With all the money we pay the Goverment, how dare they spend it on promoting themselves for elections?

If a goverment is that good, let the people decide on the past performance and you will probably find most voters have made up their minds who they will vote for before all the advertising and promotions on what party will do for it people.

To me they are a huge business using our hard earned money so they can put themselves into lerdership again. Where does it say that they can use our money to promote their Party?

google 'direct democracy arizona' and you will learn how citizens manage their affairs. you are not a citizen, you're a subject.

in oz, you live in a nominal monarchy, an oligarchy of the politician's guild in fact. they can spend their money as they please. it is theirs, they took from you and you let them. now get back to eating grass and raising more fleece- they'll want more next year.

Governments have a right to promote their policies. It is an essential part of good governance to get the information out there. Of course governments are going to do in the best possible light. It is then up to other parties, sitting members, institutions, etc to put forward any opposing views.

We pay our governments to improve policy. As part of this, we must accept that we pay them to promote this policy. It is inescapable that self-promotion will accompany this.

We can’t just leave all promotion up to the media, can we?

So I see it as quite reasonable that governments spend money on reminding us of all the good things about their style of governance come campaign time, if not constantly throughout their tenure.

This money should come from a neutral source. The taxpayer base is a much better source than donations from big business, or any form of donation/funding that has favours attached or the connotation of favours.

Donations are the really obscene thing about political funding in this country, not the use of taxpayer’s money for political promotion.

Each government, local, state and federal, should have a budget for self-promotion and policy advertising. But the government of the day must not have a huge advantage over the opposition by being able to spend taxpayer’s money while the opposition can’t. So opposition forces must also have reasonable advertising/promotional budgets.

Governments need to inform people of changes that affect their lives.

Sure governments use the opportunity to promote themselves, but what is the alternative? No communication between a government and the people? Is it just the worst possible solution except all the others?

Perhaps there could be an independent body that evaluates the cost-effectiveness of government advertising before allowing public money to be spent. But would it really be any less political, controversial or more cost effective that the current solution? I don't think so.

Also without public funding of political (election) campaigns a Party's ability to access the public would be almost totally dependent of the private wealth of its sponsors, which favours plutocracy. Again I think the current solution produces a better, more democratic, outcome.