You may have noticed, like I have, just how many government ads have been on telly the past few months. It’s a long running trend - starting some years ago.

These ads bug me on a number of levels, but I have often wondered just how much public money (our money) is being spent on what often amounts to little more than propaganda for the government’s (mostly unpopular) policies.

GetUp have just launched a campaign that puts the figure at $2 billion since the government took office - $200,000 of that this year.

Yep, you read that right - $2 billion! GetUp claim that that works out to be around $1 million a day.

This is what GetUp are asking for:

GetUp is calling for the introduction of a new law that ensures that:

1. All future government advertising costs (from focus groups to media buying) are publicly available and easily accessible to the community via an annual report
2. All advertising above $250,000 is to be approved by an independent auditor who applies strict guidelines to limit advertising to the dissemination of public information
3. These guidelines are to be developed with public consultation with the final guidelines to be publicly available
4. These conditions to apply in both the federal and state governments within 1 year
5. A cap of $100 million p.a for total government advertising spending is to be imposed with any additional money to be approved by parliament.

The $100 million cap even seems high to me - I’m amazed that rules like this don’t already exist. Time we had some methinks…