Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to talk about two very important and serious issues, the first being the misuse of government power and the other being the misuse of taxpayer dollars. This Howard government is a government that is out of control. It is also a government that is out of ideas and out of touch. It is now spending more on ads than it is spending on programs. This is a government that has lost sight of its role, lost sight of the need in the community and lost sight of what it has been elected to do. The reason it has lost sight is that it is now in a desperate state of disbelief and a desperate state of trying to hang on to the seat of power. It will do that by any means it can, and the easiest means by which this government can achieve its ends is to spend taxpayers’ dollars. It will now spend every cent that it has running around with purely political election campaign ads. These are ads that provide no information whatsoever—that do not in any way further inform the community on legislation or on anything that might be of interest to the community and about which they actually do need some information. These ads are clearly about promoting the government, not about promoting any possible programs.

People in the community are picking up on this. They are picking up on it as they face an absolute raft of ads in the papers, on radio and on TV. They are being bombarded day in and day out, hour after hour. Wherever they turn, they have this federal government in their face—with their taxpayer dollars. They have nowhere left to turn because everywhere they look this government is in their face, in their home and in their workplace. This truly is the Big Brother government of Australia. You cannot walk away from this government. You cannot have peace for five minutes because everywhere you turn the government will be there, spending your taxpayer dollars, spending your hard-earned cash that should be spent on schools, on health programs, on dental care, on child care, on developing skills for young people—the sorts of things that we so desperately need in this country. This government instead is just spending that money on ads. This is truly Orwellian; it truly is something out of 1984. This is a government that, since it has been in office, has spent $1.7 billion of taxpayer money on advertising—$1.7 billion promoting itself; $1.7 billion abusing and wasting taxpayer dollars. This government is so desperate that it will say anything, it will do anything and, even worse, it will spend anything to achieve its goals.

The sad part is that people in my electorate, as I go around and talk to them, are more confused than ever. They are more confused about the unfair Work Choices legislation—legislation that this government spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on, only to decide later that it cannot possibly call it Work Choices anymore because polling tells it that this is not popular, that its legislation is failing. Its only response is to spend more taxpayer dollars telling people that it is good for them. Everywhere they go, no matter which way they turn, and every time they turn on their TV or their radio, they see the Howard government wasting their money.

There is no information—just government propaganda. There is no limit to how much this government will spend. In just days, it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on industrial relations ads in newspapers. It will spend millions of dollars on radio ads and tens and tens of millions of dollars on TV ads. But it does not stop there. This is a government that is so out of touch and so out of control that the Prime Minister now is looking at spending half a million dollars for a larger dining room for his residence and new chairs for cabinet. Money is being spent, wasted on renovations and chairs in the government’s dying months just to make sure that it continues to spend taxpayers’ dollars.

I have to read this into the record, because this comment sums it up for the government. When the Prime Minister was asked whether he really understood about the amount of money and the number of ads the government was wasting money on, he said, ‘I don’t understand why the Labor Party is getting so upset over just a few ads’—just a few ads that have cost this community and taxpayers $1.7 billion. This government ought to be condemned, it ought to be disgusted with itself and it ought to be ashamed of its waste of taxpayer dollars. (Time expired)