Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Back in 2004, the Prime Minister had a strategy to win the election, and that was to spend his way out of trouble. We are again in an election year and he has a new strategy: to advertise his way out of trouble. Either way, the taxpayer foots the bill, but at least in 2004 there was a bit of a chance that you would get a road, some childcare money or something like that at the end of the process. The trouble with the strategy that the Prime Minister is now pursuing is that not only is it funded by the taxpayer but, at the end of the process, all you get is the warm inner glow from sitting in front of the television set and hearing how your penalty rates and your overtime are protected by law—or whatever the latest version of alleged fairness in the government’s extreme industrial relations agenda is—how private health insurance is providing an umbrella for all Australians to ensure that they get high-quality health care and how John Howard’s superannuation changes will allow you to retire on a country estate with your own golf course, maybe a swimming pool and all sorts of other delightful things. At least in 2004 Australian taxpayers got something at the end of the giant spending spree. This time round, all they are getting is a giant advertising spree. It is a clear sign of a government that has lost all sense of an agenda for the future—all sense of trying to solve the nation’s problems of high-speed broadband, climate change and investing in the education of young children to ensure that they have better chances in life. All it indicates to Australian taxpayers, to Australian voters, is that the government is obsessed with maintaining office. It is seeking to advertise its way back into office, and it is trying to tell Australian working families that they have never had it so good.

Remember the Prime Minister’s statement in this parliament only a matter of weeks ago: ‘Australian working families have never been better off.’ That is the mentality behind the giant advertising propaganda campaign that is now starting to unfold. ‘You have never been better off; how dare you even contemplate voting us out of office?’ and ‘We are going to spend vast amounts of your money to make sure that you truly understand just exactly how well off you are.’ The statement ‘Australian working families have never been better off’ will be hung around the Prime Minister’s neck from now until election day.

Senior ministers and the Prime Minister stand in parliament, day to day, boasting about their extraordinary economic management record. The Treasurer, who without doubt is the most bombastic politician in Australian history, stands up and says how wonderful his management has been. I know that ‘the most bombastic politician’ is a big statement, but there is no question that he deserves the honour. ‘We’ve paid off all the debt, inflation’s low, unemployment’s low, the budget is in surplus, economic nirvana has been delivered.’ He does, of course, leave out a few things. When he is in boasting mode—when he is in skiting mode—you do not hear many references to productivity. You do not hear much about foreign debt or the current account deficit. You do not hear much about exports. We have not heard them boasting about the performance of Australian exports in recent times either.

They have gone a bit quiet on interest rates, because ours are amongst the highest interest rates in the developed world and, as we and Australian families know, interest rates have been steadily increasing over the last year or two in spite of the government’s promise that it would keep interest rates at record lows. Particularly what you do not hear about is the impact of the costs of everyday things on ordinary working Australians—to name a few: rising childcare costs, the price of petrol, rising medical and dental bills. None of these things ever get seriously addressed by the government.

This is a government that is seriously out of touch. Its solution to dealing with its political problem is not to tackle the issues that face the nation, not to build a coherent future agenda for Australia, but to try to advertise its way out of trouble. Back in 1995, shortly before the coalition came to government, it made a promise that it would cut government advertising by $20 million per annum. We all recall the famous quotes from the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, who said:

In a desperate attempt to find an election life raft, the Prime Minister is beginning an unprecedented propaganda blitz using taxpayers’ money.

He said:

This soiled Government is to spend a massive $14 million of taxpayers’ money—

it looks pretty small in the current context—

over the next two months as part of its pre-election panic.

…            …            …

This grubby tactic will backfire on the Government. Taxpayers will see through it. They don’t want their money wasted on glossy advertising designed to make the Prime Minister feel good.

And he said:

Over the last few days the Labor Party has spent $150,000 of its own money on an advertising stunt which disappeared without a ripple.

…            …            …

The problem for this Government is not communication. The problem is that it is tired, it has broken too many promises and it has hurt too many people.

That was the Prime Minister in 1995. Let us have a look at his record in government. For one year, they stayed pure to their commitment to reducing advertising—their first year in office. And then came the GST and advertising spending—which peaked at $84 million under Labor and typically was in the $60 million to $70 million area—hit $211 million. The following year, which just happened to be an election year, it was $156 million. It started to drop down just a little, to $143 million, in 2003-04 but it was still very hefty. In 2005-06—a non-election year; the last completed year—it was $208 million. Even when you adjust the figures to take into account inflation, that is almost double the highest amount ever spent by Labor.

I cannot help but be reminded of one of my favourite characters in George Orwell’s famous book Animal Farm. I apologise for the comparison, but I am afraid the Prime Minister reminds me somewhat of Squealer, who was a very important figure in Animal Farm. You might recall that Squealer was the pig who was responsible for propaganda and for explaining, when things were getting tough, why they were actually getting better—for example, on Sunday mornings, Squealer would hold down a long strip of paper with his trotter and read out to them lists of figures that proved that the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by 200 per cent, by 300 per cent or by 500 per cent, as the case might be. Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones’s day, that they worked shorter hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer than a larger proportion of the younger ones that survived infancy, that they had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas.

I apologise for the comparison between the Prime Minister and a pig, but Squealer was a very cunning pig. Does any of this sound familiar: ‘No worker will be worse off’; ‘We’ll never, ever have a GST’; ‘Your conditions are protected by law’; and, of course, ‘Australian working families have never been better off’?

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