The Media Report: 7 July 2005 - Ad Campaign
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/stories/s1407808.htm]
Richard Aedy: Now it’s time for a message from the government.
SONG ‘Unchain My Heart’
Richard Aedy: Joe Cocker in fine voice. You might remember that in this particular track he’s extolling the virtues of the GST.
The government’s approval has softened this week because of likely changes to industrial relations law, and some very effective ads from the unions. It’s certain that the government will fire back with its own campaign, because it’s not short of money to spend on advertising.
Sally Young is a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Melbourne.
Sally Young: It spends usually around $100-million a year at the Federal level; since the Howard government came into power in ’96, it’s spent about $900-million over that period. And the spending always increases just before an election, so usually in an election year there’s more.
Richard Aedy: How does $100-million compare to people like Coke and McDonald’s and Toyota?
Sally Young: It’s up there with all of those. And in some years, particularly again in those elections when the government spends a lot, they’re the top advertiser in the country. So over the past few years they’ve been in the Top Ten consistently, and some of the State governments are spending more than many of those large corporations as well, they’re usually in the Top Ten advertisers in Australia.
Richard Aedy: I was going to get on to that actually, because especially the bigger States in population and economy terms, like New South Wales and Victoria, they do a lot of advertising, don’t they?
Sally Young: They do. They do all sorts of advertising. Some of its fairly boring and mundane sorts of things, like job advertisements and tendering contracts and so on that are advertised. Other things are the more controversial, big theme campaigns, things about the tax system, or drug and alcohol campaigns and so on, or some of the ads that we’re going to see shortly perhaps about industrial relations changes and so on. So there’s a difference between the campaign advertising, which is those big themes, and in the non-campaign, which is the more routine advertising that governments do.
Richard Aedy: All right. If we look at the non-election period, which is most of the time, how does one tell government public information campaigns from government political campaigns, because sometimes it’s a bit of a fine line.
Sally Young: Yes, well I mean the government’s supposed to be using advertisng for information, for letting people know about changes to policy or law for example, they’re not supposed to be using it for political messages, for putting out partisan information for doing ideological campaigns of any particular nature. So this is why it’s controversial about trying to tell the difference between doing those sorts of activities, between informing people and trying to persuade them of a political case or a political message. So that’s where the controversy comes in.
Richard Aedy: You didn’t actually answer my question. How does one tell the difference then?
Sally Young: How does one tell the difference? Well, it’s very difficult, the government would say, to tell the difference between the sort of information that they say they’re putting out. They say it’s about letting people know of their rights and entitlements and changes to law. And their critics will often argue that emotional-type messages are creeping in, and this is something that you have to really judge for yourself ultimately. You need to look at government advertising and judge for yourself whether you think it’s trying to give you a political message and trying to persuade you, or whether it’s just giving you information in a more neutral manner. So the example I often talk about is the new tax system when the GST came in, and they had the music ‘Unchain my Heart’, by Joe Cocker.
Richard Aedy: Yes, I remember that.
Sally Young: And that seemed to be quite a motive message. They were throwing off the chains, if you remember, people were all chained up and they were throwing them off and saying this was unshackling. The old tax system was a burden, it needed to be unshackled. So that seemed to have an emotive sort of message, it wasn’t just about letting you know about the nuts and bolts of the changes, but also trying to persuade you that these changes were valid and necessary and a good thing.
Richard Aedy: So aren’t there any laws on this about what government advertising that’s supposed to be non-political, can and can’t say?
Sally Young: No, there’s not in Australia, and that’s a big issue. The only guidelines that we have been in place since the previous government, since 1995 under Labor, and those guidelines were not changed when the Howard government came to power. And those guidelines say nothing about the potential abuse of government advertising for political purposes, they don’t even mention it as a factor. So there’s nothing to prohibit that in Australia, which is unlike the situation in many other countries.
Richard Aedy: What does exist overseas then?
Sally Young: In Canada, for example, they’ve just had a massive scandal there in the last few years about government advertising, and people were even charged with fraud and all sorts of things were going on, so they’ve actually brought in guidelines about trying to tell the difference between these very things about political messages and neutral information. And the other thing they do, which is very good in Canada, is they put up for public comment, the advertising agency’s brief about what the campaign is going to be about, what its aims are, and then they tell us also what its results were, so if there was an information campaign, they say how many people it reached, how many people rang the hotline, for example, or whatever the result was. So that way, people can judge for themselves whether it was a valid way to spend the money.
Richard Aedy: What about involving someone here, like the Auditor-General? You’d think that that office would have something to say about this kind of thing.
