pissing money down the drain
- May 18, 2007
Electioneering on the taxpayer’s tab
One of the things opposition parties always bag governments out for is the amount of money wasted on such things as advertising, consultants and travel. Advertising is the big one. And what do oppositions do when they become governments …cut back on the advertising? Of course, not, its snouts in the trough time for them when they win government.
When the Howard government came to power, they cut government advertising spending inherited from the Keating government in half, from about $100m to $50m. Since then its been up, up and away, according to Labor’s Penny Wong, around $1.7 billion during the 11 years of the Howard government.
It now looks like the government is about to spend another $75m telling us how good Workchoices Lite is (sorry, the workplace relations system, seeing Workchoices is now persona non grata). This is after $55m spent last year telling us how good the original Workchoices was.
This year, for ad campaigns already announced, the Howard Government will be spending $173.8 million of our money. It includes, for example, $69 million to promote the Government’s superannuation reforms and $17.5 million to promote the private health insurance rebate. The Howard government has become the single biggest advertiser in Australia … outspending the likes of Macdonalds, Coca Cola, all the banks, car companies, retailers etc. The vast majority of the advertising is purely political messages, not information about essential services, which at least has some justification. The government using taxpayers money to campaign for its re-election so blatantly is nothing short of obscene. When the Howard government is replaced later this year the first thing Kevin Rudd should do is invoice all the advertising costs to Liberal Party HQ - of course thats not going to happen, is it?
To put the size of government advertising into perspective, the Liberal Party spent around $15m on its 2004 election campaign ads. We pay for those too, through public funding of elections, but thats at least vaguely legitimate.
And its not only the federal government advertising constantly its wonders. State and local governments milk their treasuries for everything they”re worth. You can’t go past a government project site without having logos of every agency involved plastered all over it and the smiling face of the premier/minister/mayor responsible. This stuff is high priority too … I’ve seen tender documents that specify the signage to be erected by the winning bidder - saying stuff like how big the signs have to be, the logos etc to be placed on them, how big these are to be, the order they have to appear in, all that sort of junk. Amazing isn’t it, that we have public servants paid to think of shit like that!!!
Update (19/5/2007) - Surprise, surprise, Kevin Rudd is promising to do something about the abuse of government advertising. Lets see what happens after the election.
