Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How good is it to have an ad man running the country? Normally, a business goes to an advertising company if they've got a product to sell, but not this mob—five years in government, three Prime Ministers, but not much in the way of runs on the board. Wages are down, business investment is down and retail sales are down. In fact, everything is down except the taxpayer-funded ad spend.

Today we learnt that, in his first year as Prime Minister, they've racked up $175 million in government advertising—and there is some astounding stuff here. The Treasurer, never shy of self-promotion, has spent $18 million on his tax cut advertising. But the two standouts are the energy minister and the infrastructure minister—$45 million between them. You can just imagine the conversation between the energy minister and his ad men: 'I want to run an advertising campaign.' 'What's your energy policy?' 'Oh, well, we've had 10 different policies but we haven't got one right now.' 'No, worries.' 'Let's talk about powering forward.' 'Great,' say the ad men—$27 million. Our infrastructure minister makes the ABC's Utopia look like a documentary. Our roads are stuffed but $16 million is spent on advertising a program that doesn't start for another five years.