Labor Waste

Media Release – Greg Hunt MP

The Auditor General has released a damning report into the Government’s $31.5 million dollar Carbon Tax advertising campaign finding that it breached financial management regulations and tendering processes, while failing to sell its message.

These findings are extremely serious and indicate that proper processes were completely disregarded in the Government’s desperate attempt to put a positive spin on the unpopular Carbon Tax.

The Prime Minister must now immediately stop the remaining $10 million still set aside for the next advertising phase ahead of the Carbon Tax’s introduction on July 1. (ANAO Performance Audit Report 24 p.196).

The Report also reveals that the Prime Minister’s office was closely involved in approving the household mail-out in what was clearly a political campaign. 

And despite the millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money the campaign was found to have failed with research concluding “limited acceptance of the key campaign messages related to carbon pricing and household assistance and the findings that the advertisements did not translate to high levels of action” (p.220).  In response, the Minister approved an additional “intense advertising burst” in September last year with an increase in the campaign expenditure of $3.5 million.

The Audit Report tabled in Parliament has found:

• “A verbal approval was given for a DCEE delegate for a spending proposal, valued at $1.7 million, for the household mail-out distribution contract, that spending was approved without the proper financial authorisation…resulting in a breach of the financial management regulations.” (p. 29)
• “Six other DCCEE spending proposals only received the necessary financial approvals after the relevant funding agreement was entered into, resulting in further breaches of the financial management regulations.” (p.29)
• “DCEE’s select tender for procuring the print services for the household mail-out booklet, valued at $2.7 million for the publication of 10 million copies, was conducted within a severely compressed timeframe of approximately 1.5 days.” (p.30)
• “A last minute variation to the scope of the tender – which gave firms approximately 90 minutes to quote on the cost of printing the booklet…had the effect of further limiting the number of suppliers likely to submit satisfactory quotes, and further eroded the capacity of the tender process to maximise value for money.” (p.30)
• “The department was  not able to establish a clear line of sight between 52 statements presented as fact in the campaign and the sources cited in the matrix to support those statements.” (p.23)

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