Sally Young: Yes, and that’s certainly been proposed in the past by both sides of politics. In 1995 when the Keating government spent a lot of money on Working Nation ads about employment, or unemployment at the time, Howard –
Richard Aedy: They’re the Bill Hunter ones, weren’t they?
Sally Young: That’s right.
Richard Aedy: Made you proud to be Australian.
Sally Young: Yes, they were very patriotic and those ads were very controversial, and the Liberal Party or any opposition, saw those as very political in nature, and said if they got into power, they’d make sure all government advertising was scrutinised by the Auditor-General to make sure that it wasn’t partisan in nature. But once they got in, that didn’t occur.
Richard Aedy: That is a surprise. What about the State politicians? If they offered to go to the Auditor-General?
Sally Young: Yes, as well. It’s one of the most broken promises in Australian politics I think. Latham promised it at the election last year, so we didn’t get a chance to see whether he would have actually implemented this. But also at the State level, Bob Carr proposed it before he came to power, and so did Steve Bracks in Victoria.
Richard Aedy: So people tend to be very keen on it when they’re Leaders of the Opposition?
Sally Young: Yes, they all think it’s a fabulous idea then, because they’re very concerned about governments using public money to disadvantage them, in opposition, but once they get into power, they see how much money is available and what they can do with it, and they all tend to have done the same thing over the past few years, which is abuse this for political purposes.
Richard Aedy: So I want to be clear on this, Sally. This isn’t just something that the Coalition government’s done under John Howard; this has been done by government of all hues in all parts of the world I would imagine.
Sally Young: Well definitely at the State level in Australia it’s a big issue, and at the Federal level. It’s not just the Howard government, it’s also the States and Victoria and New South Wales are very big spending governments. Across the world it’s very different. Other countries do regulate against this. The United States had a law preventing use of public money for political purposes since the 1950s, so they do have regulations about it. Canada, New Zealand, and the UK all have regulations on this matter. So it’s really in Australia that we have the most serious issue with government advertising.
Richard Aedy: Well what is the solution then? What would you like to see happen?
Sally Young: Well there are a few things that could happen. One of them is to use the Auditor-General to scrutinise the content and make sure that public money isn’t being misused. Another is to have a cap so that we determine a reasonable amount for advertising, and we ask that governments don’t go over that unless there’s an extraordinary case to be made in an emergency, for example. And the other thing that we can do is to have guidelines in place that talk about this very issue and try to prevent misuse of public money. So there are all sorts of things.
But the other proposal is what Canada does, which is put all the information out so that we can see it, because in Australia there’s a great deal of secrecy about this. The Federal government’s very reluctant to reveal how much it spends or what the campaigns are about or the results.
Richard Aedy: Now just to come back to the industrial relations changes, what are your sources saying the government’s likely to do? How much are they going to spend, do you think?
Sally Young: Well we’ve heard that they’re going to spend around $20-million, which is a large campaign in government terms, so we’ve heard that they’re going to devote at least tens of millions of dollars to countering the unions’ message, and the unions’ ad seems to have had quite an impact as well as protests and marches and workplace action. So the government seems to have been caught on the back foot in a way. So they’ll spend public money I think to put out a message to say that these changes are necessary and positive and counter the unions’ message.
Richard Aedy: Sally Young’s at Melbourne Uni and author of ‘The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising’, which is published by Pluto Press.
We just heard from Sally Young on government advertising. Dr Young’s a former ALP member who, while she was doing her PhD thesis, volunteered to work inside the party’s campaign headquarters. Our next guest has a completely different background: Stephen Bartos used to be a very, very senior public servant. These days he’s Director of the National Institute for Governance at Canberra University.
As a former insider, he knows a bit about how the government manages its advertising.
Stephen Bartos: Government makes a distinction between what it calls campaign advertising and non-campaign. Non-campaign advertising is routine stuff, like advertisements for staff, advertising for tenders and so on, and that’s up to each individual department. But anything that’s called campaign advertising, and that involves almost anything that gets booked on television, has to go through something called the Ministerial Committee on Government Communications. Departments make submissions, get centrally co-ordinated through a Government Communications Unit located in the Prime Minister’s Department, and that Government Communications Unit in turn passes it on for decisions to that Ministerial Committee on Government Communications.
Richard Aedy: So there are two bodies: this government communications unit inside the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, which is a sort of Secretariat, in effect, is that what you’re saying?
Stephen Bartos: It’s more or less a Secretariat for the Ministerial Committee, yes, that’s its main role. It supports the Ministerial Committee on Government Communications.
Richard Aedy: And they make the big decisions?
Stephen Bartos: They make the decisions on all campaign advertising.
Richard Aedy: I want to just get the I suppose the Government Communications Unit out of the way so I’m clear on it. What does it actually do?
