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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-02-05 Daily Xml
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GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:00): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the acting deputy premier a question about piracy.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: Mr President, you would have been as concerned as I was about lost jobs when in mid-December the government told us there would be Public Service job losses in the order of thousands, plus other cost cutting measures, in light of a predicted budget deficit of $112 million this financial year. Yet this government's advertising bill remains undisclosed and is growing.

I will shortly ask the acting deputy premier whether he supports the spending of taxpayers' money on promoting this government. First, I have observed that usually the Premier personally promotes on television and radio actions being taken by the government on bushfires, desalination, budget updates, the Tour Down Under, and so on. The only instance I can think of where the Premier was not talking about what the government was doing was when Penzance the pirate monkey was on radio promoting a pirate exhibition at the Port Adelaide Maritime Museum during the school holidays, and when minister Zollo apologised on Today Tonight for a bungle on notifying motorists about the new road rules. My questions are:

1. Did not the Premier want to be a pirate?

2. What has been the government's advertising spending in the past five financial years?

3. Does the Leader of the Government support continuation of the same level of government advertising when the razor gang is slashing jobs and selling its cabinet room?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (15:02): I certainly do support the government spending money on advertising for important matters like it did last week. The honourable member gave some examples but failed to mention the advertisements the government ran last week to inform people of some of the issues in relation to the heat wave that Adelaide has been enduring and which hopefully will end at the weekend. Clearly, important issues had arisen in relation to the heat wave, in particular for elderly people who are at risk during the heat wave. It is entirely appropriate on such issues that the government should use advertising to seek the public's help to look after the elderly in our community. That is one example of an entirely proper use of advertising spending by the government.

The honourable member asked questions in relation to the sum of money spent on advertising, which I will refer to the minister in another place. Incidentally, I am not the acting deputy premier. The Deputy Premier is in Canberra today with the Premier at the COAG meeting, but he is quite capable of still being Deputy Premier while he is in Canberra.

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