One one hand, the governments of Britain and Australia are falling over themselves to say that the invasion of Iraq made us safer, despite the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and no links to Al Qaeda appeared to have existed. On the other hand, they are spending millions of GBP / AUD to warn us of the dangers of local terrorism.
In Australia, we’ve already been lucky enough to have our famous fridge magnet mailout which cost AUD$15 million and helped our government to win Privacy Internationals’s “Most Egregiously Stupid Award”.
Winner of the “Most Egregiously Stupid Award” was the Australian government for a series of policies and education campaigns, which included the distribution of leaflets and fridge magnets, to warn citizens about terror risks and how to cope with chemical attacks.
The hugely expensive campaign was carried out despite the fact that there is little suggestion that Australia is a target for terror groups.
e British are in for the same treatment, with their government spending GBP£8 million printing and distributing a booklet titled “Preparing for Emergencies: What You Need To Know”.
Not to be outdone, our Man of Steel is promising a return of the Australian campaign.
The Prime Minister said yesterday that the now infamous motto would be used in more TV advertisements, and he believed much of the cynicism that followed the campaign’s 2003 launch had “fallen away”.
The national terrorism hotline is here to stay, but it is understood journalist Steve Liebmann - the star of the initial campaign - will not be making a repeat performance.
“Many of the jocular, derisive, critical references to that campaign when it was first launched have, in the fullness of time, been demonstrated to have been totally wrong,” Mr Howard said. “We intend to revisit that campaign in an appropriate, tailored way in the weeks and months ahead.”
I’m not quite sure what John Howard means when he says that the “jocular, derisive, [and] critical references…have…been demonstrated to have been totally wrong”. The references I heard suggested that the campaign was a complete waste of money aimed at scaring the electorate. Has this ever been shown to be wrong it any way?
“We intend to revisit that campaign in an appropriate, tailored way in the weeks and months ahead.” - Appropriate and tailored for the upcoming federal election perhaps?
This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2004 at 7:06 and is filed under News and politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.