The federal election date may not yet be determined, but the vote-buying scams are already in full swing.
We’ve already been treated to tens of millions of dollars worth of publicly funded political advertising for the Coalition government.
On the ABC’s June 19 AM program, PM John Howard claimed that political advertising is only that which “says `Vote Liberal’ or `the Labor Party’s hopeless’ or `Vote Labor, the Liberal Party’s hopeless’”.
But Howard’s not fooling anyone. Some $15 million has been squandered on the promotion of the Coalition’s decimation of Medicare. Another $6.5 million has gone on the much-criticised anti-domestic violence campaign, perhaps in the hope that we may forget the massive funding cuts to women’s services carried out by the Coalition government.
Up to $21 million is being splurged to publicise the federal government’s $600-per-child payment to families. These payments were automatically deposited into the accounts of those eligible — no action was required by parents to obtain the payment. Still, it cost millions to tell us about it.
Other worthy causes include some $5.5 million spent on convincing us that the Coalition cares about the environment (despite the government’s appalling record on stopping climate change, protecting old-growth forests and looking after our rivers’ health), and $3 million on the AusLink campaign to promote the federal government’s commitment to roads.
The Labor Party has made a bit of noise about it. In the Senate on June 24, ALP Senator John Faulkner argued that the Coalition government “has made an art form of plundering the public purse to support and fund its own election campaigns”. He claimed that the government has spent, or committed to spend, $123 million, so far.
On June 27 federal ALP leader Mark Latham made similar remarks to journalists in Sydney: “Propaganda should be paid for by political parties, not the Australian taxpayer. We will apply that standard to ourselves in government. A Labor Government will be bound by that.”
But what is “outrageous” now was good enough for the ALP when it was in government. The June 16 7.30 Report on the ABC raised the use of actor Bill Hunter in 1995, who was paid some $250,000 by the then-ALP government to participate in the “Working Nation” campaign. In an unsubtle move, he then followed this by appearing in Labor Party election campaign ads.
According to the June 24 Melbourne Age, the ALP spent some $45 million of public funds on campaign advertising during the year prior to the 1996 federal election.
Despite Howard’s self-righteous defence of his lavish spending on advertising, his public stance was dramatically different when the roles were reversed. The Sydney Morning Herald pointed out on June 29 that in September 1995, Howard (who at that time was opposition leader) said that then Labor PM Paul Keating “is about to boost government promotion to a massive new high [$14 million] and it’s time a brake was put on this fraud ... propaganda should be paid for by political parties”.
Each election the circus is the same, and the same roles are performed by the incumbents and “opposition”, regardless of which of the two major parties is in power. Governments only need to spend millions of dollars trying to con us into believing that they’ve done a good job if they haven’t.
Many millions more will be squandered before polling day arrives — not just of public funds, but also the enormous slush funds provided by major corporations to both the Labor and Liberal parties in return for pro-business policies.
Unfortunately, green and left-wing candidates don’t have millions of dollars, from the public purse or from big corporations, to get swish-looking ads on television. To get a hearing, put an alternative, they need support from those they support: working people.
If you want to help progressive candidates get a hearing for their working-class policies and campaigns amidst the million-dollar lies and hypocrisy, why not help the campaign building a grassroots alternative to money politics — the Socialist Alliance.
From Green Left Weekly, July 14, 2004.
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