[Jan Fisher]

Does there need to be more scrutiny on tax payer-funded advertising?

A new Grattan Institute report found that $200 million is spent each year by the federal government on advertising, and nearly $50 million of that on political campaigns.

The report also found that over the past 13 years, $630 million – or a quarter of all federal campaign advertising – was spent on campaigns that spruiked government achievements.

I don’t know about you but $200 million goes a long way towards a new hospital and I know which one I’d prefer.

If a government wants to spend money on a political ad, it needs to come from its own party coffers and not out of our pockets.

What do you think? Is that money being wasted?

[ronloby]

All government political advertising should come from political party funds NOT our taxes. If this was the case, then imagine all the new hospitals and other urgent stuff that could be built.

[Denise]

Our tax gets stretched enough without wasting it on political advertising. I agree with ronloby, its about time our government spending got serious and directed the money to where it is needed and to stop wasting tax payers money.

[52-KID]

Absolutely, we don’t give them out tax money to waste on telling us how good they are. They should do that by example. It would be amazing to see this money going to our hospitals which are pretty much at crisis point.

[Sue Ridge]

Both sides of politics are guilty of this and justify it by saying that it’s only letting people know what changes have been made in the legislation. Sure, it comes across as political because of the proximity of an election but it’s going to be very difficult to try and stop it because of the claim that it’s in the public interest.

What is of more concern is what the Queensland government has done (and federal Labor wants to do) is that they have banned donations above $10,000 from any individual. It’s also illegal for any party to spend more than $87,000 in any single electorate and $1 million overall for third-party organisations, including unions, political action groups, and industry bodies. This sounds OK but there are 25 unions in Queensland and each is classified as an individual. If we look back at the 2007 election, unions spent $25m in advertising backing Labor and when Labor won that election, amazingly, unions were granted $25m for training.

[Author]

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