Opinion: Labor skirts line between public service announcement and self-promotion

The State Labor Government has launched a new media strategy complete with shiny new social media videos. Are you paying to make them look good, asks Jessica Marszalek.

POLITICAL diehards who’ve had cause to scroll through the social media accounts of State Labor Government ministers lately will have noticed a new professional and highly produced slant.

They’re full of glossy videos, making the government’s announcements, talking up their track record, all spliced with happy images, uplifting music and paid for by you.

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They’re not classed as political advertising. But they sure look like it.

Premier of Queensland Annastacia Palaszczuk

It’s a new media strategy openly being talked up by one senior press secretary as a way to bypass traditional press outlets they don’t believe to be friendly enough.

There is an argument a government should embrace technology to get their messages out, especially in a contracting traditional media market.

But where is the line between glossy public announcement and glossy promotional video?

And should taxpayers be funding it?

Some of the videos are straight forward public service messages.

One tells Queenslanders they can now get the contraceptive pill and urinary tract infection medication more easily over the counter at pharmacies. Okay, that’s good to know.

There’s another – inexplicably featuring quirky Seinfeld music – in which Manufacturing Minister Cameron Dick strolls through a toilet paper storage facility and tells people not to lose their minds panic buying because there’s more than enough to go around. Fair enough.

State Development, Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Planning Minister Cameron Dick

But some of the others aren’t so straight forward.

The most obvious example is the recent announcement of Labor’s backflip plan to aircondition every Queensland school, despite having earlier argued the LNP’s plan to do so was too costly.

Before media could even arrive at the Premier’s press conference, the announcement was made on social media through a minute-plus video that set out the plan to cool all schools over the next two years and how the Palaszczuk Government was delivering excellent education and jobs for Queenslanders.

It featured inspiring music, the soothing voice of a press secretary and slow-motion vision of the Premier walking alongside glowing, schoolchildren.

There was no Labor Party branding but it wouldn’t have gone astray as a party-political ad during an election race.

Another, posted last week on the announcement of the government’s five-point plan to address youth crime, is simply a spliced-up video of the Premier’s press conference highlights.

There’s commentary about “tough action” and “drastic consequences” for young offenders, but no actual information about what the policy is.

It’s unclear how the video is doing anything to inform the community, other than about how tough the Premier apparently is on youth crime.

And who’s producing these videos? Press secretaries with photographic experience have been hired to run cameras around media events and a new office of press secretaries has been put together in recent week to produce the shiny ads for social media.

Fortunately for the government, this isn’t at odds with the advertising and marketing communication code of conduct it has written for itself.

The new code came into effect in December last year.

It reads: "This Code of Conduct provides specific criteria for Queensland Government agencies and government entities to ensure advertising and marketing community is objective, factual and an efficient use of funds. It does not apply to advertising and communication actively undertaken, and paid for, by Ministerial Offices."

Otherwise, there are quite a few rules stipulating when advertising is okay and when it is not.

For example, advertising "must not give prominence to the voice or image, of a Minister, any other member of parliament or a candidate nominated for parliament".

Neither should it "be designed to influence public support for a political party, a candidate for election or a Member of parliament".

You know why? Because you’re paying for it.

Your money, taxpayer money, shouldn’t be used to give the incumbents a leg up in an election year.

Thirty years ago, Tony Fitzgerald wrote of the role of press secretaries in the Queensland government as being legitimate and necessary if they led to a better informed community.

“Media units can also be used, however, to control and manipulate the information obtained by the media and disseminated to the public,” he warned in his report into systemic political corruption and abuse of power in Queensland.

“Although most Government-generated publicity will unavoidably and necessarily be politically advantageous, there is no legitimate justification for taxpayers’ money to be spent on politically motivated propaganda.

“The only justification for press secretaries and media units is that they lead to a community better informed about Government and departmental activities.

“If they fail to do this then their existence is a misuse of public funds, and likely to help misconduct to flourish.”