Spruik no more: depoliticising taxpayer-funded advertising

If you’ve been watching TV or reading the paper, chances are you’ve seen an ad spruiking the achievements of federal and state governments, from the next big transport project to how they’re reducing the cost of living.

While some of these ads are worthwhile—such as encouraging people to get vaccinated—others masquerade as subtle political ads on the taxpayer dime. So, what can be done to prevent such blatant misuse of taxpayer-funded advertising?

Join host Kat Clay, as she discusses the latest report in the New Politics series, with co-authors Kate Griffiths and Anika Stobart.

Transcript

Kat Clay: If you’ve been watching TV or reading the paper, chances are you’ve seen an ad spruiking the achievements of federal and state governments, from the next big transport project to how they’re reducing the cost of living. While some of these ads are worthwhile, such as encouraging people to get vaccinated, others masquerade as subtle political ads on the taxpayer dime.

So, what can be done to prevent such blatant misuse of taxpayer funded advertising? I’m Kat Clay and this week we are discussing the third and final report in Grattan’s New Politics series on how to end the politicization of taxpayer funded advertising. With me are co-authors, Kate Griffiths and Anika Stobart from Grattan’s Budgets and Governments team.

Welcome Kate and Anika. Hi Kat. Hi Kat. So, before we get stuck into it, let’s take a step back. Kate, why do governments advertise at all?

Kate Griffiths: Governments run advertising campaigns to communicate important public messages and to ask us to take action. For example, in recent years, we’ve seen lots of federal and state government advertising about the symptoms of COVID, about restrictions and ads that encourage us to get vaccinated.

As you mentioned, Kat, these are health messages that are in our individual and collective interests. So, it is appropriate that governments communicate these sorts of messages and that we, the taxpayer fund that advertising. Health is, is generally one of the big topics in the government advertising space.

And at the federal level, another big one is defence force recruiting. So that’s. You would have seen those ads too, I’m sure. In terms of the dollars involved, this is a pretty big enterprise. Federal and state governments combined spend nearly 450 million each year on advertising. And the federal New South Wales and Victorian governments, so the big ones, individually spend more than many of the large private companies we see all the time, such as McDonald’s, Kohl’s, Telstra, and the banks.

Most government advertising does target important public messages, but not all of it. And that’s really what we’re focused on. Some advertising campaigns look politicized. They sometimes include party slogans or colours, spruik government achievements, and are often deliberately timed to run in the lead up to elections.

So, this sort of politicization is completely inappropriate. We are not talking about political advertising here. Political advertising is funded by the parties themselves. We’re talking about government advertising, which is funded by you and me, the taxpayer. So, this is public money being misused.

Taxpayer funded ads are supposed to be apolitical and objective, but unfortunately, they still often contain elements that are aimed at securing an electoral advantage, and that’s where they cross the line.

Kat Clay: You’re not talking about, say, the big yellow billboards we see around election time promoting a particular political candidate.

This is more subtle work here, isn’t it?

Kate Griffiths: Yeah, it can often be quite subtle. it’s certainly not as overtly political as, as the advertising that we see for particular parties and candidates, but they use some of the same tricks.

Kat Clay: And I think we’ll just get into some of those tricks Anika, can you explain how governments are misusing this advertising?

What are some of these sneaky tricks?

Anika Stobart: Before I jump into that, I think it’s important to know that there are like a raft of codes and rules that require governments to spend taxpayer money in the public interest and not in the political interest. You know, governments still sometimes use this pot of money for their political advantage, and we see this at both the federal and state level.

but we in particular did a deep dive into federal government advertising campaigns over the past 13 years and kind of identified three main characteristics of politicization. The first of these was where campaign materials include political statements, party slogans, or overt actions. Party colour schemes.

So, this is kind of the more obvious, form of politicization. It’s a bit more in your face in terms of promoting the political party. So, for example, last federal election, people may have seen published ads in major newspapers that used blue colour scheme, very similar to the liberal party blue alongside, you know, a vague statement promoting the government’s economic policy.

The second, characteristic we identified. was where campaigns were timed specifically to run in the lead up to a federal election. We found looking over the past four or five elections, spending consistently spikes in the lead up to elections on these taxpayer funded campaigns. There should be no reason why Spending should spike, in the lead up to election if it’s just public interest advertising, not politicized advertising.

So, an example is in the 2019 federal election, there are at least six campaigns that were timed to run almost exclusively in the months leading up to the election, including the building our future campaign, which was promoting the government’s investment in transport infrastructure. And then I guess the third main characteristic we identified was where the key purpose of a campaign was to spruik the government’s policies or performance, notably, many of these, lack a call for action.

