Howard's word costs $187m By ANDREW PROBYN 28jan02 THE Howard Government spends $512,000 a day telling you what to think. And it spends $15.5 million a year to check the message is getting through. Having spent $187 million on advertising campaigns and self-promotion last year, the Federal Government is now Australia's biggest advertiser. What it spends on ads could provide 19,280 university places, 12,460 heart bypasses or build 38km of four-lane freeway. The Government's advertising expenditure is the equivalent of what McDonald's, Ford and the Commonwealth Bank spend collectively. An analysis of the financial records of 22 departments and agencies shows they spent $186,981,428 on advertising in 2000-01. While $21.4 million went on placing job ads and tenders, a massive $109 million, or 58 per cent, was spent on media campaigns. Household mail-outs cost the taxpayer $18.1 million, market researchers were paid $15.5 million and advertising agencies pocketed $15.1 million. Defence was the biggest government advertiser, spending $45.5 million. Of this, $34.4 million was spent on a recruitment ads on television. The army, navy and air force last year enlisted just 5131 applicants, meaning the ads cost $6700 for each new full-time recruit. For the same period, the Australian Defence Force lost 6967 personnel, including 1258 officers. The second biggest Government advertiser was the Australian Tax Office which spent $42.9 million on advertising, including $33.3 million on TV, radio and newspaper ads. Third biggest was the Health Department on $25.8 million, of which $19.9 million went towards campaigning. ACNielsen figures show that in just six months the Federal Government overtook Telstra and Coles Myer to become the nation's top advertiser. Telstra, at $142.58 million, was the nation's biggest advertiser in 2000, according to ACNielsen's Adex Advertising Expenditure. Coles Myer was second in 2000 on $140.45 million and the Government was third on $85.6 million - more than $100 million below the 2000-01 figure. Evidence emerged this month of a Government splurge on ads in first six months of 2001. Australian Electoral Commission figures showed Channel 9 Melbourne logged $683,682 worth of Government ads in the six weeks before the Aston by-election. Labor said much of last year's government advertising amounted to little more than de facto political ads. The campaigns on private health insurance, the scrapping of financial institutions duty and one-off $300 pensioner bonus were all election flavoured, Labor said. The Opposition's public administration spokesman, John Faulkner, said of particular concern to Labor was the $15,452,990 spent on market research. "Labor has never had satisfactory guarantees that market research paid for by the taxpayer hasn't ended up being used by the Liberal Party," he said. "More than $15 million worth of market research is a goldmine of information about how the electorate thinks on every conceivable subject. The huge advertising bill confirms Labor's warnings that the Government was going all out in 2001 to promote itself." A spokesman for Special Minister of State Eric Abetz defended the Government's ad bill, saying it operated under the same guidelines as the previous Labor government. "A very significant chunk goes towards defence recruitment, a singularly appropriate thing at this time, anti-tobacco advertising and Australian citizenship," the spokesman said. "The Howard Government is a proactive government that has introduced sweeping new legislation, particularly in health care and the GST, and it is duty bound to alert citizens of obligations and entitlements that might flow from that legislation."
