Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak briefly on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008 and cognate bills and to address myself to the two sets of amendments that Labor, in conjunction with the Australian Democrats, intends to move in the committee stage. The first issue I address is government advertising. We have seen from the government an extraordinary propensity to treat taxpayers’ money as its own. Over this last period, particularly through Senate estimates, it has been disclosed that this government proposes to spend millions of dollars prior to the next election. We have had the extraordinary example of around $4 million being spent in some six or seven days on the latest tranche of the industrial relations campaign, the Work Choices mark 2 campaign. We saw around $24,000 an hour being spent by this government on advertising Work Choices mark 2. I remind the chamber that this second tranche of advertising is on top of the $55 million of taxpayers’ funds that the government has already spent on advertising Work Choices mark 1. One of the most telling examples of the wastage associated with this campaign and the way it has been all about propaganda is the example of the booklets. I am sure all parliamentarians would remember the very pretty yellow Work Choices booklet, and that millions were—