McCully Murray: Urgent Debates — Budget Advertising Programme—Report of Auditor-General 
McCully Murray: Urgent Debates — Budget Advertising Programme—Report of Auditor-General 
[Volume:619;Page:15343] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 The letter that the National Party received today from the Auditor-General contained no good news and indeed contained quite a lot of criticism for a number of parties associated with the Government. There was criticism for the Ministry of Social Development and for the Inland Revenue Department there was a smack across the knuckles for Treasury and of course in appropriately guarded and diplomatic language there was a decent-sized serve for Cabinet. Each of those parties failed in the view of the Auditor-General to discharge the obligations they have under the Cabinet rules. Let me start by making it clear that the Auditor-General’s report today was not about the programme we have seen at vast taxpayer expense under the slogan “You’re Better Off with Labour”. That is a completely different additional matter where this Government has used taxpayers’ funds to try to secure its re-election. The Auditor-General is on to that too. He has embarked upon another inquiry and that will be a topic for discussion in this House on another day. This report is about the $21.15 million that is to be spent by the Ministry of Social Development and the Inland Revenue Department on telling us what a good Government we have and how lucky we all are. 
First let me be clear that the National Party has no quibble with the notion that those who are entitled to some form of benefit from the Government and that those who are to have something done to them by the Government are entitled to be told about it. Over time we have made it clear that that is a legitimate use of taxpayers’ expenditure provided it is done within the Cabinet rules and provided it meets the test of the Auditor-General’s office. My leader Dr Brash made it clear that that was a process committed to in earlier times. There are two things that are different about the programme the Auditor-General wrote to us about today. First of all there is its scale. This is $21 million of taxpayer expenditure. That $21 million dwarfs most of the major brand advertising campaigns as Mr Prebble told the House this afternoon. Secondly there was a lack of process about this programme—a process that normally involves informal consultation with the office of the Auditor-General. That is why the Auditor-General has told us today in very clear terms that this programme has not met the test of the Cabinet rules and has not met the test of his office. He has told all the parties to go back and do the job they should have done in the first place and has predicted that the figure that will ultimately be spent will be somewhat less than $21 million in the event. 
As Mr Prebble has told us this is a damning report. It comes many many weeks after the matter was first raised with the Audit Office by the Opposition parties and many many weeks after the Auditor-General’s office said that it would report. I want the House today to know the reason for that. It is because the highly paid lawyers of the Inland Revenue Department and the Ministry of Social Development have been pointing their bazookas in the direction of the Auditor-General’s office and trying to get this report watered down. I would love to have seen the first draft of the report that came down today; it would have been a ripper. For weeks those highly paid lawyers have been trying to negotiate down the scale of the wording that is ultimately in the report made available today. 
As Mr Prebble said after making allowances for the diplomatic language and the careful wording of the Auditor-General let us just have a look at what he has told us. The Auditor-General has stated that at the time of the Budget some people in the Government sat down and decided to have a very substantial advertising campaign. He has told us that they had some consultations with an advertising agency. He does not tell us in his letter whom that advertising agency was but I will tell the House today that it was Clemenger BBDO Ltd. On the basis merely of some conversations with that agency a figure of $21 million was devised as being an appropriate level of expenditure for a public advertising campaign. Mr Prebble has also told the House that a number of Ministers were involved in that process. Noting the sheepish look on the face of Mr Mallard I would say that he clearly was one of them. Clearly Mr Cullen was one as were a number of other senior Ministers and no doubt “Minister Simpson” was involved in that process. Then those Ministers handed the project over to their senior public servants. 
On the basis of that work we were told on Budget night that an advertising programme the largest by many times ever embarked upon by a Government in this country and costing $21.15 million would be embarked upon to tell us how lucky we are to have this Government. We were told that this advertising programme would last for 3 years but miraculously much of the money would be spent at the time most useful to the Government: during the coming election year. On the basis of that announcement this House passed legislation that handed over the cheque for this year’s amount of 11.5 million bucks. That money as the Auditor-General has told us today has been approved by the Parliament handed over to the executive and can be spent by the executive notwithstanding that the whole premise on which that figure was arrived at was wrong. None of the tests that should properly have been applied were applied and none of the justifications that the departments were required to produce could be produced. That money was handed over by Parliament in breach of the rules because the Government used its majority to require Parliament to hand over the cash. 
The Auditor-General tells us that there will now need to be some additional processes engaged in to second-guess that process and to double-check it. On the basis of that double-checking the Auditor-General states that we will not need $21 million. He does not know how much the cost will be but he knows that Mr Mallard should have known that before he came to Parliament with the Budget and that the Government should have known that before it asked Parliament to pass the bill. The Auditor-General states that it is too late now for a costing but we should do the programme anyway and that it will cost less than $21 million. 
We also know that the activities of the Ministry of Social Development and the Inland Revenue Department do not stack up. But let us be clear about whom the major culprit is. It is the Ministry of Social Development—Mr Maharey’s ministry—which clearly acting under his direction has put aside almost $10 million for so-called generic advertising. That is not for communication in terms of sending a letter to people that tells them what their entitlement is and asks whether they want to access it but is highly paid television advertisements that tell us in propaganda terms how lucky we are to have the Government. All that money is to be spent in a way that will benefit this Government at a critical time in an election year. 
The Auditor-General tells us further that Treasury was asleep on the job and failed to run its ruler over the programme and he gives it a whack across the knuckles. Finally he tells all the parties that they must now go back and do the job they should have done before Budget day. He states to those departments and Ministers that they must now claw back the amount of money that does not meet the test of the Cabinet rules or the Audit Office scrutiny. He makes it clear that the Audit Office will watch that process with some care. On that basis maybe we will see the brakes put on the high-spending high-living ways of the Government. The Prime Minister who talked about an “orgy of advertising” when a few hundred thousand dollars of expenditure was being embarked upon in a previous age must now live with the fact that her own orgy of taxpayers’ expenditure is about to come to an end.