Government advertising may be legal, but it’s corrupting our electoral process
Joo-Cheong Tham proposes a ban on federal government advertising in the period leading up to federal elections, in this crossposting from The Conversation.
The Coalition government’s use of taxpayer money for political advertising – as much as A$136 million since January, according to Labor figures – is far from an aberration in Australia. It is part of a sordid history in which public resources have routinely been abused for electoral advantage.
For example, the Coalition governments of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull spent at least A$84.5 million on four major advertising campaigns to promote their policies and initiatives with voters. The ALP governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard spent A$20 million on advertising to promote the Gonski school funding changes and another A$70 million on a carbon tax campaign. Going further back, the Coalition government under John Howard spent A$100 million on its WorkChoices and GST campaigns.
This is also a history in which hypocrisy is not hard to find.
When in opposition, Rudd condemned partisan government advertising as “a cancer on our democracy”. His government, however, exempted its A$38 million ad campaign on the mining super profits tax from the government guidelines put in place two years earlier.
There can’t be such a ban in NSW. There were literally hundreds of ads for government across Sydney in the month or so leading up to the NSW election. Billboards, train and bus OOH, online ads. I couldn’t escape it.
Small business taxes
Electricity switching
Online safety
Health/exercise campaign
What about campaigns for Health? Defense Force Recruiting? A national issue or emergency? You going to ban those too? You make a fair point Professor Tham but it’s not a simple change.
First, we all know that both political persuassions rort the system, and every election it gets worse.
But we do have as ban – once the election is called.
The government has a right to inform the people. In fact, doing the opposite and banning government information would be asn even stupider thing to do.
The issue is in the ‘run-up’ to the election.
So maybe the Professor has some ideas rather than penning a pretty obvious piece.
My thought was that as we know that there are rules that govern when elections can be held (well, more like relating to the latest that they can be held), that either all government advertising is banned in the six months prior to the latest date, or capped at, say, the average of the advertising during the current term-to-date.
Who has any good ideas? If we wait for the pollies it will never happen.
I think national government advertising should be banned during the 3 months before all state and federal elections, and there should then be a minimum 3 month window between calling and holding an election.
The government have been using the date as political advantage, trying to squeeze as much advertising and pr as they can in the knowledge that other parties don’t know when the date is.
Interesting points all, and the debate about what is important public information and what’s advertising of a political nature will continue to be a wrangle of semantics.
Readers of mumbrella, however might be interested in another simple truth about government advertising around elections.
It doesn’t work anymore.
John Howard’s Government, as the piece mentions, spent millions on new campaigns in the run up to their election. And lost. Brexit was the same. And closer to home, in at least one state election in the last 20 years in each of NSW, VIC and QLD, the result has been the same. Big spend, lots of new campaigns….election loss.
That’s the problem with using the blanket phrase “government advertising”. There’s plenty of empirical information that shows the effect of some of the brilliant government educational campaigns on the dangers of smoking, drink driving, sun safety and more, particularly at state level. But government advertising at election time? That’s a whole different can of worms…
Technically Brexit advertising did work, but it was only the illegal stuff that did.