Newsroom

28 April, 2004

Interview Transcript

The Nationals Victorian Leader Peter Ryan Champions of the Bush Executive Officer Darren Chester ABC Gippsland presenter Mike Harris

Topic: Follow up to 'Back to the Bush' and 'Make it Happen' campaign

Harris: Now you may recall seeing the ads on TV encouraging us to Make it Happen in Provincial Victoria. It was a major campaign by the Bracks Government to try and get more people moving to and working in regional areas of the state.

Well the National Party says almost half of these advertisements actually ran on regional television, effectively wasting taxpayers' money by preaching to the converted.

Leader of the Nationals in Victoria and Member for Gippsland South Peter Ryan joins us now. Good morning Mr Ryan, thanks for your time.

Ryan: Good morning Mike. Makes comment on Prime Minister's visit to Gippsland.

Harris: Mr Ryan, to the issue of the Make it Happen in Provincial Victoria campaign, and your statement that you have an issue with the advertisements running on regional television, why is this such a problem?

Ryan: The initiative itself is a great idea and all credit to the State Government of Victoria for doing it. I said so at the time and I still say it.

But what happened was - and we've now made application through FOI, just to follow through the chain of the way in which the advertising occurred - and what we now find after several weeks of pursuing this is that a total of 393 advertisements were placed on television during the course of this campaign which saw $1.3 million expended.

But 186 of those advertisements, almost half of them, were placed in rural and regional Victoria. So the advertisements were being placed on the televisions of people who live in the same areas that the government is purporting to try and attract people out of Melbourne to come to.

Harris: Well a government spokesperson has said that there was subtle differences between the ads shown in the country and those seen in the city, that the country ads encouraged people to welcome others who moved into their communities - isn't that valid?

Ryan: Well that's a lovely state of affairs to say isn't it? So the implication in that is that we are not welcoming of those people who come to visit us and come to live with us. The whole idea of the government's campaign was to build upon the great hospitality for which country people are famous and to enable people who live in the metropolitan area to come out and enjoy it. To live with us and to be able to experience it and to contribute to our communities.

If anything I think that's an insult, if I might say, I hadn't heard it, but I think that's an insult for the government to now be saying that we need some sort of a subtle re-training in country Victoria to be able to be readily accepting of those whom we're trying to attract to come to us. That's a ridiculous notion.

The basis of this is - instead of following through with what I still say is a very good initiative and all credit to them - they just couldn't help themselves. They had to put 186, almost half of those advertisements, on our own televisions, the intention being I believe just to simply try and display their wares as representing the interests, so they would say, of rural and regional Victoria.

All the advertisements of course, should be placed in Melbourne in the market that we're trying to attract people from.

Harris: Well Mr Ryan the campaign is to be extended, what would you like to see happen with that now.

Ryan: Now what they've announced, and all credit to them again, what they've announced is that there will be $5.7 million spent on the next leg of this campaign.

Now that is meaningful money in anybody's terms Mike. What I'm calling upon Mr Bracks and Mr Brumby to do is to put aside the charade that the past campaign represented - we ought to make sure that all of that money is spent truly in the market that we're looking to attract.

All of the money should be dedicated to that Melbourne audience that we want to get out to rural and regional Victoria.

There is no doubt, that even though it had a limited showing in Melbourne, it was effective. It was effective, there were a lot of hits on the various websites, we were able to get people out, wouldn't it be much better if we devoted all of the money to the cause instead of just half the advertisements being placed in Melbourne where all of them should have gone.

Harris: Thanks for your time this morning Mr Ryan.

Ryan: A pleasure.

Harris: Peter Ryan, the Victorian National Party Leader and Member for Gippsland South. Paying an unusual amount of credit there. The concept of encouraging more people to experience regional Victoria has had some degree of success during the Back to the Bush weekend, promoted by the Champions of the Bush organisation. Executive Officer Darren Chester is on the line with us this morning - thankyou for your time Darren.

