Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is no question that the issues associated with political advertising are very important, but it is about time that the opposition, and in particular Senator Ronaldson, put away its confected outrage. Today’s contribution, verballing Dr Hawke as referring to ‘this duplicitous government’, is starting to get quite ridiculous. After about three minutes he did get to the substance of the motion but, in his reference in his introduction to Mr Rudd’s comments, he again faded well away from the truth. Yes, what occurred under the Howard government—which I will elaborate on later if I have sufficient time—was a sick cancer on democracy and, yes, we honoured our election commitments, but it is about time this opposition stopped hiding behind the independent review that occurred to try to claim we have not met our commitments on transparency and on political advertising.

Let us look at what Senator Ronaldson does not say. He does not say that in Senate estimates the Auditor-General, Ian McPhee, indicated very clearly that, in his view, the framework we have in place under the current guidelines—despite his concerns with those revised guidelines undertaken as a result of an independent review by Dr Hawke—is a significant improvement. There is no qualification and no moving away from it; it is a significant improvement. So what seems to be happening here is that, where the Rudd government acts and then responds to changed circumstances, this opposition continues to try to argue that original commitments have not been met. And let us just deal with the issue about changed circumstances, because that was also referred to in the opposition’s dissenting report into the Greens bill that we have also dealt with on this matter. In fact, quite a bit of attention was paid to the issue of the role of the Auditor-General in the advertising guidelines and, in fact, the change that occurred was your policy.

So on the one hand the opposition have one of very few limited positions or policies—and we have accommodated the concerns that have been raised not only by the opposition but by the independent review—and now they try to claim that we are not meeting our election commitments! I am sorry, Senator Ronaldson, but you cannot have it both ways. Senator Abetz will be following me with his contribution. We will hear him too try to have it both ways as we look at some of the detail about what did not occur under the Howard government and what he will try to justify now. Again, when I looked at the coalition senators’ response to the report of our Senate committee inquiry into the Greens bill on political advertising, it had a very interesting historical discussion. Senator Ronaldson talked about the fact that he wanted to reacquaint the Senate with this. Well, I think he ought to reacquaint some of his own senators with what happened under the 11½ years of the Howard government in this area.

The introduction to the coalition senators’ report refers to the fact that in 1998 the Auditor-General issued a set of draft guidelines for government advertising. This was not in response to the Howard government—and the Howard government continued to ignore them; they were ignored for the full period of the Howard government. However, the coalition senators seem to think that in this little historical discussion they can avoid addressing what they ignored for so many years. They go on to say that these guidelines were the subject of a review of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit in 2000—but still no action by the Howard government—and that they were further revised in 2008 as government policy and revised again in March 2010. Well, that is the whole point: it took until 2008 until there was any government policy. Before that time, there was an enormous level of government expenditure on advertising—and it was completely unjustified, completely unreported and hidden.

One of the first things the Rudd government did was to abolish the Ministerial Committee for Government Communications and the Government Communications Unit in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. This, of course, was the body that Senator Abetz chaired when he was the Special Minister of State, when government politicians and staff ran the government’s advertising. So it will be very interesting to hear how he justifies his activities during that period and indeed the present lack of any policy from the coalition on this matter.

I want to try and capture a brief summary of what occurred in the Howard government years. I need to pay tribute to Jason Koutsoukis, who in a piece on 2 September 2007 elaborated on the Howard government’s record on political advertising. He said:

Prime Minister John Howard has spent nearly $2 billion on government advertising and information campaigns since coming to power 11 years ago—

And this is possibly why Senator Joyce is confused about ‘millions’ and ‘billions’—

A Sunday Age investigation has found that just weeks from calling an election—

Remember, this is 2007—

the government has 18 advertising campaigns on the air …

Eighteen campaigns! He continued:

The Sunday Age investigation has also shown that since the last election in 2004, Mr Howard has spent a record $854 million of taxpayers’ money on government advertising.

               …            …            …

The record spending comes despite Mr Howard being elected on a pledge to cut it back.

In 1995, Mr Howard promised that if elected he would instruct the Commonwealth Auditor-General to draw up guidelines on appropriate use of taxpayers’ money for advertising. “There is clearly a massive difference between necessary government information for the community and blatant government electoral propaganda,” Mr Howard said at the time. “Propaganda should be paid for by political parties.”

Despite 11½ years in power, Mr Howard never instructed the Australian National Audit Office to inquire into government advertising. According to Melbourne University academic Sally Young, the author of Government Communication in Australia, the Howard Government’s spending on advertising is among the highest per head in the world. “It’s up there with only a few other countries,” she said.

This puts some broader context around the comments made by Senator Ludwig in question time today. The Rudd government’s expenditure in this area last year was one-third of the Howard government’s expenditure in 2007, and in 2009 it was one-half. The comparison is very stark and speaks for itself.

In my remaining time let me address the RSPT issues and the exemption matters. As Senator Ludwig highlighted, we make no apology whatsoever for defending the national economic interest against the scare campaign from some companies and from those opposite. This scare campaign could damage the economy and hurt working families, whom we strove so desperately to protect against the global financial crisis with a stimulus package. Do not forget that every government that has substantially reformed the tax system has engaged in a public information campaign, including those opposite—look at their advertising expenditure on the GST.

But let us go to the facts of this particular matter. We announced our tax package on 2 May and this campaign was funded in the budget on 11 May. Let us have a look at what happened, though, between those dates. One miner said his company was in trouble, but then he bought a million shares in it with his own money. Of course, we need to remind ourselves about Mr Peter Dutton’s own investments contrary to the complaints of the opposition. At the same time, Rio Tinto put a story in the paper about closing down all their projects and then rushed out a correcting statement before markets opened. And Mr Palmer claimed that he cancelled a South Australian project that did not even exist. This is why Mr Swan asked Senator Ludwig to allow us to bring the planned campaign forward—not to exempt it from scrutiny— (Time expired)