The Public Sector Informant: Audit report shows political propaganda evades government advertising rules

Government advertising campaigns, supposedly relaying information but also aimed at making us feel good about the government and its policies, are a scandalous (and highly irritating) abuse of democratic process.

Party-political propaganda has its proper place in a democracy, but should be paid for by political parties themselves, not by the taxpayer. Such advertising tends to peak in the period leading up to elections but is not uncommon at other times.

Indeed, the Morrison government, still fresh from its election victory, has recently launched a "better tax" campaign which features tax cuts "for hard-working Australians" who can now "keep more of [their] money" [emphasis added].

The ostensible purpose is to inform taxpayers that they need to submit a tax return to receive the benefit. The obvious political reason for the emotive language and the extensive coverage is to enhance the government's popularity.

Such abuse of public funds is compounded by hypocrisy, through which an elaborate administrative process, specifically intended to confine such advertisements to objective information, is knowingly manipulated for partisan purposes, by both ministers and public servants. The process itself is badly flawed and in urgent need of reform. For this reason a recent detailed report by the Auditor-General on the administration of the policy, Government Advertising; June 2015 to April 2019, (Report no 7, 2019-20), is particularly welcome.

The current advertising campaign framework dates from 2008, with a number of minor amendments. It is based on three unexceptionable principles: that members of the public have the right to comprehensive information about their rights and obligations; that governments may legitimately use public funds to inform the public about their rights and obligations, to encourage informed discussion and to change behaviour; and that campaigns must not be conducted for party political purposes.

The framework also includes five campaign principles which expand on the general principles and which are supported by detailed guidelines. An independent communications committee examines compliance with the first four campaign principles, including the key requirements for objectivity and absence of party-political considerations. After receiving the ICC's report, the agency head is then required to certify compliance with all the guidelines. Overall responsibility for managing the framework lies with the Department of Finance under the Special Minister of State (currently the Minister of Finance, Mathias Cormann).

The audit by the Australian National Audit Office examines three government advertising campaigns for their compliance with the framework and also assesses Finance's general administration. The selected campaigns represent a reasonable cross-section. One is a lengthy, multi-phase campaign on a matter of controversial and partisan policy, the Powering Forward campaign boosting the government's claims to be reducing power prices and run by the Department of the Environment and Energy (2017-19).

According to the Auditor-General, the second campaign, Physical Activity for Young Women (2016-18) managed by the Department of Health, and the third, the National Child Care Plan campaign (2017-18), devised by the Department of Education, generally complied with the framework.

The Environment campaign on energy policy, Powering Forward, however, attracts more severe criticism. In assessing the campaign materials for the ICC, the department did not adequately document that information presented as fact was accurate and verifiable, as the Finance guidelines require. In the view of the ANAO, the department should have been able to show "a clear line of sight" between campaign statements and relevant source material.

The ANAO finds that the campaign did not contain overt political argument in the sense that it avoided the types of party-political argument highlighted in the Finance guidelines, such as mentioning the governing party by name or attacking the views of others. But it does criticise the accompanying media statement from the Minister of Energy, Angus Taylor, launching phase four of the campaign, in which he praised the Coalition for working to reduce electricity prices while Labor sided with the big energy companies. Indeed, the ANAO recommends that such ministerial statements should be subject to the same vetting process as the campaign materials themselves.

Asking politicians to meet the same standards of objectivity and non-partisanship as government officials may be a hard call. But the fact that the minister launched the campaign with a partisan speech does give the show away. The government clearly decided to fund such a campaign as a means of gaining political advantage. Moreover, as the ANAO usefully documents, there is a similarity of tone as well as content between the minister's statement and the advertisements, thus confirming suspicions that the campaign was intended to influence public support in the government's favour.

As is its standard practice, the ICC, the body designed to be an independent check on the objectivity of advertisements, did not vet the final text of the Powering Forward campaign. It simply assessed general proposals from the department for the various phases of the campaign and agreed that the advertisements were "capable of complying" with the framework. In the ANAO's view, the third-party compliance advisory function is failing to give the public and Parliament confidence in the framework.

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Strengthening the review process is one of the ANAO's key recommendations for the framework as a whole. It favours allowing the ICC (or any equivalent independent body) to review and advise on campaigns at any stage of development, including final advertising materials such as creative material and the media plan. The ANAO is also concerned about the high level of departmental discretion currently allowed for in the guidelines. It therefore recommends that the wording be tightened, for instance by mandating all the principles ("campaigns must be" etc rather than the looser "campaigns should be" etc).

The report notes that the ANAO has made similar recommendations about extending the scope of the ICC in 2015 and again in 2017. In response, Finance merely noted the recommendations without giving any considered brief on the topic to the minister, a response that the ANAO considers "poor practice". As a result, in spite of repeated requests, neither the department nor the minister has been called on to justify the restricted role of the ICC and the loose interpretation of the guidelines. This is a shockingly cavalier snub to the office of the Auditor-General, Parliament's principal guardian of government integrity. The failure to explain and justify suggests bad faith on the part of both the department and the minister who know current practice is indefensible but do not wish to change it.

If the authority of the Auditor-General is to be upheld, Parliament must come to the rescue, particularly through the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit. Ideally, the committee could encourage the government to tighten the framework. Alternatively, if ministers insist on bombarding us with pro-government propaganda at our expense, they could adopt a policy which openly legitimises the practice. Such a policy could require accuracy of factual statements and avoidance of overt reference to the governing party and of direct criticism of the opposition. But, within these limits, the policy would abandon any claim to be objective or non-partisan. Advertising could legitimately contain emotive language and presentation designed to create a good impression about the government and its policies. Such honesty may be too much to expect. But it would be better than the current practice which implicates the public service in a corrupted process.

More broadly, government advertising illustrates the difficulty of relying on departments under ministerial control, such as Finance or PM&C (the Prime Minister and Cabinet), to regulate the ethical behaviour of ministers and politicians generally. As with rules relating to parliamentary and electorate expenses and post-ministerial employment, compliance too easily becomes a matter of routine box-ticking which neither side has any interest in treating as an effective check on unethical practice. The remedy is to vest control in genuinely independent officials and agencies. But only Parliament, in practice the Senate crossbench, has the political leverage to impose such reforms.