Chester: No worries at all Mike.

Harris: How successful would you say the Back to the Bush weekend was in encouraging city people to head out to the regions.

Chester: We were very happy with the way the campaign went. We had about 3000 hits on our website that we set up specifically for that. We were happy with the number of people that expressed interest in inviting their family and friends.

Keep in mind, this is the first time we've done it, we're trying to build it up into a bigger event in the future. We really think the March long weekend is a weekend we can target because there's so many events, festivals and activities happening right throughout regional Victoria and we're just encouraging country people to get on the phone, leading up to that weekend, and invite their city-based family and friends to come out and just discover what country Victoria's got to offer.

Harris: But that wasn't a move to encourage people to move to regional areas permanently - just to head out for the weekend wasn't it?

Chester: The idea was to get them to come out for the weekend but we really think Mike, once we get them out here, give them a taste of country life, we can actually convince a few to come out here and stay.

The whole push is to attract more skilled workers to country areas as you well appreciate, and I'm sure your listeners do too, we have a shortage of skilled workers in areas like health and education, engineering, a lot of tradespeople - we have trouble filling those jobs - so we get them to come out, experience the fishing, experience the great wines, the food and all of that sort of thing. We hope we might be able to wrangle a few of them to stay - I don't think we'll have to twist their arm very much when they start seeing the great lifestyle we've got to offer here in Gippsland.

Harris: Did you get any inspiration from the Make it Happen campaign?

Chester: It's actually a bit of a build on from the Make it Happen campaign and I agree with Peter Ryan in that sense - it was a great idea to promote the opportunities that exist in country areas in the metropolitan market.

We were looking at an extension of it - we thought country people themselves need to become better salespeople on behalf of their own regions.

I think we can use that word of mouth advertising, which is a very strong way to encourage people to come out and see what we have to offer.

Harris: Darren, if you had a say in how the government might extend their campaign to have more people to move permanently to regional areas, what would you like to see them do? More TV ads, or perhaps more substantial incentives?

Chester: Look, there's a couple of points there Mike. Certainly the TV ads in the Melbourne area I think are going to be really effective but at the same time, some of the advertising in country areas can build up this perception that we're talking about - getting the country people themselves to help us out with the salesperson job if you like.

So there is value I think in building pride among country people, that we're not second class, we're a fantastic community, we've got a great deal to offer city people - so there's two sides to that.

The other thing is we've got to make sure Mike, while we're doing this, while we're doing all of this advertising that when people come out here they've actually got the level of service that they expect to receive. So we've got these great health facilities, the education facilities, our transport is up to scratch - it's a two-sided thing. We need to spend a certain amount of money raising awareness in the city but we also need to make sure that the money is being spent on the infrastructure in regional Victoria in the first place.

Harris: What about the money being spent on local advertising for the campaign?

Chester: I'm not completely against localised advertising Mike. I can understand again where Peter came from on that point and perhaps the advertising needs to be fine tuned a bit if it's going to be screened in country areas.

I think we had a fairly generic ad which was run in the metro areas and it was pretty similar in the country - perhaps the country ad needs to be fine tuned and be more specific to country communities and what they can actually do as individuals to help encourage people to visit.

I think the bigger issue is government advertising in general.

There's a lot of government advertising going on. Governments at federal and state level are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year and I think they've got to realise that the punters out here, the taxpayers, the voters - they've got pretty fine tuned bull-dust detectors and they know when they're being snow-balled and there's something going on that's not really ridgy-didge if you like.

Harris: Do you think Mr Ryan's comment on people potentially taking offence at being reminded to welcome new visitors to regional areas was on the mark?

Chester: I don't know that country people need too much reminding Mike about welcoming family and friends and newcomers to their regions. I think we're a pretty welcoming bunch across the board.

Harris: Fair enough. Thankyou for your time this morning.

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