David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise to speak to this matter of public importance. I should say that congratulations are in order for Senator Ronaldson, because clearly this is an issue that he has worked diligently on. He is doing his level best to attract publicity to this cause. I guess it is a feature of contemporary politics that matters like these attract the interests of the media and the press. The business of the opposition is to gain the occasional headline and it is good to see Senator Ronaldson returning to core business. But I think the Senate, and indeed all of the participants in this debate, would be well served by us having a more considered and more factually based discussion about what has actually transpired and what will transpire into the future. One thing is clearly true: when describing government propaganda and when describing how taxpayers’ money can be best deployed to a partisan task, no-one is better qualified than the Liberal Party. They have a record on these matters which, frankly, is second to none. Indeed, the dictators of North Korea and 1970s Romania would struggle in a competition with the Liberal Party as to who can best deploy taxpayers’ funds to their own advancement.

Having made that bold assertion, let me set about the task of making the argument out, because this is an entertaining subject for those of us who are interested. There was a fascinating political study in 2005 by Peter van Onselen, who I think even those opposite would have to concede is by no means a left-wing commentator. That study was described as ‘John Howard’s PR state’. It is a fascinating read, because what we see in John Howard’s PR state is a political scientist going through the task in a measured and considered way of discovering how the Liberal Party in office was able to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds to build the power of incumbency for a conservative government. It is a fascinating study. I intend to take the Senate to the details in a moment, but the other interesting thing is that we can see that Labor in power over the last 18 months has set about keeping its promises, realising its mandate and systemically dismantling the pillars that sustained John Howard’s PR state.

This debate proves an old truism. Labor has made important changes and introduced new standards of transparency and honesty in how taxpayers’ money can be used and, most specifically, not used to a political task. But are the media or the opposition interested in talking about the hundreds of million dollars saved on television advertising or the staff positions that no longer exist or the entitlements to individual MPs that have been changed? Of course they are not. What they are interested in now is signage. The Liberal Party have moved on to their next political bandwagon, and for that I do congratulate Senator Ronaldson. He understands a tabloid headline when he sniffs one, and on this occasion he probably has one. But the important point is that, despite the fury and the noise, Labor in fact has a very strong record in this area—and the Liberal Party, I might say, have a very strong record in this area too. Never before in the history of our Commonwealth were so many taxpayer dollars deployed so ruthlessly and, indeed, so effectively to a political task.

When one looks at John Howard’s PR state, the first pillar is government advertising. The second pillar of John Howard’s PR state was an institution called the Government Members Secretariat. The third pillar of John Howard’s PR state was members’ entitlements. The fourth pillar of John Howard’s PR state was the implementation of a fundraising regime that did its level best to protect Liberal Party donors from transparency. These were the four bases upon which the Liberal Party built its electoral machine and this machine operated for 11 years in this country. In this matter of public importance, we have an important debate being presented to this Senate—but, ironically, it is being put forward by those who know most about the subject and have most to hide. This is a subject that goes far beyond signs or stickers. What we in fact have here is an important public policy debate where the other side’s runs are on the board, and I would like to take you to them.

Firstly, let us talk about that feature of John Howard’s PR state, promotional advertising, because senators opposite do not come to this debate with clean hands. They may think everybody has forgotten about their record in this regard, but I can assure them that that is not the case and I will do my level best in the next few moments to remind the Senate and to remind the people of Australia about the literally hundreds of millions of dollars that those opposite destroyed, flushed down the toilet, by spending on television to support their partisan politics. Between 1998 and 2001 the Howard government spent $420 million supporting its GST policy—a tax which had not yet then been approved by the parliament.