I guess every mum has their moments of minor indulgence: for me it's 15 blissful, uninterrupted minutes of News Radio in the bathroom every morning (10 if the natives are restless). This morning it was very nearly my last 15 minutes as I choked in the shower hearing that the budget for promoting the Coalition's failed Work Choices legislation had been a cool $100 million.
One hundred million dollars. And what did that achieve? An electoral rout and a "never again" tag (for what it's worth). And I guess there were some jobs and profits made at advertising agencies and the media outlets that ran the ads as a silver lining.
The obvious question is, what else could the government do with $100mil?
I'm no economist, but I can spout what I know about: the cost of medical research. You know, that thing that saves lives...
Yesterday it was announced that the federal government would invest $107million over the next five years on nine largescale Australian research programs addressing complex research problems like how to improve the health outcomes of Australians with developmental disabilities or who have suffered strokes and developing new treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Maybe workplace reform is about as complex a problem as any of these... But is advertising a failed campaign worth five years of medical research?
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2 comments:
What a colossal waste of money!! But then, nothing about the Howard government should surprise me!
I fear it was just the market price- the fact was raised in the context of "would the Gillard Government spend that much to promote the carbon not-tax?"
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