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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-06-18 Daily Xml
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ELECTORAL (ADVERTISING COST) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:16): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Electoral Act 1985. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. M. PARNELL (16:17): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill seeks to provide increased disclosure in government taxpayer-funded advertising and does this by requiring all government advertisements to disclose, alongside the authorisation, how much the particular advertising campaign has cost. The effect of this bill I hope will be to discourage governments from using taxpayers' funds for blatant party political advertising. Whilst my bill does not go so far as to ban any particular form of government advertising, it does draw attention to the cost of such advertising, which in turn will provide useful information to the public about how sensibly or otherwise taxpayers' dollars are being spent.

The most recent example of blatant taxpayer-funded political advertising relates to the recent state budget. We saw on television, on radio and in print advertisements the Premier telling us that his government had a vision. There was nothing in these advertisements that anybody needed to know that they could not have obtained elsewhere. A useful comparison to draw concerns editorial comment that can be procured around political matters. In other words, rather than the government putting advertisements in the newspaper telling people how great the budget was, almost every journalist in the state was in the gallery listening to the Treasurer deliver the budget.

It formed the lead item on all television news, and the newspapers the next day had multi-page spreads. There is no shortage of information about the budget. When it comes to taxpayer-funded advertisements, my view is that they should be limited to advertisements that fulfil a number of public interest criteria. At the head of those would be advertisements that seek to inform or advise the public about things they need to know.

In contrast to advertisements promoting the state budget would be television advertisements promoting the benefits of breastfeeding, encouraging women to feed their children for as long as they can. It has a clear public health outcome and it is a public service message. We are all familiar with advertisements that encourage people to save water and energy and with advertisements that tell people about new services that might be of use to them. There is no objection to advertising that the bus timetables will change. I think on Sunday 6 July the Hills bus timetables are changing, and we had a briefing in Parliament House at lunchtime. Of course, that information needs to get out to the community: people need to know that, and there is nothing improper about it.

Advertisements relating to services that people need to access and advertisements that encourage behavioural change are appropriate. Advertisements that give us warnings, special notice of road closures, and so on, are all appropriate forms of advertisement. The only behavioural change from the budget advertisements we have just seen is the government hoping that people will vote Labor. That is the only behavioural change it is trying to illicit, and that is an inappropriate way to spend taxpayers' money. The new tram extensions are important, so let us have ads, when they have built it, telling us where we can catch them, where they are going, and all the useful information we need to know. What we do not need to know through taxpayer-funded advertisements is that the government has a vision and that in 10 years it might spend some money on some projects that might interest us; that is inappropriate. Rather than try to legislate for those indicators of appropriate government advertisements—it is not for me to say through legislation what is appropriate—it seems that the best method is for disclosure, in particular in relation to the cost of advertising campaigns.

By way of explanation of clauses, my bill proposes to insert a new section 116AA in the Electoral Act, a section headed 'Disclosure of public money used to finance government advertising'. There are three main provisions in this new section: first, to create an obligation on the part of the person who authorises, causes or permits the publication of a publicly-funded political advertising campaign to disclose the cost of that campaign where the total cost exceeds $10,000. We are all used to seeing at the end of advertisements 'Authorised by'. Under this bill, after 'Authorised by' it will also have 'The cost of this campaign was', and that is the obligation created. Secondly, there is an obligation on the minister each year to prepare a report on the cost of publicly funded advertising campaigns; and, thirdly, for that report to be tabled within six sitting days before both houses of state parliament.

So, it is a very simple piece of legislation designed to curb the excesses of whichever party is in office so that they are more likely to spend taxpayers' money on genuine government advertising that tells us things we need to know. It will help to modify behaviour, or warn us of danger we need to know about, and it will discourage governments from using taxpayers' money for blatant party-political electoral advertising. I commend the bill to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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