Stephen Bartos: Government Communications Unit prepares the papers that go up to the Ministerial Committee. So what it does, is it liaises with Departments that want to run an advertising campaign, it helps them put together the paperwork to go to the Ministerial Committee. It then advises the Ministerial Committee. It also has another important role in managing the contract with the actual buyer of media. Government doesn’t actually do its own buying directly, so the Government Communications Unit manages the relationship with the buyer. It does centrally filter everything. So it keeps a rulebook as to what’s allowed to be in and out; it keeps lists of the approved consultants, so it acts as a central control point. Which is one of the major reasons why it’s in the Prime Minister’s Department, it’s part of making sure that there is centralised control over the messages that are going out.
Richard Aedy: It sort of locks steps with the rest of the world and increasing professionalisation in communication from governments?
Stephen Bartos: Absolutely, yes.
Richard Aedy: If we go back to this Ministerial Committee on Government Communication, in the life cycle of an ad, there’s market research, there’s setting a strategy, working out what the brief is, and then choosing who gets to come up with the campaign. They do all of that, is that what you’re saying?
Stephen Bartos: They do all of that. So they commission any market research of a value over $100,000, and that’s the market research for any large campaign.
Richard Aedy: And that’s anything for television?
Stephen Bartos: It’s really the control point for any television messages that the government wants to put out. So they approve the market research, they look through the market research when they get it, they then approve a strategy, they then approve a consultant, they then approve the final advertising. So they take a directive role at each and every step of the advertising process.
Richard Aedy: Now I know that this Committee is chaired by the Special Minister of State, Eric Abetz; who else is on it?
Stephen Bartos: Even though it’s called a Ministerial Committee, it doesn’t contain Ministers other than the Special Minister of State. Last time there was public information about its membership, it had three other members, two Liberal Party backbenchers, and Tony Nutt, a member of the Prime Minister’s staff. The Ministerial Committee on Government Communications doesn’t have its own website, it doesn’t have its own publications, it’s just mentioned briefly in a couple of lines in the Government Communication Units’ website. Which is a worrying thing really because they’re dealing with decisions about spending taxpayers’ money, roughly $100-million each year, and some years the government advertising spend goes well beyond that. In the year when we had the GST campaigns, it was well over $200-million.
Richard Aedy: Stephen, you’re a former senior public servant yourself; if there is a Committee of five chaired by a Minister, but one of the five is from the Prime Minister’s office, who’s actually going to be setting the agenda?
Stephen Bartos: Oh look, the reality is that the Prime Minister’s office sets the agenda. That’s certainly the case under the current government. We’ve got a Prime Minister’s office that’s very powerful, and someone like Tony Nutt wields a lot more power than many Ministers.
Richard Aedy: So the Committee doesn’t report to Parliament. Who does it report to?
Stephen Bartos: That’s a very good question. As far as we can tell, it doesn’t actually report to anyone at all. So there’s an accountability gap here in relation to the spending of those taxpayers’ dollars. There’s no reporting on the decision-making process out of that Ministerial Committee.
Richard Aedy: All right. Well Eric Abetz has been on this program before, in May of last year when Mick O'Regan was still doing it, and he told Mick that this is just public information campaigning, nothing to worry about, in effect.
Stephen Bartos: Some of it is. Each year the Defence Department spends tens of millions of dollars on defence recruitment; Health Department spends money on various different types of health promotion advertising, and those are just public information campaigns.
Richard Aedy: There’s also the campaign to encourage people to become Australian citizens, and things like that.
Stephen Bartos: Yes, so there is a role for government advertising, don’t get me wrong here. I actually think that there’s clearly a legitimate role for government advertising. The only issue I have with the current process is that it’s hidden; it’s not transparent, that we’re spending taxpayers’ dollars without proper accounting for it. That’s the thing that worries me because there’s now a visible pattern in relation to government advertising. Six months before an election is called sees a spike in government advertising, whereas in any one year, you might get somewhere around the $100-million mark in terms of government advertising, of which defence recruitment is typically the biggest campaign. In the six months before an election, you might get the same again being spent on a whole range of different types of campaigns that all have the effect of getting the government and its policies to the forefront of people’s minds before they go into the booth to vote.
Richard Aedy: There was a lot last year on Medicare changes I think.
Stephen Bartos: Yes, absolutely. And there’s I understand, speculation that there will be an advertising campaign around the government’s industrial relations changes in a similar sort of way as there was an advertising campaign around their GST changes.
Richard Aedy: So your concern is that it’s not a transparent process, and that can lead to a suspicion that it’s a somewhat politicised one?
