(Image: Supplied/Private Media)

Ad blitz Crikey has long noted the great generosity of various government departments when it comes to Coalition policy. In 2019 Treasury sang the praises of the government building a “better tax system … so hard‑working Australians can keep more of their money … Better for you, better for business, better for Australians.” And who can forget the relentless (and highly misleading) positivity of the “Australia’s Making Positive Energy” campaign, which cost it (or more accurately us) $26,000 a week.

And now, as pointed out by veteran journo and sometimes Crikey writer Malcolm Farr, The Canberra Times has a giant ad explaining “Australia’s Economic Plan”. Sure, it reads suspiciously like an election pitch (point one is “keeping taxes low, because money in your pocket eases the cost of living”) but it’s not authorised by the Liberal Party, or even a specific department, but just “the Australian Government”.

Back in 2019, we asked whether the Treasury campaign complied with Commonwealth advertising regulations that “government campaigns must not be conducted for party political purposes” and that “campaigns must be presented in objective language and be free of political argument”, and found the paperwork was all in order — indeed, it suits both parties for these rules to be fairly flexible. So we can look forward to a lot more of this kind of thing over the next few months.

Have you seen a notably effusive take on the Morrison government created to a supposedly non-partisan government departments? Let us know.

Taught a lesson A Friday evening email last week informed students of the sudden and brutal cancellation of the Macleay College journalism program just two weeks into their first trimester, ostensibly on account of “low enrolment”. But internal communications seen by Crikey paints a different picture. Senior staff have said they’d found out about the cancellation on the same day as the students (“I’ve not been consulted and won’t be”), adding the program was not operating as a loss but that students had been seen as troublemakers for expecting a physical campus and audio/video gear.

In Advance As Crikey covered earlier this year, right-wing activists Advance — the latest in a long line of attempts to create a “right-wing GetUp” — received $1.3 million in donations (a lot less than the actual GetUp, but more than say, One Nation) in the last declaration period. The question follows: what is it doing with that money? The answer: fantastically xenophobic ads!

The sight of Chinese Communist Party general secretary XI Jinping casting a vote for Labor is of course an echo of the strange and grubby about-turn the Liberals have done on Australia’s relationship with China, baselessly painting the ALP as stooges for the Chinese government.

Whether this intervention proves as successful as Captain GetUp, a satirical orange-suited superhero whose regular gyration against posters of Zali Steggall did so much to halt her landslide victory against Tony Abbott in Warringah in 2019, remains to be seen.

Adventures in design The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has made some interesting choices in its design. It has made a boob — well, two of them — with its new women’s network logo:
https://mobile.twitter.com/simonahac/status/1502952891207745537

You may note on this, as many on Twitter have, a decidedly anatomical vibe to the design that we simply can’t believe no one noticed before it was made public.

[A note from the Tips editor: 152 jokes were submitted for consideration for this item, and none were deemed publishable.]