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

Entertaining but disorderly. Between 1998 and 2001 the Howard government spent $420 million promoting the GST, a tax which had not yet then been approved by the parliament. Some $36 million was spent on the ‘Unchain My Heart’ advertisements which were, of course nothing more than Liberal Party propaganda paid for by the taxpayer. The entire nation was deluged for months by highly political television ads full of dubious claims about the taxation system then being proposed by the government.

As no doubt you are aware. Mr Acting Deputy President, I was during that time a campaign director for the Labor Party, so political advertising is something I know a little about. There can be no doubt whatever that the purpose of those television advertisements was not to promote in a non-partisan manner, it was not to inform in a non-partisan manner, but rather it was to elevate the policies and the politics of the government of the day. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on a political task. When we look behind the curtain of how these ads came into being and by what mechanism the government funded them, we see some interesting things. The Government Communications Unit, as it was then called, was a structure that operated from the Prime Minister’s office. It operated in a manner which was all about coordinating a whole-of-government communications strategy. But it was not being coordinated by Treasury; this was not a procurement mechanism. This was a group of Liberal Party politicians using the Government Communications Unit to deploy hundreds of million of dollars of taxpayers’ funds for a political task. It was an outrageous thing and it has been the subject of long and difficult debates.

Between 2004 and 2007 the Howard government spent a figure variously estimated at between $114 million and $120 million promoting its Work Choices legislation. It does remind me of that old adage, Senator Ronaldson, that nothing kills a poor product like good advertising. In the 15 weeks before the calling of the 2007 election, the Howard government spent $61 million promoting Work Choices and the so-called fairness test, or more than $4 million a week on Work Choices advertising in total. Seldom has so much money been spent on so many ads for so little political return. I do not want to dwell on the fact that they were not effective, but rather the fact that here we had a government that had established a structure that took command of the public purse and deployed it for political gain on a level and by a standard that had never been seen in this country before and, thanks to this government, will never be seen in this country again.

As well as these massive cash splashes of taxpayers’ money on promoting partisan Howard government legislation, namely the GST and Work Choices, the Howard government also recklessly spent millions of taxpayer dollars on their various other communications schemes. They spent more than $50 million trying to persuade people to buy private health insurance, a massive spend of public money for the benefit of private companies selling a product which most people do not see as value for money. They spent $36 million promoting their changes to child support arrangements. They spent $25 million marketing the Telstra 3 share offer. They spent $15 million promoting the Independent Contractors Act.

In the 2006-07 financial year alone, according to figures produced at estimates, the Howard government spent over $250 million on government advertising in total. In their 11 years in office they have probably spent well over $2 billion on government advertising. That is a $2 billion spend on a political task—not Liberal Party funds, not National Party funds, but taxpayer moneys deployed to political campaigns that were conceived in the office of the Prime Minister by politicians to achieve a political task. This was an unprecedented political act. It was, of course, something that even those opposite hang their heads in shame about.

But, as they say in the classics, that is not all. That was one important tier of Liberal Party incumbency. That was one important mechanism the Liberal Party used to spend taxpayers’ moneys on its re-election. But there is more. The Government Members Secretariat, the GMS, was of course an equally notorious instrument for the Liberal Party. It was established when the Howard government came to office in 1996. It was a unit run out of the Chief Government Whip’s office. ‘Why the Chief Government Whip’s office?’ you might well ask. Because there it was an arm of the legislature and it was immune from questioning at estimates. But that was nothing more than a cynical device. The real purpose, of course, was to operate as a unit at the whim of the Prime Minister of the day. What did these 11 persons, collectively earning $1.5 million, do as taxpayer paid public servants in the secretariat? Well, of course, they worked on Liberal Party campaigns, they worked on Liberal Party media monitoring and they worked on rapid response for the Liberal Party. There was a full-time campaign unit of 11 persons working in this parliament for 11 long years whose sole task, notwithstanding the fact that they were public servants, was to work for the re-election of the Howard government. Again, it was another cynical piece of a taxpayer funded apparatus.

Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington pointed out in their 2005 study of the government members secretariat, which they called ‘the beating heart of the PR state’, that this unit was also implicated in allegations of dirt digging against shadow ministers and other Labor figures but said that those things were a distraction from the real importance of the GMS. They wrote:

Its importance lies in the way it connects the government’s national communications strategy with individual members of parliament, most notably those members in marginal seats. This allows government policy releases, advertising and other communication on behalf of the executive to be made timely and relevant to the grassroots House of Representatives campaigns that help win elections. The GMS is a prime example of the way that government and party communication strategies have become inextricably linked.

Now I have no objection to a unit that provides support, information and resources to government members of parliament. But this was a campaign unit.

The Government Communications Unit and Liberal Svengalis spent hundreds of millions of dollars on government communication campaigns and the government members secretariat had 11 persons, acolytes of the Liberal Party, deployed to a political task. Further, the entitlements of individual members were dramatically expanded over 11 years so that those opposite in marginal seats had more taxpayer dollars to spend on printing and more taxpayer dollars to spend on other important parts of campaigning. Throw in for good measure the transformation of our electoral donation laws, with a $10,000 cap applying to nine different jurisdictions effectively meaning that Liberal Party donors could donate $90,000 across the country and avoid disclosure. When you put that together, you can see that those opposite know more about the subject of propaganda and how a government can fund its own re-election than we on this side could ever hope to do. The important thing is that all of those features that I have described have been dismantled by this government, and those opposite now have the cheek to talk about signage. (Time expired)