is a bit of a pivot — but if I’ve got one more minute, I also just wanted to mention this course.
Now, I know there are Downloaders in the crowd here, which is awesome, because my job’s a whole lot less difficult when they can tell you just how brilliant this course is. We have opened up registrations for The Download. It’s for eighteen to twenty-five year olds. It equips them in biblical and Christian worldview.

We have one of our premier speakers here today, Dr Steven Shavira, who gives great lectures on the changes in history and the Christian influence on the West. He’s giving those lectures here today and giving us a taster of that. Young people need to hear this.

They need to be equipped in this way. The course is very much a response to the fact that sixty to seventy percent of young people are losing their faith at university because they’re being confronted by ideologies — be it cultural Marxism or scientific materialism, reductionism — and in that, not having the answers or the intelligent understanding of their faith to be able to rebut it and to be able to stand strong and firm in their faith in both an inspirational way and an intelligent way. So look, I’d really encourage you, if you’ve got young people aged eighteen to twenty-five in your life, to get them to go along to this course.

I often encourage churches to sponsor a young person to go, and then get them to come back and, in the announcement slot, give a five- to ten-minute talk about what they’ve experienced in the community there and what they’ve learned. It’s a great way to engage them and also bless them and equip them as young people. We’ve got some flyers up the back.

Please come and talk to me. If you want to be a volunteer leader, or a volunteer in the community, please also talk to me. Don’t be scared.

I’d love to at least have a conversation about it. I think that’s enough from me.

God bless you guys.

Thank you.

Episode 4: What Is Lobbying And Why Is It Important?

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More Episodes

Episode 4: What Is Lobbying And Why Is It Important?

Manuscript

More Episodes

Episode 3: Biblical Patriarchy

The Honour of Motherhood

Episode 4: Is your church a House of Refuge?

Episode 10: Hope – Standing in the Gap