Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, I refer to your election promise to tighten the rules in relation to political advertising, specifically your undertaking:

… you have my absolute 100 per cent guarantee that that will occur. And each of you can hold me accountable for that.

Given your ‘100 per cent guarantee’ has been breached, why should anyone believe you on this issue anymore?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Berowra very much for the question, given his historical commitment to integrity in this place. Can I say in response to the honourable member’s question that, when the government was elected, its pre-election commitment was to bring in a system of guidelines which involved the Auditor-General. Furthermore, that was then argued against by two members of the opposition: the member for Kooyong and, I think, the member for Mackellar. The Auditor-General himself also expressed reservations about the system that we were proposing to bring in. When we brought that system in, as of July 2008, we also undertook to review that system in 2010.

When the system was reviewed in 2010, consistent with the original recommendation by the Auditor-General, we established instead an Independent Communications Committee, and that was welcomed by Senator Ronaldson, on behalf of the opposition, by the member for Kooyong and by the member for Mackellar. Those guidelines, which were welcomed by the opposition, as of their introduction in March 2010, contained within them the exemption clauses which have already been the subject of questions by the member for Farrer.

Can I also say that the pre-election commitment by the government went to guidelines and it went to quantum. The second element of the commitment on quantum was to reduce the overall amount expended on government advertising. In the government’s first year in office we spent one-third of what the previous government had spent in 2007. In 2009 we spent one-half of what the government expended in 2007. The government’s allocation in relation to this campaign in support of tax reform in Australia represents less than one-tenth of what those opposite allocated for the GST campaign, and it represents a little more than a quarter of what the previous government allocated for is Work Choices campaign.

I also say in response to the member for Berowra: this campaign in support of tax reform is to deliver an additional benefit to working families through better super. The campaign in support of Work Choices, on which they spent nearly four times as much, was about ripping away the wages and conditions of the same working families.