Page 1639 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 April 2009
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The bill duplicates current mandatory requirements in the authorisation of government advertising campaigns. It simply duplicates provisions in the Electoral Act 1992 and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Services Act 1992. Indeed, these acts are far more specific in their requirements than Mr Seselja’s woolly and hastily drafted political response to his shellacking at the last election. The only effect this bill would have is to create confusion as to whether compliance with these other acts, as with commonwealth legislation, would be sufficient.
The implied requirement in the bill that a radio or television or radio advertisement would require authorisation at the start and at the end borders, of course, on the ridiculous. Just imagine that. Every radio ad and every television advertisement would require a statement before the ad commences and at its conclusion that this is a party political ad. Subtext: a 15-second ad. It would have the authorisation at the start, two seconds in the middle for the ad, and then another authorisation at the end. Ten seconds of authorisation and five seconds of message is what you get under this particular proposal. There would be barely time for anything but authorisation, unless, of course, we doubled all the 15-second ads to 30-second ads, with the commensurate cost that that would impose.
In any case, all the government’s external communications is already authorised. Our current branding policy states that all external government communication must prominently display the ACT government brand. There is no confusion. The logo is front and centre, and proudly so. The policy is always adhered to in all our notices.
The requirement in clause 10 that campaigns costing more than $20,000 must be reviewed by the Auditor-General to ensure compliance with the proposed bill is a major concern for government, and I imagine it would be a concern for the Auditor-General. In 2008-09, more than 25 campaigns costing more than $20,000 were conducted. These included the shop local campaign conducted over Christmas to encourage Canberrans to support local businesses, and the great jobs come with the territory campaign. Each of them, of course, had jingles, so each of them would be caught up by the Seselja bill. They could not be authorised or placed without going through this whole process. The shop local campaign, conducted of course in partnership with CBD Ltd, could not—
Mr Seselja: Do you think the Auditor-General would not have ticked it off?
MR STANHOPE: For the Auditor-General to be deciding whether government policy or a government decision is appropriate really is a very significant issue, and I will go to that in a minute.
Reviewing every campaign that crosses this magic, if somewhat arbitrary, threshold of $20,000 would mean a significant increase in workload for the Auditor-General’s office and would impact on the capacity of the government to respond rapidly to an emerging issue. Yes, we need to actually get an ad out on this, but we had better go through the process; we had better get it up; we had better refer it to the Auditor-General; we had better see if she will tick it off.
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