Dr Sally Young writes:

In regard to the Special
Minister for State’s chief of staff, Peter Phelps, and his claims, I
suggest that people read ALL of the parliamentary submissions for
themselves to check his statements on government advertising.
The current reporting system is ludicrous and the rules on government
advertising are so lenient as to be basically non-existent. We have the
most lax system of regulating government advertising of any comparable
democracy. This is why the Howard government has been able to get away
with the GST advertising, Strengthening Medicare and now the IR ads.

As
to the accusations of my “bias” against the Howard government (yawn –
also levelled at the ABC, the universities, the media and any other
critics), I’ve pointed out, in my book and other places, that the NSW
and Victorian ALP governments are also big spenders and, like Howard,
who promised in 1995 to institute Auditor-General scrutiny of
government ads before they were broadcast, ALP state leaders have also
broken similar promises. Neither of the major party’s hands are clean
on this issue. Government advertising is being roundly abused for
partisan purposes in Australia.

Rather than cloak myself under
parliamentary privilege, I have been writing opinion pieces and talking
about alarmingly high spending on government ads (at both state and
federal level) for some time, which is why the Minister and Mr Phelps
have launched an all-out attack. Although they deride academics for
being in an “ivory tower,” they dislike it even more when we enter
public debate and dare to critique their methods.

The current
Senate inquiry into government advertising received submissions from a
number of people and organisations. In response to the concerns which
were raised in those submissions, Senator Eric Abetz submitted an
extraordinary response which tried to vilify EVERY non-government group
and individual who made a submission to the inquiry and described
various authors or their submissions as “pathetic,” “partisan” and
“left wing.” See it here.

In
attacking us, the Senator also tried to identify various submission
authors’ political ideologies and associations (such as my Fabian
membership but also others’ affiliations and prior work histories).
This was a tired McCarthy-era attempt to engage in unfair
investigations and accusations against those who had expressed concerns
as a way of trying to silence or discredit them. The Clerk of the
Senate, Harry Evans, who also put in a submission suggesting government
advertising processes were not transparent enough, was subjected to a
very sustained and public attack.

The personal attacks are an
example of how the Howard government will not tolerate dissent or
debate. But they are also attempts to deflect attention from its high
spending and are further evidence of just how sensitive the government
is on the issue of government advertising. The government is sensitive
because there are very real concerns that it is misusing government
advertising as pseudo-political advertising to shore up its re-election
chances.

Noel Turnbull writes:

Read your piece by Peter Phelps. I should tell him – and your readers –
that not only are Sally Young and I both members of a giant global
conspiracy to bring about socialism but I’m also contributing a chapter
on government PR to a book she is editing for Cambridge on government
communications. I am planning to write at some length of my experiences
with the Ministerial Committee under this and previous governments so
will save a detailed response until then.

Meanwhile,
at my age, I’m delighted to be described as “swashbuckling.” I loved
both filmed versions of Cyrano and was thrilled by the Errol Flynn
Robin Hood and the Crimson Pirate at the Saturday arvo flicks but sadly
my pleasure was vicarious only.

May I also say that the issue
ought to be discussed without Phelps’s ideological witchhunts. As a
child of the Enlightenment I could say, using his standards, that I
disapprove of his Minister for being an anti-gay, fundamentalist
Christian. But I don’t, because the impetus for witchhunts is
irrelevant to making a case against the Government’s outrageous misuse
of my taxes for political propaganda purposes in ways which would be
illegal in most other western countries.