So, asking the public to change behaviour or do something, they’re more just vague. Positive statements. So, for example, there was the Western Australian bigger picture campaign that ran from 2012 to 2016, and that promoted the government’s investments in infrastructure, such as upgrading regional boarding school.

So, yeah, and we also found that. Some of these campaigns have multiple of these characteristics, so they might have party colours, they might have feel good messages about what the government’s doing and be time to run before an election.

Kat Clay: So, I mean, how big of a problem is this, and does it happen across both parties and at state and federal levels?

Are we talking about just a couple of campaigns each year or are many advertising campaigns corrupted in this way?

Anika Stobart: So, we found that the misuse of taxpayer funding advertising is rife. so, we calculated that at the federal level, about nearly 50 million. Dollars each year on average was spent on campaigns that have one of these one or more of these characteristics that I just outlined, which is about a quarter of total spending by the federal government on advertising each year.

So, we’re talking quite a lot of money here, and we also looked at what the Australian National Audit Office has said about these campaigns. And it found that 40 percent of these campaigns tend to not be value for money. 30 percent lack objectivity or evidence. And we’ve had similar findings from state water to general reports as well.

As I said, this is something that happens at both the federal and state level, but we also found that it’s something that happens on both sides of politics. So, at federal level, we found that the 10 most expensive politicized federal campaigns in the past 13 years. Half were approved by Labor governments and half were approved by coalition governments.

Kat Clay: So, Kate, turning to you, I mean politicization of taxpayer funded advertising is obviously an enormous waste of taxpayer money. What are some of the other harms that might not be so obvious?

Kate Griffiths: Yeah, you’re right, Kat. It is a terrible waste of money and of course a waste of money means a missed opportunity too, because it means there’s less money to spend on more important things.

It’s particularly wasteful actually, given that governments can already get a lot of free publicity in this space. So, they can use speeches and debates in parliament, doorstop interviews, traditional media programs, and ministers themselves usually have quite a large reach through social media too. And if governments want to convey a political message outside of those channels, they can also advertise using party funds.

that’s political advertising, that’s appropriate, rather than drawing on the public purse. Just getting back to your question though, in terms of other harms, there’s the waste, then there’s the misuse of government advertising, then there’s the effect that misuse of government advertising has on the playing field in elections.

So, it actually creates quite an uneven playing field. between governments and oppositions, and between government candidates and any other candidate, because when government ads are running close to elections, which can drown out, advertising, by parties and by candidates and governments are effectively exploiting their incumbency in doing this.

And we saw actually in the lead up to the 2019 federal election, Nielsen reported that in the nine months leading up to that election, political parties spent a combined 80 million on TV, print, and radio advertising. And over that same period, the federal coalition government spent about 100 million in taxpayer funded advertising campaigns.

So, the incumbency advantage is huge. One. Further harm I should mention, is that politicized government advertising can undermine trusting government messaging more generally. So, if we go back to what the purpose of taxpayer funded advertising is to communicate important public messages, this is kind of a terrible result where it could mean that government messages, like encouraging people to get a vaccination are.

being heard or falling on deaf ears, falling on, naturally sceptical populace because they’re being swamped with advertising about, how great their government is, for example. Politicians will rarely acknowledge these, these harms and some even brazenly push back on them. there was criticism, from the Victorian Auditor General around, Victoria’s Our Fair Share campaign, which the Premier Daniel Andrews, defended and was, was not backing down on.

And we saw the same from former Prime Minister Scott Morrison when he defended his spending, in the lead up to the 2019 federal election. So, there’s still a long way to go in actually convincing governments that this sort of behaviour is not good government.

Kat Clay: And there’s also an effect, essentially, if you’re spending all these millions of dollars on advertising that doesn’t necessarily have a clear purpose.

That’s money that could have gone to more beneficial campaigns, such as public health campaigns about COVID 19, or quitting smoking, or there’s a whole raft of things that it could have been used for that would actually have a general public good. Anika are there rules and regulations in place at the moment to prevent politicization of taxpayer funded advertising.

Anika Stobart: There are rules currently in place, but they are mostly voluntary guidelines and largely unenforceable. Most jurisdictions rules, excluding the ACT in Victoria, have only a very narrow definition of what they are. What they define as politicization. So that’s more just that first example I talked about where they promote a party such as using a party logo or using a party name.

They don’t include this broader definition of spruiking of government policies or performance or anything to do with the timing of the ads either. Most jurisdictions have. Weak approval processes before campaign are launched. So, at the federal level, there was an independent committee that reviewed campaigns against the guidelines that had certain rules about what can be released and what can’t, but the panel, I was opposed to that.

pretty limited in its effectiveness because it only reviewed campaigns mid development, and they didn’t have the power to block politicized campaigns. And the panel itself was politicized. There was a former liberal staffer on the panel. Now that we’ve had a new federal government come in this year, they’ve actually come in and updated the guidelines and effectively abolished this, independent panel, which reduces scrutiny and transparency even further.

