Chief Minister Stanhope is having a good old dummy spit over Liberal plans to put some checks on the rampant ad spend of his Government in defence of Labor’s policies.
There’s even a lengthy list of grievances:
- Mr Stanhope said the Liberal Opposition’s Bill would:
— Severely impact the effectiveness of Government advertising by banning slogans and jingles;
— Create unacceptable restrictions on legitimate advertising three months before an election;
— Severely impact the Government’s capacity to respond rapidly to issues by requiring all campaigns costing more than $20,000 to be reviewed by the Auditor General;
— Fundamentally alter the Auditor General’s role by making the Auditor part of the decision-making process rather than the scrutiniser of Government actions;
— Require radio or television advertisements to be authorised at both the start and end of the advertisement, meaning there would be barely time for anything but authorisation;
— Create confusion and uncertainly by preventing Government advertising for party political purposes without defining the term ‘party political’;
— Create confusion by not recognising statutory officer holders as chief executives;
— Violate the independence of statutory authorities by wrongly implying that Ministers are responsible for agency advertising; and
— Duplicate the current mandatory requirements of Government advertising campaigns in the Electoral Act 1992 and the Commonwealth’s Broadcasting Services Act 1992.
I really liked the line about “wrongly implying that Ministers are responsible for agency advertising”.
Pull the other one Chief, it plays Jingle Bells.
For the record RiotACT would be all in favour of more Government advertising if only some of it would come our way. *sigh*