What a way to spend 2 billion dollars!
New figures provided to the Senate estimates committee suggest that Howard government spending on political advertising over its decade in power is reaching $2 billion dollars. It looks like I was too generous in my previous post, which refers to political advertising spending of "only" $1.7 billion.
Of this amount, over $550 million has been spent in the last two years (it is ever so convenient to control both Houses of Parliament). However, the full extent of the advertising expenditure is not yet known because the government has not provided details of all of its major campaigns. This is not surprising - when Howard's advertising spend was last examined by a Senate committee in 2005, that committee also had difficulties accessing the required information. So much for open government.
The $2 billion is not comprised of funds raised by the Liberal party for its political campaigns. This is public money, paid in taxes by us all, entrusted to the government to spend it for use in the interests of the electorate. Instead of spending these funds on promoting the welfare of the electorate (health, education, improvements in services, drought relief, etc), the government spent our money on promoting itself. Does a government that misuses our tax dollars deserve to stay in power?
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