Thursday, 7 April 2022

Government advertising

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (18:40): (1889) My matter for the adjournment tonight is for the attention of the Premier. People will be aware of what has happened this week with the Auditor-General’s report on government advertising. The indication, the clear position that the Auditor has taken, is that illegal action occurred. The government actually broke the law in running party-political advertising in the 2019 election campaign. In the so-called ‘fair share’ campaign, most of the ads were clearly lopsided, designed to spruik the government or attack the commonwealth. We are within days of a new federal election. We have got clear indications from the Auditor’s report that the actual law that was changed in 2017 has not been properly communicated to departments and that there is a clear and illegal set of actions that have happened by the government.

The Premier went on a rant in the lower house and has sought to defy the material that has come from the Auditor, whereas I think the independent Auditor-General ought to be adhered to and listened to and the government ought to be putting in place steps to stop this happening again. Since I can only, through this forum, appeal to the Premier I would ask that the Premier pass my adjournment to Jeremi Moule, the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, and that Mr Moule take on board what has been put forward by the Auditor and Mr Moule intervene immediately, urgently, this week, before a federal election is called and insist that departments obey the law and go through the proper processes—insist, as he should as the head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet—and proceed to make sure that proper guidelines are in place and that there is no deviation from those guidelines.

We know from what the Auditor said that the Department of Premier and Cabinet has not promulgated adequate guidelines to explain what is required, and the Department of Premier and Cabinet should do that forthwith. Indeed the urgency of this cannot be overemphasised. I do not think we want to get down the track in the next couple of weeks and see the Premier and his government launching more illegal and corrupt advertising campaigns—more advertising campaigns that are designed to force a particular view on the community using taxpayers money. I would also ask Mr Moule, through the Premier, to not only move very quickly here but to institute procedures to force the Labor Party to pay the taxpayers money back from 2019.