Michael McGuire: ‘Commercial-in-confidence’ is a poor excuse for state secrets
One day after declaring we couldn’t know what the UK crooner charged to visit, the government is singing the same tune about two Adelaide 500 guests, writes Michael McGuire.
Opinion
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Here we go again. A day after the state government declined to tell taxpayers how much it spent to bring singer Sam Smith to South Australia, it has followed up by refusing to divulge how much it showered upon a couple of professional Royal Family freeloaders in order to entice them to the Adelaide 500.
New premier Peter Malinauskas made the reasonable decision to bring back the 500 but why anyone thought the event could be improved by funding a couple from one of the world’s richest families to turn up in Adelaide is more of a mystery.
But sure, take that at face value. Zara Tindall is the daughter of Princess Anne, the niece of King Charles III. Her husband Mike played rugby for England. They fit comfortably under the tag ‘celebrity’. They have some sort of profile, but why anyone would care what either of them think is more perplexing.
As with Smith, the invitation is not the biggest issue. Neither is paying them, even if it looks like a vanity exercise from a government desperately looking to impress various other celebrities.
Even if the Tindalls are part of a family worth billions, who benefit lavishly from the public purse in their own country and could afford their own airfares if they were truly keen on seeing SA. The problem is the state government refuses to tell anyone how much South Australians paid them.
A state government spokesperson justified whatever the expense was in the same way it did with Smith. The ever-nebulous “exposure’’ argument. She said Mike Tindall has a “social media reach’’ of 586,000.
“Collectively, the combined value of this exposure is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and helped contribute to a successful Adelaide 500,’’ she said, without detailing how that number was arrived at.
Of course, the government is hiding behind that old phrase “commercial in confidence’’. One of the most overused excuses for a cover-up in any government. It was wheeled out to obscure how much money taxpayers have contributed to the already bulging wallet of the singer Sam Smith.
Now, Smith is not a singer I am tremendously familiar with. But Smith did do a tune for the Bond movie Spectre back in 2015. Spectre wasn’t a great Bond film, but the tone was set early on by Smith who conjured up a truly dreadful song.
Maybe my problem with Spectre was that Smith’s song was so epically dull, that my brain was anaesthetised for the first half-hour of the film and by the time I woke up I had no idea what Daniel Craig was up to.
Smith once claimed it only took 20 minutes to come up with The Writing’s on the Wall. Smith was exaggerating. Or if it is true, the first 15 minutes must have been taken up by Smith rebooting the laptop or sharpening a pencil.
Anyway, it was a song so terrible, it made me decide never to listen to Sam Smith again. I have watched Spectre again. It certainly improves if you fast forward through the opening credits.
But in many ways, my taste in music is neither here nor there. If people want to subject their ears to Smith, that’s entirely fine. What’s not so fine is the SA government refusing to tell us how much Smith was paid to have a singsong down in the McLaren Vale at the D’Arenberg Cube. Especially when it’s an invitation-only event where hardly any South Australians are allowed to attend.
The Tindall and Smith cases also show a staggering lack of imagination. A visit to the Star of Greece at Willunga. A visit to the d’Arenberg Cube. Nowhere else to go, although perhaps the government is protecting its $2 million investment in the Cube.
That Tourism Minister Zoe Bettison is hiding behind the old “commercial-in-confidence’’ is no surprise. It’s a favourite phrase of pollies, right up there with “I don’t recall’’ and “I don’t accept the premise of your question’’. The best the government could finally come up with was that the number was “well south” of $1 million. There was no indication what “well south’’ means.
It’s a nonsense. What information is Bettison protecting here? Why is Sam Smith’s fee a state secret?
Part two of the “commercial-in-confidence’’ excuse is usually some implication that it must remain hush-hush because otherwise some miscreant such as the government of NSW or Queensland will swoop in and steal Sam Smith from under our very nose. It makes no sense.
If you are a tourism Minister of another state, all you have to do is ring up Smith’s management and find out how much the singer wants.
The commercial-in-confidence line is only wheeled out to spare the government embarrassment, because it knows that if it admits it paid Smith more than $1m to turn up for a few songs and some Instagram snaps featuring koalas then there will be a backlash. The argument being that it’s a lot of money that could be better spent elsewhere.
That’s a bit simplistic and reductive, which is why Liberal tourism spokeswoman Michelle Lensink was keen to use it, telling ABC’s breakfast program the money could have been used to provide vaccinations against encephalitis in the Riverland.
But still, it’s nice to see the Liberals come on board with the idea of governments being transparent with such things. It was only two years ago that former Premier Steven Marshall was telling us he couldn’t possibly tell us how much the state was forking out to bring a game from rugby league’s State of Origin series to Adelaide because, yes, the old “commercial in confidence”.
“I think it offers a fantastic investment and return for the taxpayers in South Australia,” Marshall said at the time.
Which is similar to the various lines used by Bettison to justify the Smith spend.
But the truth is we never really do find out whether all this largesse is worth the effort. Marshall claimed the origin game would inject $15m into the economy, but then again you will find most “economic impact” statements filed in the fiction section at your local library.
Similarly, the full cost and benefit of Smith’s South Australian sojourn, and whether we just funded a nice holiday for a millionaire, will never be fully known.
Bettison talked about Smith’s large reach on Instagram and the social media effect of the various influencers that were invited to the 300-person event.
Bizarrely Bettison on ABC radio also claimed it as some sort of victory that Smith’s October concert tour is now starting in Adelaide. Is that a thing?
Across the years, Premier Peter Malinauskas has talked about the need to restore the public’s faith in politics. It is this kind of unnecessarily secretive behaviour, especially when hosting events that deliberately exclude, that helps undermine that confidence.
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