Political mirage !

Wollongong has been singled out as the target for an advertising campaign to discourage gambling. The city has seventeen poker machines for every thousand citizens, and statistics show that the average gambler loses $ 750 to the one-armed bandits.

The only problem is that this sort of approach doesn't work ! In recent years our television screens are filled with advertising from both the state and Federal governments either urging us to cease doing something - or extolling the benefits the government is providing.

For the most part, government advertising is a mask for the " do nothing " approach to our problems.

When a particular problem starts to attract public attention and the media picks up on it the government spends money creating a mirage. Rather than fixing the problem it is cheaper to run advertising that convinced the majority of citizens that the government is " doing something about it ".

That is the pure essence of politics. A political party gets re-elected only if it can create the conviction in voter's minds that it is on the ball, has solutions to problems - and that a substantial improvement is just days away.

These days a large industry of highly skilled technicians make a good living creating the advertisements that shape public opinion.

We enjoy movies that provide escape entertainment. Government advertising is little different. The only real problem is that it is funded from the public purse - and in most cases it provides no tangible benefit to the public !