Page 5580 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
before the election. It costs $49,000 and it gives you an electorate by electorate breakdown of what the government is doing. Now, we only do it in the election year. We did it after the 2006-07 budget when we made such a mess that we had to go out and explain ourselves and try and put some spin on it.” Under Mr Stanhope’s proposal of $50,000, we would still get what I think can only be categorised as party-political advertising on behalf of the government in the form of a $49,000 brochure. It is interesting that the limit that the Chief Minister proposes is $50,000. It shows that the government is not hearing what the Assembly is saying.
The problem with the $100,000 limit is that it would allow many more campaigns to be included. It is interesting that on page 6 of the government’s response to the committee it indicates that the initial reason for not doing this was that it would capture too many campaigns. The government wanted to continue to trot out these campaigns, particularly in an election year, to boost the chances of the government. The second excuse was that this has ramifications on the regularity of scheduling an assessment panel to be available for deliberations. That is what the panel is there for. Its job is to go through these campaigns and make sure they are compliant with the law. If the problem is with the regularity of the meeting of the panel that would have to be one of the weakest excuses I have ever heard to stop an amendment to an act.
I suspect that a lot of the government’s campaigns will be approved because they are the continuous campaigns that government always do—health messages, road safety messages and tourism, as the Chief Minister points out—but the problem for the government is that when they are relying on these campaigns, whether they are done directly through the departments or through TOCs, they want as many of them as possible to get through. The answer to the government’s response to the report is: get organised and get these things certified far in advance of the campaign period. Go out and actually do your work. Make sure that the messages that you give are for the community benefit and are apolitical. They are there to inform, not to enhance the reputation of the government.
The $40,000 threshold, based on the evidence, would seem to be reasonable. It would seem to be reasonable, particularly in terms of the brochure that went out after the 2008-09 budget in July, three months before the election. It would be clear that the government still seeks to maximise its advantage from the spending of taxpayers’ dollars to enhance the reputation of the government and the Labor Party, hoping in some way to affect and assist their re-election. This bill is about making sure that taxpayers’ money is spent for the benefit of taxpayers, not for the benefit of the government. The amendment should stand as it is.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4:39): I move amendment No 9 circulated in my name [see schedule 3 at page 5628].
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video