Page 172 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 December 2008
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Then we had puff pieces on health. We had already seen the health program during the budget release, yet we had large, full colour advertisements in the Canberra Times and a full mailout in a format that looked remarkably like the list of achievement ads that the government ran under their own name during the campaign proper. These were two election issues and the money used by the government promoted election issues campaigns. Moving a policy forward does not change this fact.
The bill presented today is a real tool that can actually bring some restraint to this practice and accountability to the people. When developing the idea we noted that the federal government, after many failed attempts over the years, instituted guidelines to rein in the practice. We have researched this and taken a more direct and more powerful approach. Our bill aims to hold ministers and governments accountable for the money of the people that they spend with the strength of statutory regulations and requires all government advertising campaigns to meet certain standards, to curtail certain practices and to subject their campaigns to independent scrutiny.
The bill promotes a number of important principles. First, the bill ratifies that members of the public have the right to access information and that governments have a legitimate purpose to run education and information campaigns. But, importantly, the bill sets out in law that the campaigns must not be used for campaign purposes.
The bill insists that campaigns that are over $20,000 must be reviewed by the Auditor-General to determine whether they comply with the new act. This is an important, independent assessment and one of the most stringent safeguards against exploitation of any jurisdiction in Australia. The bill also requires that ministers prepare a statement of total costs so that an assessment can be made about whether the campaign represents fair value for money and whether the spending could be better placed on providing the actual services instead of merely promoting them.
The bill creates an obligation that governments develop and adhere to guidelines that are consistent with the purpose of the act and must include provisions to the following effect:
• Information on a government campaign must be relevant to current government responsibilities—for example, information about existing or new government policies or policy changes for which there is legislative authority, an appropriation or a current government decision to implement; information about government programs or services or changes to programs and services for which there is legislative authority, an appropriation or a current government decision to implement; scientific, medical or health and safety information or information about government performance to facilitate accountability to the public.
• Information in a government campaign must be presented in an objective and fair way and not include comment or opinion or statements promoting the government’s performance, for example, objective facts and explanatory information are included; material presented as fact is based on and conforms with accurate, verifiable facts; factual comparisons are presented in a way that is not misleading and state the basis for comparison and existing policies, services or activities are not presented as new.
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