Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It worked because the Democrats sold out. That is why it worked; it had nothing to do with the advertising campaign. There was the campaign promoting the changes to Medicare. Remember the campaign on national security, the famous fridge magnet? I wonder how many people still have their fridge magnets. And of course there was that scurrilous campaign, $55 million on the introduction of Work Choices, an advertising campaign that was run before the legislation was even introduced into the parliament.

Mr Deputy President, $118 million was spent on the GST, $18½ million on the national security campaign, $54 million on Medicare, the PBS and those other health campaigns—all to convince the public on the government’s policies, to assist the government in its election campaign. As Senator Faulkner has just referred to, we now have a situation where government advertising under this government has reached $1.8 billion since the Howard government was elected, and, in the current two years, this and the next financial year, it has reached almost $1 billion. It has generally run at around $100 million to $150 million on average. It is now running at around $500 million on average. And now, again, we are going to have a campaign to try and convince the people about the changes to Work Choices, because the previous campaign did not work. The Prime Minister has now accepted that it is not a fair system, so the government is now going to spend millions more dollars trying to convince the public that it is going to change Work Choices to make it fairer.

I am old enough to remember senators and members of the coalition attacking Gough Whitlam when he bought Blue Polesa national treasure now—and attacking Paul Keating when he put the Gould prints into the cabinet room. The worst thing that had ever happened! ‘Scurrilous and outrageous conduct,’ they cried! Yet here we have a Prime Minister who wants to increase the size of his dining room simply so he can enjoy his last supper! (Time expired)

Question agreed to.