The Australian National Audit Office has said incumbent governments splurge on taxpayer-funded advertising in the lead-up to elections, with a clear trend established over the past five federal campaigns.
A new report into government advertising between March 2013 and June 2015 has also determined that the federal government’s campaign advertising framework was “weaker than it could be” because of changes in the government’s internal third-party advisory processes.
The latest audit has clearly established the trend of the pre-election splurge. “Increased expenditure has been observed prior to the last five elections,” the audit office says.
“In 2013 and 2016 around $100m and $95m respectively, was spent on media placement alone in the three months leading up to the caretaker period.”
In a non-election year, the average annual spend is $186m.
The audit office examined a number of campaigns undertaken between 2013 and 2015, including the controversial “By Boat, No Visa” campaign Labor ran before the 2013 election.
That campaign was controversially exempted from the government’s guidelines governing taxpayer-funded advertising on the basis that communication with voters was considered urgent, but the audit office said the blitz was expected to comply with the underlying principles of the guidelines.
It said that didn’t happen. “The usual order of expenditure approval, contracting and service delivery was not observed in the procurement of media placement and research services.”
The audit office also questioned whether a higher education reform advertising campaign undertaken by the Abbott government contained accurate and verifiable information.
It said a key statement in the campaign: “The Australian government will continue to pay around half of your undergraduate degree”, was reasonable “for the first year, 2016, with students subject to the existing arrangements taken into account”.
“However, the statement is not as strongly supported in the subsequent years, and for all new students to whom the reforms were to apply,” the audit office said.
“The statement could also have been misinterpreted by potential students and their families because, at the individual level, the government’s contribution to different courses varies considerably.”
It suggested the government’s internal processes for clearing advertising campaigns be strengthened.
It said campaigns were reviewed by an independent committee too early in the process. “The early timing of the committee’s review of campaigns means that it is not in a position to provide a high level of confidence to entity chief executives – and by extension the parliament and community – regarding a campaign’s compliance with the guidelines.”
“At present, the committee reports on whether a campaign is capable of complying with the guidelines, as it does not review final campaign materials and other relevant information,” the audit office said.
It recommended the processes be altered to allow review at any stage of a campaign’s development.
