Page 5571 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009
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Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (4.01): I move amendment No 4 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 5624].
This amendment proposes an addition in the definition of “government campaign”—two further examples. One is tourism campaigns; the other is land release programs. In relation to tourism campaigns, this is an area of reasonably significant government advertising. We understand the import of the bill and what this bill is seeking to achieve, but the rationale that we put is that this is a significant area—we acknowledge that—but almost all of the advertising is done outside Canberra; it is done in other cities around Australia. It is not aimed or directed at the people of the ACT.
More often than not—I do not have the exact numbers here—the vast bulk of tourism funding is funding directed at advertising Canberra in other cities. To the extent that the basic rationale is that the government might—heaven forbid, and it has never been done—use government advertising for party political purposes, one area where that is not going to occur is where the advertising has been done in another city and where it is not the residents or the voters of the ACT that are impacted or influenced by the advertising. We believe, in that sense, accepting the underlying objectives, that there would be no diminution of what it is that the Assembly seeks to achieve through this legislation by excluding tourism legislation or tourism campaigns.
Similarly, in relation to land release programs—just to put beyond doubt that the advertising that is done by the LDA in relation to land release or the selling of land is not other than the routine business of government and exempted through earlier clauses—we would like to think that the routine work of the LDA in relation to land release programs might be excluded explicitly from the legislation.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.03): I move amendment No 1 to Mr Stanhope’s proposed amendment, circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 5634].
We have considered what the government put to us and have come to a conclusion. With tourism campaigns, we accept the rationale and we accept the logic, so we do not have an objection to tourism campaigns being included in the examples.
Land release, on the other hand, we do not support. In his speech, Mr Stanhope spoke about routine activities of the LDA. That may well be the case, but there is the potential for a government, in promoting its land release program, to sing its praises in terms of its response to housing affordability issues or the like.
As with all aspects of this bill, there should be nothing to fear for agencies that are engaging in routine advertising. We do not believe that a blanket exemption for land release is appropriate, but we do accept the rationale that has been put to us on tourism campaigns. So we will support tourism campaigns, but not land release.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4:04): I will speak to both amendments, for the sake of brevity. The Greens will be supporting Mr Seselja’s amendment. We believe that Mr Stanhope’s amendment around tourism campaigns is entirely appropriate. I
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