Selling the Vote
Advertising, advertising everywhere we look. Research has fairly consistently proven that a word of mouth recommendation is much more effective than any other form of advertising such as television, radio or internet advertising. The link below from Nielsen’s gives a good overview of the efficacy of the various methods of advertising
Another important aspect of marketing is the product itself. If the product is good and people find it useful they will tell other people about the product. If on the other hand the product itself is poor the consumer will not give a good word of mouth referral and they will tell people of their negative experience.
Given that a word of mouth referral is so important, and having a good product is vital to getting a good word of mouth referral you’d think that there wouldn’t be too many poor products out there for sale or that those products would not sell. A quick search on many types of products will show that sadly this isn’t the case.
You would also think that if you have a good product, then you would need to advertise less. In my view this is true. As evidence I’d offer the following, think of your cities most popular restaurant and then consider, when did they last do a television, radio or even a Facebook advert? Having a hard time with that? They don’t have to advertise because word of mouth is all the promotion they ever need.
Now consider our political parties. How many good word of mouth referrals do they get? How much advertising do they engage in? Facebook in particular has become particularly painful for political advertising. The proliferation of Facebook pages containing political rants which in many cases are just obviously misleading has escalated over the past two or three years. The major parties are all as bad as each other.
What does all that say about their product? Pretty much speaks for itself I’d suggest. Once again though, all the major political parties are just as bad as each other. Worse still there are no easy answers. But their product and some of the irresponsible spruiking that major parties engage in are not the greatest concern to me.
Consider how these advertisements are paid for? There are two sources, public funds and private donations to the major parties. With regards to public funding there are arguments for and against. Public funding does somewhat level the playing field between candidates. Perhaps the strongest argument for is that it makes it less likely that our elected representatives will spend all their time fundraising instead of the doing what they were elected to do like developing policy. I’m strongly against public funding for just one simple reason. Public money should not be spent to support the views of a party which do not reflect my own, or other tax payers’ views.
As uncomfortable as public money being used for advertising makes me, the use of private money I find even more disturbing. This is for the very simple reason that we cannot be sure that this privately donated money is not influencing policy decisions. It almost certainly does. Lawrence Lessig’s book entitled ‘Republic, Lost’ outlines this very effectively. A Link to Lessig’s website is below.
(1) http://republic.lessig.org/
So we have a situation where our major political parties both advertise. They advertise because the ‘product’ they are ‘selling’ is of questionable value. One source of the funding of this advertising is from the taxpayer. The other almost certainly affects the Government’s ability to make unbiased policy decisions based on the greater good as opposed to policy decisions which support their major political donors.
If the Government’s ability to make unbiased policy decisions (which is what we elect them to do) is affected in any way it hurts our democracy. Our government should be making decisions which they believe are in the best interests of the voting public, not the best interests of their donors. I’m not sure how we can reasonably tolerate a situation where the Governments motivations are in doubt. They clearly are.
This article (2) http://theaimn.com/trust-federal-parliament-sure-can/ sums up the situation quite nicely. A quick look at the latest polls for satisfaction with both the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition is also enlightening. Politicians are not trusted, and when their campaigns are heavily funded by individuals with a vested interest it’s not hard to understand why.
Most private businesses have strong internal policies which prevent gifts and gratuities to be passed onto employees when those employees are involved in procurement. It’s widely acknowledged that even the smallest of gifts can influence the decision making process. This is why sales staff will often endeavour to take new clients out of their workplace for meetings and pay for their lunch, alcoholic beverages or at least a coffee.
To imply that private individuals, who are donating enough funds to buy a lot of coffee, are not trying to influence the major parties with large donations is absurd. It’s just as absurd that the political parties which support candidates, and the candidates themselves, are exempt from policies which a humble employee in a private organisation is subject to when receiving gifts. How are those donations not the same as gifts? Worse than even.
In 2011 Daryl Melham, commenting on the report into the funding of political parties and election campaigns, said the following;
‘Australia can be proud of its democratic system, but there is scope for improvement. In terms of political financing arrangements, the funding and disclosure system that was introduced in 1984 was a leader in its field. However, more than a quarter of a century later, Australia’s political financing arrangements are in need of review and revitalizing.’
Melham is right. That review should be fairly brutal. I believe there is no reason why political parties and or candidates should receive any private donations of any kind at any time. Furthermore public funding should be limited to enough funds for just one website, where all the major parties can describe their policies and their position on other candidate’s policies.
This might force the major parties, and their candidates, to focus more on their product and less on the increasingly purile banter that sometimes passes for serious political discussion in this country. I’m not so naïve as to suggest that it is some game changing solution to public’s dissatisfaction with its leaders. But reviewing the financing of political parties is a start.
The kind of leader I want to vote for is the kind that doesn’t take donations which may compromise their judgement. A leader who doesn’t need advertising to convince people they are worthy of our vote. Their actions should do that.