Re: lobbyists, I've been working with a lobbying firm for a couple of years now. There's nothing wrong with using them, but their use can be abused.
I have used them to get me access to ministerial offices, and in some cases ministers, in order for me to represent a particular commercial scenario that needs visibility at their level so that the decisions made at a very senior level are done so from a balanced perspective. I'm choosing my words very carefully here for obvious reasons, but suffice to say that if you're the chairman or CEO of a very large company that employs tens or hundreds of thousands of people, you can pick up the phone to the some of the highest levels of government and get a sympathetic ear. If you represent a competing vendor who has a different but equally valid perspective on the market and how government legislation and decision making will affect it, you sometimes need assistance to get that sympathetic ear. That's where lobbyists come in, and they're very useful.
Where lobbying really can run amuck is when they represent very powerful and/or wealthy special interests. The problem isn't so much lobbying as it is the ability to use power and influence to affect campaigns - lobbyists simply provide the voice to those interests. If you controlled election spending more tightly, you'd reduce the power of the special interests over the candidates and thus the lobbyists would be less relevant.