Stephen Bartos: It’s not a transparent process; there’s no guarantees that it isn’t politicised, and there’s no guarantees that the materials that are developed as part of this, are not being used politically. I think one of the areas that does concern me is that there’s a huge fund of politically useful material developed through market research. If that’s available only to the government, and not to the rest of the Parliament, then you do have a real disadvantage for people who are not in government, and so it’s taking the advantages of incumbency, I think, a step too far.
Richard Aedy: Well governments of all political persuasions are going to use all the advantages of incumbency aren’t they? That’s happening right round the world.
Stephen Bartos: Yes. And this is going to be something that a Labor government will want to do in the event that there’s a Labor government in future.
Richard Aedy: Is that why the ALP’s been fairly quiet about this? They haven’t said a word, as far as I know.
Stephen Bartos: I suspect so. I mean there’s a number of advantages of incumbency; this is only one of them, and Labor is unlikely to want to overturn the advantages of incumbency for as long as it hopes that some day it might be the incumbent itself.
Richard Aedy: Yes. Well you can’t really blame the government for acting like a government, but what about the press though? This should be quite a good yarn, but I haven’t heard a peep about it.
Stephen Bartos: We could get a little bit cynical here, given that we’re looking at a body that distributes roughly $100-million a year of taxpayers’ money in government advertising. You don’t want to get those people offside by criticising them or investigating them too hard, and I suspect that people realise that it’s a dangerous step to take.
Richard Aedy: So you’re saying that it’s in nobody’s interest to make a fuss?
Stephen Bartos: It’s in very few people’s interest to make a fuss, but there are some positives. The Senate has started an inquiry process into government advertising, to which I made a submission. There’s some Senators who are concerned about this; the Auditor-General suggested some guidelines should be put in place for government advertising. Government’s never taken up that suggestion from the Auditor-General but I thought it was a very positive and useful step forward, that would have had the advantage of making some of these processes a little more open to scrutiny, and a little more transparent.
Richard Aedy: What else would you like to see to improve the transparency and accountability?
Stephen Bartos: I’d like to see a little more of the paperwork that goes to it; the Ministerial Committee at least being referred to, so that we can know the sorts of things that it does. We know it’s a busy Committee; the last Annual Report of the Prime Minister’s Department told us that the Committee met 46 times in a year. So we know it’s a really busy Committee, but we know very little about it. I’d love to see more information about it being made public. This would assist in transparency. So this would lower the level of perception that the government is simply using advertising for political purposes. I’d really like to see the market research on which it bases its decisions much more available for public examination because that would take away the huge political advantage that it will give. I think that’s probably a wish list.
Richard Aedy: Well you said it’s a wish list, I mean how likely is any of this to happen, Stephen?
Stephen Bartos: I think some of it may happen if there’s sufficient public disquiet about politicisation of government advertising. At the moment I’m not actually seeing too much concern being expressed publicly, either in other parts of the media, as we’ve discussed, or through community groups. There does seem to be a general acceptance of the notion that it’s fine for taxpayers’ money to be used for government advertising, regardless of whether it’s political or not. It would be in the government’s interests to make more of the advertising apolitical if there was community outcry. I’m really not seeing that at the moment, so until there’s any sort of pressure, the government’s not going to have any incentive to change the way it does it.
Richard Aedy: We’re an apolitical nation Stephen, we’d much rather think about the footy or go to the beach I think.
Stephen Bartos: Absolutely.
Richard Aedy: Thanks very much for coming in and joining us on The Media Report.
Stephen Bartos: No worries, Richard, thank you very much.
Richard Aedy: Professor Stephen Bartos from the National Institute for Governance in Canberra.
And incidentally, the full permanent membership of that Committee Stephen was talking about: Senator Eric Abetz, he’s the Chair; Tony Nutt, who’s the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary; and Liberal backbenchers Tony Smith, Petro Georgiou, Susan Ley and Andrew Robb.
Guests on this program:
Dr Sally Young
Lecturer
Media & Communications
University of Melbourne
Professor Stephen Bartos
Director
National Institute for Governance
University of Canberra
Further information:
Dr Sally Young
University of Melbourne
http://www.mediacomm.unimelb.edu.au/aboutus/staff/sally.html
National Institute for Governance
http://governance.canberra.edu.au
Inquiry Into Government Advertising and Accountability
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/fapa_ctte/govtadvertising/
Government Communications Unit (GCU)
Details on the Ministerial Committee on Government Communications
http://www.gcu.gov.au/code/about/index.html
Publications:
The Persuaders: The Hidden Machine of Political Advertising
Author: Sally Young
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 1864033045
Presenter: Richard Aedy
Producer: Jackie May
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