Back in November 2001 I ran the rule over political advertising for The Australian’s Media section. The difficult thing at the time was trying to work out what exactly spent on advertising, PR, leaflets et.c.Crikey has been covering Senator Eric Abetz’s attack on the Clerk of the seante, Harry Evans over the Industrial relations reform ads.
PRIME Minister John Howard’s attempt to repair damage from the leak of
a highly critical memo written by Liberal Party president Shane Stone
in March by spending massive amounts of taxpayers’ money on government
advertising helped the Coalition win office, according to Labor senator
John Faulkner.
About $156million was spent on ads in 2000-2001, according to an annual
report from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Labor says
the spending peaked at about $20million a month for June, July, August
and September. In particular, pensioners and farmers were targeted.
However, a drop in federal Government advertising can be expected for the next two years, further denting the confidence of the advertising industry, which is already in recession. An analysis of the federal elections in 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1998 shows that the Labor and Coalition governments increased their advertising substantially in the year prior to the polls. In 1990, 1993 and 1996, election spending peaked at between $4million and $6million, before dropping back to an average of just over $2million a month after the election.
Ad expenditure increased most dramatically in the past two elections with the introduction of the GST, which generated spending of $98million on ads and about $500million on other forms of communication.
Between July 1996 and July 2000, $435million was spent on media space alone, according to figures from the Government Communications Unit, or GCU.
Advertising peaked after the introduction of the GST, with $210million spent on media in the 1999-2000 financial year.
If the ALP had won the election, it planned to cut $65million from the budget and shake up the GCU and move it from the Prime Minister’s power base.
In 1997, decision-making for and the administration of all government communications began to be controlled more closely by Prime Minister Howard. When the Department of Administrative Services was dismantled, the Office of Government Information and Advertising moved to finance, where it stayed for one year before joining the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The GCU now reports to the Ministerial Committee on Government Communications, chaired by the Special Minister of State Eric Abetz.
George Bell, a marketing lecturer at Swinburne University who specialises in government communications, says: “By being closer to the Prime Minister, (departments) are closer to the political centre … Lots of OGIA employees left because of politicisation.”
Within the Australian Taxation Office, staff became concerned about political interference after the introduction of the new tax system and the launch of the largest ad campaign in Australian history. Although decisions are recorded in sessions, former OGIA staff members say those rulings are not written in the minutes or made available to relevant departments. Within the ATO, some civil servants are concerned about the paper trail in decision-making.
But a spokesman for Senator Abetz says the GCU operates to exactly the same guidelines as those put in place by former prime minister Paul Keating.
He says: “Public servants are always present and would not allow the politicisation of government advertising.”
Senator Faulkner believes the GCU has moved too close to the political centre of government. Like a true politician, however, he chooses his words carefully. He says there are several options for the restructuring of the unit. What seems certain is that the ALP wants more accountability.
The OGIA had been viewed as a centre of excellence for government communications. One prerequisite for working there was that its employees had experience in the commercial sector. It was staffed by communications professionals — from advertising, PR and market research — to give professional communications advice.
Although Greg Williams, first assistant secretary of the GCU, says that all the staff in his department are communications professionals, former employees contradict him. Government service employees refuse to go on the record for fear of reprisals. But they say few people in the GCU have commercial sector communications experience.
Senator Faulkner says: “The Howard Government completely changed the role of the old OGIA; it was staffed by communications specialists.” Bureaucrats now rule the roost. “What that did in my view was change the way government communications was organised and run in this country,” Senator Faulkner says.
Since the early 1990s, the OGIA found its position eroded by a series of departmental heads who were accountants and bureaucrats rather than communications professionals. Bell says that with the transformation of the OGIA into the GCU, a lot of collective knowledge was lost and the transfer of knowledge to other departments stopped.
One former employee says: “It became an incredibly fiscally oriented department and all talk of excellence in communications stopped. They had a situation with OGIA where there was a lot of knowledge transfer.” This has led to a scattergun approach to communications.
In 1998, Harold Mitchell became involved with the appointment of his media-buying agency Mitchell & Partners. Mitchell has a privileged relationship with the Liberal Party and is chairman of the National Gallery of Australia. He has a say on media spending in each campaign. One source says that in 1996 the spending split was roughly $250million on below the line — that is, public relations, brochures, design and so forth — and $70million on advertising. Today the situation is reversed.
Senator Faulkner says more funds should be put into better targeted forms of communications. For example, direct mail would be used to communicate with farmers rather than TV ads.