Ad money better spent on doctors, aged care
Tanya Plibersek, a Federal Labor MP in NSW, has said in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (3 October), that the $2 billion spent on Federal Government advertising over the past 10 years would have funded aged care bed years for 64,500 frail elderly Australians at a cost of $31,000 for each bed each year. An extra 6,450 older Australians could have been appropriately cared for, for 10 years.
Alternatively, the NSW Department of Housing could have built an additional 8,000 homes for pensioners, seniors and people with disabilities, fully fitted out for their special needs.
She concedes that “all governments do advertise. Some advertising is necessary. But no government in the history of the federation has spent as much as the Howard Government”.
“As we approach an election, the advertising spending is climbing to $1 million per day. That would buy about 1,000 hospital beds for a night; pay the salaries of 12 senior nurses or up to four emergency department doctors for a year; fund 78 hip replacements or 65 knee replacements including the cost of the doctors, nurses, hospital bed and the replacement prosthetic; buy 3,440 dental consultations or one neo-natal intensive care cot for a year.
“One entire year of government advertising would pay the salaries of 1,100 specialists such as emergency department physicians, anaesthetists, geriatricians, intensive care doctors or paediatricians.”
