Prebble Richard: Urgent Debates — Budget Advertising Programme—Report of Auditor-General 
Prebble Richard: Urgent Debates — Budget Advertising Programme—Report of Auditor-General 
[Volume:619;Page:15339] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 The granting of an urgent debate by the Speaker for a debate of this sort is not common. As one of the Ministers pointed out when there are budgetary matters on it is uncommon. We then have to ask why the Speaker thought that this is an issue that the House should look at. When we look at the Standing Orders we can see that it not only has to be an important matter but it has to be a matter that requires the attention of the House. When we read the report we can see why. I realise that this is written by the Auditor-General who writes in the bureaucratic language of that office. I guess one has to be a member of Parliament to realise that this is a damning report. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Rubbish! 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: One has a fear that that means the Minister will not take any notice of the Auditor-General’s report. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Will the member read paragraph 14 of the report? 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Let me read him this paragraph: “However this letter has set out our concerns about the robustness of the process for costing the Budget bid”. That means that there was no proper analysis before $21 million of taxpayers’ money was decided on. It also refers to “the lack of consistency in approach”. I guess what it means by that is that this is a huge over-the-top expenditure. The report goes on to state: “Those concerns mean that it is not possible in our view to say that the budgeted costs are a realistic reflection of the likely actual costs of a communications campaign”. What the report is actually stating is that the Government just picked up and guessed a figure. 
I am a bit concerned that the Auditor-General did not go further. The Auditor-General said: “We have not sought to compare the costs of this communications strategy with other government-funded public information campaigns.” The Auditor-General did not have to do that. The Auditor-General could have asked how this compares with the cost of selling McDonald’s KFC or Air New Zealand the biggest purchasers of television advertising. I can tell the Government the answer. This is the biggest advertising campaign. There is no one who is proposing to spend $21 million promoting a single product because that is what this is. This is a single product—the Government’s Budget. It is the biggest advertising programme in the history of New Zealand. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: What percentage of the cost is it? 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: If the Minister would like to go back and check he will find that the Government of New Zealand was able to spend less money informing the public about GST than it is spending now to sell this Budget. In fact the Government spent less money telling us all about decimal currency than we are now being given to sell this Budget. I will tell the Minister the reason why. When one has a Budget that one says is helping people to go back to work then finds that solo mothers who accept the Government’s advertising and go back to work will pay 92.2 percent tax I have to say to Mr Cunliffe that I do not think $21 million will cut it. I do not think he would be able to persuade solo mothers that this is a great package when they actually work out that when they go back to work they will pay the Government $92 for every $100 they earn. 
I can tell Mr Cunliffe how this Budget came about and how the spending came about. It was not done as the Auditor-General was told. No before the Budget when a group of senior Labour Party Ministers realised how complicated and how unsaleable the Budget was they panicked. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Yeh right! 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I tell Mr Cunliffe that they had a meeting and he was not one of them. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Yeh right! 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: They had a meeting with a number of senior officials from the Beehive—political officials no civil servants—and they panicked. They said they would need the mother of all advertising Budgets. Then they went and spoke to their friends in the advertising industry who said: “You’re going to have to spend more money on this campaign than anybody has ever spent in the history of New Zealand.” I will say that again: “more money on this campaign than anybody has ever spent before”. 
Pita Paraone 
: And why? 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I will tell the member why. A solo mother under this package who accepts the propaganda and goes back to work will find that the Government will take $92 out of every $100 she earns. Of course there is another maxim that the advertising agency did not draw to the public’s attention. If one has a bad product and a big advertising budget one just goes bankrupt faster. That is the real problem. 
The advertising agency also forgot another maxim which is that good government sells itself. But this Government knows that it cannot persuade ordinary working New Zealanders that this is a Budget for ordinary working New Zealanders. When one analyses it it is a welfare Budget and 300000 people will benefit the majority of whom are welfare beneficiaries. What is the importance of that? Well that goes to a point that the Auditor-General also makes in Auditor-General - type language so I will have to explain it. The Auditor-General is basically saying that he thinks they ought to review “generic television advertisements to promote the package as a whole.” What does “generic television advertisements” mean? I will give members an example. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Propaganda. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Well it is propaganda and I thank the member. But I like to give people an example. There are new things called “PHOs]primary health organisations. The Government is now spending millions of dollars and I have seen the ads on television—and I do not watch television very often but I must have seen it half a dozen times—where a charming young lady appears and says she is acting on behalf of the Government and as a result of these new primary health organisations general practitioner visits will be cheaper. I am sure she did not realise she was lying—she was paid to read out a script—but we all know that that is a lie. We all know that in fact as a result of these primary health organisations and the extra bureaucracy—because the General Practitioners Association has explained it—the cost of general practitioners has gone up. Has the Government withdrawn that advertisement? No it has not. Do we all belong to primary health organisations? No we do not. But the Government thinks that it is necessary to have “generic television advertisements” promoting its changes to the health system. The Government is now going to spend money on television to tell us all that we are benefiting somehow from the Budget when as the Auditor-General points out only 300000 of us are being so targeted. The Auditor-General also knows that the Government actually does know the name of every beneficiary—I know that some of them are fraudulent names but they do know the names and the addresses. 
Do members know that a letter to each beneficiary explaining that he or she will be paying 92.2 percent extra in tax can be sent for $300000? Of course the Auditor-General wants to know why the Government does not do that instead of spending $21 million on the most expensive advertising campaign in New Zealand’s history the biggest ever done by a Government; greater than the amount of money needed to tell us all about GST greater than the amount of money to tell us all about decimal currency and of course it is going to 3.7 million New Zealanders who do not actually benefit at all. But we are going to be told just as we are told in the advertising for primary health organisations that the cost of medical visits is going down when we actually understand that they are going up. That is why one has to spend more money. If one is going to tell a lie one has to tell it often and tell it many times. But I have to tell the Government that $21 million will not cut it. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: This is a most experienced member. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: It most certainly is. I can remember that Government doing the Rub Out the Crim campaign. I can remember the Access scheme. Those programmes look mild compared with this. Actually rubbing out crims is not a bad thing. But this Government spends $21 million to try to persuade the majority of New Zealanders that a 92 percent tax rate is a good thing for solo mothers.