Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, this is probably a question that should have been asked as part of Prime Minister and Cabinet. I do chair the Ministerial Committee on Government Communications but that falls within the responsibility of Prime Minister and Cabinet. No, I cannot provide the information that he has asked for now and I do not know whether I can. He referred to a particular figure out of Senate estimates. My recollection is that there were some figures thrown around by senators in Senate estimates. I am not sure whether anybody was able to determine where those figures came from. I suspect that they were figures grasped out of the air by opposition senators during that estimates process.

Individual departments make decisions about their particular campaigns that they are running, whether it be issues related to health, skin cancer and those sorts of campaigns, which they are doing at any particular time. But the timing is individual within the departments. For instance, people would be aware of the advertisements running at the moment for Welfare to Work. Those were obviously timed quite appropriately to inform people about the changes in legislation that come into effect on 1 July. You do not start doing that six months before, but by the same token you do not start doing it on the day that the changes take place. So that was appropriately timed for very proper reasons—so that people understood that there was a change coming up in legislation and that it would come into effect on 1 July. The timing for each of those particular advertising campaigns is very much a matter for the individual departments.

The Minister for Human Services has joined us. He was one of the ministers responsible for that Welfare to Work campaign, to make sure that people are well aware of the legislative changes. So, to further answer the member’s question, individual departments and the particular information they need to provide and the timing of it will be determined by them and not by government in any sort of total sense. The Ministerial Committee on Government Communications responds to individual departments’ requirements for providing that information.

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