The Government is set to slash the bloated printing and communications allowance that has afforded incumbent MPs a massive election-propaganda advantage.
It is expected that Special Minister of State John Faulkner will soon announce a decision to wind back the allowance, which grew to unprecedented size under the Howard government.
Originally set at $8000 a year, the allowance hit a peak at $150,000 a year in 2005 as a result of the Coalition winning an absolute majority in the Senate.
It has been allowed to be rolled over across the three-year election cycle, meaning the nation's 226 incumbent MPs and Senators can share in an election-year war chest worth more than $100 million as they seek to see off challengers with no access to public funds.
The Howard government changed the system on a number of occasions, drawing much fire for moves aimed at entrenching itself in power.
While the Labor opposition railed from time to time at the largesse, there had been fears that it would not alter the system if it won government.
The Faulkner move is set to decisively explode that theory, winding back many of the changes that ramped up support to incumbents over a number of years.
"The advantages of incumbency in our political system have been great," the minister said.
"They won't be as great for the Rudd Government when it goes to the polls because of decisions for better governance and better processes."
Before the 2004 election, the Howard administration moved to allow federal MPs and senators to use their printing entitlements to run off how-to-vote cards not just for themselves, but for other federal MPs, or senators, or even state parliamentary candidates.
A matter of months before last year's election, it moved to provide for the allowance to be spent outside MPs' electorates, benefiting incumbents who were contesting seats that had been substantially redrawn at redistribution.
It had at least two NSW MPs facing vastly different boundaries.
One was returned. One lost his seat.
Those changes were made by regulation so as not to attract parliamentary debate.
The Faulkner move against the printing and communication allowance is part of reforms promised by the new administration in the areas of accountability and transparency.
Senator Faulkner has special responsibility for this, being not only the Special Minister of State, overseeing the nation's electoral machinery, but also being Cabinet Secretary, the Prime Minister's right-hand man on the implementation of all government policy.
A new ministerial code of conduct is already extant and Senator Faulkner has repeated Labor pledges to move quickly to revamp the Freedom of Information Act. Labor is to appoint an FOI commissioner and end the practice of conclusive certificates, whereby a minister can close down an FOI request without appeal and without reasons.
"In government advertising, you'll see, at long last, proper guidelines in place with which to measure content of advertising, and very solid processes to ensure the guidelines are adhered to," Senator Faulkner said. "I think you'll see an end to the extraordinarily wasteful and partisan political government advertising you've seen over the past nearly 12 years."
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, who chairs the Expenditure Review Committee of Cabinet, told Parliament yesterday that the Howard government had spent $457million on advertising in the 16 months before the election. From $95million in 2006, the previous administration had spent $368 million in 2007 up to the November 24 election, a 285 per cent increase with Mr Tanner noting, "That wasn't even a full year."
Email a friend
Favourites
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Digg
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Reddit
Newsvine
LinkedIn
Kwoff
Twitter