Media Release
Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer has condemned the federal government’s asylum seeker advertising campaign in local papers as blatant political advertising and a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Mr Palmer said the full page advertisements running in News Limited papers such as The Australian and the Courier-Mail were an insult to the intelligence of Australian voters.
“If you want to stop people in Afghanistan and Iran from coming here then you advertise in newspapers in those countries you don’t run ads in the hardcopies of Australian papers that are only read by people in Australia,” Mr Palmer said.
“This is obvious political advertising aimed at counteracting the well-founded view that the Labor Party has completely mismanaged the asylum seeker issue.
“It is obscene that the federal government is shovelling huge amounts of taxpayers’ money to win votes into the pockets of media owners to mislead voters while it is still running a huge budget deficit.”
Mr Palmer called on the federal government to stop the advertising campaign or fund it with Labor Party money.
He said the Government’s latest quick-fix policy for dealing with asylum seekers was just a distraction ahead of the coming election.
ENDS