Idiotic government advertising
If the Howard government wasn't spending insane amounts of taxpayer money on advertising itself, some of its ads could be considered funny. Not because they are by their nature humorous, but because they are utterly idiotic.
Consider this ad:
That telephone pole got in the way when I was taking the photo, but the left part of the ad reads "Who really pulls Labor's strings." Let's put aside such reasonable thoughts as why leading employee organisations is a negative thing and forget the fact that they may have been union leaders but surely not union bosses.
Does this ad remind you of something? Remember that television ad about genital herpes? The one that has little red silhouettes of men and women illustrating that "one in eight Australians have genital herpes"? I tried to find a screenshot of the ad, but no success so far, so you'll have to picture it in your head. To make the task easier - just look at the government's ad - those silhouettes look very similar!
Oh and to make it more amusing - this ad was just across the road from an advertisement for treatments to increase one's sexual function and boost one's sex life. How very appropriate.
How about this ad:
No doubt you would have seen these ads defacing many locations (public transport stops being most popular). This particular photo is from a tram stop shelter. As you can see it provides a wealth of information - a stone wall and a post it note saying "know where you stand" - almost as informative as the "know where you stand" television advertisements.
Well, if you consider the ad, it is hard to escape the conclusion that what it says is that you stand with your back to the wall (why else would there be a picture of a wall in the background?). That pretty much sums up what WorkChoices does to employees, but somehow I don't think that the government intended to be quite that honest!
That the government is spending billions of taxpayer dollars to advertise itself is a sign of a corrupt and unprincipled government. That their ads are this stupid must be a sign of desperation. I would have said that it was also a sign of incompetence, but to be fair, it is hard to advertise a product which has no merit.
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