Culture

Scott Morrison And Michaelia Cash Have Spent Nearly $120,000 To Monitor How Much People Don’t Like Them

Hint: people don't like them very much.

by Maddie James  28 November 2014

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The media has not always been kind to poor old Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. Maybe it’s because holding a single press conference a week and giving confused Monty Python-esque answers doesn’t convey competence, or because of the whole keeping refugee children in detention thing. Who knows. But chances are the Minister knows that the media often have a lot to say about him and his policies.

That’s probably what Labor MP Patrick Conroy was thinking when he asked in Parliament last month for the Immigration portfolio to disclose how much Morrison had spent on media monitoring (reports of when his name and portfolio were mentioned in newspaper clippings and television and radio transcripts).

Turns out that Morrison spent $62,484.30 on media monitoring in the year beginning September 3, 2013. The Assistant Immigration Minister, Senator Michaelia Cash, spent nearly as much, paying $54,788.16 for reports from the Australian Associated Press and “media intelligence service” iSentia. Which is ironic, given their reputation as the most secretive portfolio in the federal government. In comparison, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop spent just $6,728.69.

As all mature adults do when accused of wrongdoing, Morrison’s people responded by accusing Labor of starting it: “The Coalition Government has spent less on media monitoring for the Minister and Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection than the average Labor Minister and their Parliamentary Secretary spent over their last four full financial years in Government.” When we asked how many media mentions they get and what use they get from knowing this, a spokesperson for the Immigration and Border Protection Portfolio declined to comment.

But nearly $120,000 is still a huge about of money when you consider that the monitoring service known as ‘Google’ is somewhat cheaper than that, and still rather effective. For example, Google could have told him that the media was talking about that time he accidentally called it Operation Sovereign Murders, or when over 5700 people hated his bill, or when people wanted him to be tried for crimes against humanity.

As for Michaelia Cash, she could have found out for free that people weren’t happy when she said the Minister for Women doesn’t have to be a feminist or that people were talking about how she went a bit insane in Parliament once and accused Senator Penny Wong and the rest of the ‘Labor Sisterhood’ of knifing Julia Gillard in the back.

And just in case the 95 communications and PR staff that The Age reports have been hired by the department are just too busy to wade through all of that, there’s always Twitter.

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Feature image via Scott Morrison/Facebook.