A Labor Senator has today let the cat out of the bag on the Gillard Government’s planned taxpayer funded climate change advertising blitz, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment Simon Birmingham said today.
South Australian Senator Annette Hurley, who chairs the Senate’s Economics Committee, has late today confirmed the Government intends to use taxpayers’ own money in an attempt to win public support for a carbon tax.
“… the need to bring some facts into this debate is why this Government is planning to have some sort of advertising campaign to actually show people what the facts of this debate are all about and I certainly hope that that advertising campaign does go ahead because it is really well overdue…”
Annette Hurley, Senate, 21 March 2011
“Senator Hurley’s choice of words is significant in that she has let slip that the Government ‘is planning‘ this type of blatantly political campaign.
“Now we know why Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan have been so desperate in recent days not to rule out such a move it’s already happening.
“Julia Gillard clearly plans to use the $30 million set aside for the last shelved campaign, or even more, to help combat the public’s negativity about a carbon tax that before the last election she was very happy to rule out.
“Not only is Ms Gillard backflipping on her 2010 ‘no carbon tax’ pledge, she is also betraying her 2007 promise to ‘end the abuse of taxpayer funded government advertising’:
“Labor will end the abuse of taxpayer funded government advertising.”
Julia Gillard and Penny Wong, media release, 16 July 2007
“Nothing could be more underhanded than dipping into taxpayers’ pockets to fund a campaign in support of a new tax that will dig even further into those same taxpayer pockets.
“If Labor can’t sell the supposed merits of their Carbon Tax on their own they shouldn’t be expecting taxpayers to help them do so.”