Bill Ralston: Public servants in a spin

You would not want to be a PR person or a polar bear right now. It's hunting season and the Government is locked and loaded, looking to wipe out waste.

John Key's memorable line about Labour's "hug a polar bear" programmes, ineffective campaigns that sound good but don't deliver results, wryly summed up this Government's contempt for many of the touchy-feely, state-funded marketing campaigns the last Labour administration spawned.

Much of the many millions spent on these things proved to be a cynical exercise to try to convince New Zealanders difficult problems were being effectively tackled when, in reality, they were not.

We face a childhood obesity epidemic, so run a series of ads on television telling kids to eat their vegetables. Not a single kid will be inspired by it to munch on more broccoli, but the public will be reassured that something is being done.

Can anyone honestly tell me that they have been provoked into leaping from their couch and start running around outdoors by Sparc's inane Push Play campaign?

I'm sure the advertising agency was delighted to receive Sparc's cash and the media overjoyed to bill the Government's sports agency for running the commercials, but what evidence is there to suggest New Zealanders now enjoy more robust health and fitness as a result?

Sure, some public education campaigns are necessary and do achieve results.

For example, the mental health campaign fronted by John Kirwan demonstrably achieved results in changing New Zealanders' attitudes towards people with psychological issues.

Kirwan and others involved in that programme have taken the stigma out of mental illness.

I've argued this before, but can anyone prove that family violence has been reduced by the several series of commercials that have run over the past few years?

Are we having fewer injuries around the home since ACC started mounting campaigns advising us not to accidentally have an accident?

Let's face it, accidents are unplanned, unforeseen and happen by chance and nobody deliberately sets out to have one.

A classic feelgood "hug a polar bear" programme has to be the $15.7 million a year campaign by Sparc, the Ministry of Education and Health Department to encourage young kids to indulge in healthy activities.

It does so by making them sit in front of a computer, which is surely one of those less healthy activities it seeks to reduce.

Worse, the Mission-On website cost $3.7 million to set up. Dear Lord! I'd be happy to set up a website for them for $37.

At the same time as it spent untold millions of dollars on deluging the public with these PR campaigns, the last government padded itself with the layers of protection afforded by a bloated public service, which grew by a massive 50 per cent over the last decade.

Government communications staff, whose job it is to put a positive spin on everything the Government does, grew by 50 in just the past five years to a massive total of 488 spin doctors.

I'd hazard a guess that Government communications staff actually out-number the working journalists in the newsrooms of the all major media outlets in this country.

There were teams of communications staff whose sole job was to communicate with their own Cabinet ministers. They were charged with putting the best possible construction on everything their ministry was doing and so covering the department's political butt.

State Services Minister Tony Ryall is making no apologies about targeting the spin doctors in his initial round of public service cuts.

Oh, sorry, I mean "capping" the public service. That phrase is a bit of spin from Tony that I'm sure he could not resist.

A "cap" means public service numbers will not grow. In fact, under this administration, they will fall.

The PSA is talking more than 750 jobs lost.

Well, frankly, you and I are paying those people's wages, and if they are wasting our money then tough luck.

National's hard-line approach to waste seems to be working already.

As virtually anyone in the advertising industry will tell you, the flow of marketing cash from government departments has dried up. Traditionally, state sector advertising spending peaks around now as departments frantically try to spend all their budget before the end of the financial year.

Not this year, however.

The only problem for National in stripping the public service, reducing the excessive spin machine and chopping the meaningless PR campaigns is that it will lose the protection that these devices afforded its predecessor.

Instead of being constantly told by legions of bureaucrats and multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns what a great job the Government is doing, people now will have the ability to make up their own minds based on what they see and hear for themselves