Some states, though, have legislated these, these rules. So that’s, for example, Victoria, the ACT, and New South Wales. So, they carry a bit more weight, but New South Wales is the only jurisdiction that actually has a penalty for contravening the rules.

Kat Clay: I mean, I do really want to ask you both, I mean, has there been instances of advertising where they’ve put a party logo on a taxpayer funded advertising campaign?

Kate Griffiths: That one’s usually too explicit, so it’s usually the sort of thing that, that falls foul, but we absolutely see it on social media all the time, and that’s, I think, quite unfortunate, so that’s not paid advertising, but it will be ministers using their profile to promote it. so called government policies, but using their party logo, their party colours, etc.

Yeah, in taxpayer funded advertising that does go through some forms of checks and balances that Anika was just talking through, they would look for that sort of overt politicization, but not say for the party colour schemes, which in and of itself is, is used frequently and, does have those more subtle, elements of politicization.

Kat Clay: Thanks, Kate. I mean, you have so many great recommendations throughout this series on new politics in all of the reports. What are some of the recommendations you have from this report that should be done to depoliticize taxpayer funded advertising?

Kate Griffiths: Yeah, so in this report, we’re focused on fixing the rules and fixing the processes.

In terms of the rules, we recommend that Australia’s Federal and state governments should legislate stronger rules that limit the scope of what advertising campaigns can be run on the taxpayer dime. So, the sorts of campaigns that, that should be able to run are those that have specific actions and seek to drive behaviour change in the public interest.

And that would include recruitment, tourism campaigns, bushfire and workplace safety campaigns, anti-smoking ads, advertising about how to vote in an election, or how to fill out a census survey to give you a few examples. All of them are good uses of taxpayer funded advertising, but it wouldn’t include, for example, ads that promote government policies where no action or behaviour change is actually required.

So, letting you know about your automatic tax cut is not a necessary, is not necessary to do during primetime TV. Campaign material should also not promote, the party as we were talking about, obviously no party logos, no party colours, but it shouldn’t promote the government either. And that’s where I think a lot of the rules.

even in the states that have stronger legislated rules fall down, they, they still allow, promotion of government activity and policies. And I think that this is, this is a real problem because spruiking government activities is not actually in the public interest. That’s not something that taxpayers need to fund.

And governments do already have a platform to get those messages out there through other means. That’s not, on the taxpayer dollar. and finally in terms of the rules, campaigns should be timed to run when they’re most effective, not just before elections. There is this real clustering that Anika was talking about of campaigns running just before elections and it doesn’t make sense, in terms of what the campaigns are trying to achieve.

So, it’d be better if those campaigns were timed when they’re actually needed. when they’re going to be most effective. These rules would be a big improvement, but we did think that better rules alone wouldn’t do the job. so, we’ve recommended, that there’d be an independent panel who checks that the final campaign materials fully comply with those rules.

and the difference here would be that this new panel, would have the power to knock back campaigns if they’re not compliant. It would be reviewing those final materials, not just work in progress ones. Ultimately, they might not back campaigns that are politicized or more generally those that, that just don’t offer value for money.

So, there’s a potential to get a better, value from the taxpayer advertising that we do fund. The makeup of the panel is obviously important when you set up an independent panel. you want to have a mix of relevant skills. Hopefully with media and communications experience too, and the members of themselves must be truly independent, which is something we’ve written about in a different, report.

We wrote about what proper appointments processes would look like in the first report in this new politics series. so, we would recommend that panel members are chosen in that way through a transparent merit-based process. So, with these kind of better rules, better processes, we think we’ve. in a much better position to be spending the money effectively when it comes to taxpayer funded advertising.

And then ultimately, there’s a fairly simple penalty that could be put in place to ensure that in the end, all campaigns are in the public interest. We recommend putting in place a penalty for breaking the rules, which would be that the governing party, not taxpayers, should be liable to pay the costs of any politicized advertising.

Effectively, if the ad is politicized or political, it’s the party that funds it. And there’s actually a penalty like that already in place in New South Wales. It’s a real shame that Australians can’t just rely on the goodwill of ministers to prevent misuse of government advertising, but the evidence pretty clearly shows that political temptation can overwhelm good intentions.

So that means that we do need these stronger safeguards to protect the public interest.

Kat Clay: I like that. Better rules, better processes, and better spending for taxpayer funded advertising. Thank you so much, Kate and Anika. If you do want to read more in this cracker of a report, you can read it on our website for free at gratin au do au.

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