May 232007
Yesterday we heard reported that Senator John Faulkner extracted from the Commonwealth Public Service a figure for government sponsored, tax payer funded advertising so far this year.
That sum is a staggering $111.2 million. On 18 campaigns which are still running. This figure doesn’t account for the unpublished advertising we’ll be bombarded with once the election date is finally made known. Of course, party political advertising is supposed to be funded by the parties concerned. If that’s the case, I’m left wondering just who is paying for this kind of thing.
Nice glossy bonded paper, every second passage extolling the virtues of the Howardian cabal, those inbetween praising the local member as the ‘Little Jack Horner’ of federal politics. I’m offended by this type of advertising and not only because it’s the Howard government doing it. If I wanted to know what my federal member was up to in Parliament, I’d turn on ABC News Radio and listen to the Parliamentary broadcasts. I don’t need, nor do I want my letter box stuffed with what amounts to so much junk mail. Regardless of which political flavour happens to be holding the reins of power, mass advertising of this kind is a gross waste of taxpayers funds which can be much better directed into social necessities like health, education, transport, roads, water, et al.
Perhaps I’m expecting too much though. From what the Howardians continually tell us, all of those social necessities are State responsibilities. That’s the impression I get. Whenever the issue of who’s providing what arises, all we ever hear is the duckshove claims for political benefit.
Clearly though, it is the job of the federal government to enure that we all know what a terrific bunch of great guys they are, just like Andrew Laming obviously is. The very same Andrew Laming, who along with Ross Vasta and Gary Hardgrave who, in March this year, was under investigation for alleged rorting of electoral allowances. As an aside, we never did hear or read about the ultimate outcome of said investigations by the Australian Federal Police, did we? There’s nothing at all available via Google. Yet, Andrew is clearly a fine upstanding member of the Redlands community, according to this blurb received yesterday. Paid for by you & I, taxpayers.
Do you ever get the feeling, reader, as I do, that we’re being taken for a bunch of chumps?