Victorian taxpayers stung for ads ruled ‘political’

Daniel Andrews has refused to apologise for using taxpayers’ money for political advertising, instead claiming it’s all the Morrison government’s fault.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire

An unrepentant Daniel Andrews has sought to blame Morrison government funding allocations for the fact his government spent more than $13m of taxpayers’ money on advertising campaigns found by the Victorian Auditor-General to have been political.

In a report tabled in state parliament on Wednesday, the Auditor-General, Andrew Greaves, found the “Our Fair Share” advertising campaign – launched ahead of the 2019 federal election – was partisan in that it “could easily be seen to … criticise the commonwealth ­government”.

Mr Greaves found both the “Our Fair Share” and the “Victoria’s Big Build” campaigns promoted the Andrews government in a manner that did not fully comply with laws the state government introduced in 2017.

“Most OFS and a small number of VBB advertisements were political,” he found. “The statements about the Victorian government appeared to have a positive tone. They referred to billions of dollars or ‘record levels’ of investment. The statements about ‘Canberra’ were negative. They used language such as ‘cuts’ and ‘miss out’.

“Members of the public were likely to find the language in some of the advertisements to be particularly emotive. One of the television advertisements included the line ‘Don’t let Canberra short-change our kids’.”

Asked in question time whether he would direct the Labor Party to refund Victorian taxpayers for the ads, the Premier said “When the Prime Minister stops ripping off Victorians, we’ll stop running ads telling every Victorian that they’re being ripped off by the Prime Minister from Sydney, for Sydney, who couldn’t find Victoria with a cut lunch and a road map.”

The $1.7m “Our Fair Share” campaign ran from April to June 2019, amid the federal election campaign, with funding from state education, health and transport departments.

The $11.5m “Victoria’s Big Build” campaign began ahead of the 2018 state election and is still under way, with funding from the Transport Department and the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority.

The campaigns involved ads on TV, radio, print media and digital platforms, and “live banners” at football stadiums.

The Auditor-General’s investigation examined the extent to which the advertisements complied with laws the government introduced in 2017 “to ensure government advertising is in the public interest and to stop public sector agencies publishing political advertising”.

Opposition Treasury spokesman David Davis said the findings confirmed that Mr Andrews was continuing “to use people’s money as his personal ATM”.