BER "Electoral Advertising" signs to get axe

Wednesday, 21 July 2010 06:53

The Electoral Commission has reiterated its ruling that the Government's Building the Education Revolution signs are electoral advertising and any within 6 metres of a polling booth will need to be removed or covered. Public servants are patrolling school grounds to ensure appropriate authorisations have been placed on the signs by school staff.

The signs have cost taxpayers $3.8 million and now, according to the Australian, education authorities are directing School Principals to put authorisation stickers on each sign with Commonwealth public servants patrolling school grounds to ensure the stickers are affixed.  Come again? Why are Principals required to append anything to political advertising?

Surely the ALP should be doing this...noting that they would have to get permission to enter school grounds. Or perhaps the patrolling public servants should become the sticker squad.

The BER has created some considerable rorts and school rip-offs into the billions of dollars. The brazen use of school grounds for political advertising has added another $3.8 million in waste. By comparison to the sticker squad will cost small darts, but we wonder what the cost is nonetheless.

To put these costs in perspective, today the Government and Bob Brown are opposing Tony Abbott's attempts to cut wasteful expenditures. It all adds to the deficit and debt.

The application of stickers to let the Government and the ALP off the hook for its improper use of taxpayer funds for electoral advertising is a distraction for Principals who, surely, have better things to do.