Why stop at tunnel builders, pubs and clubs when it comes to handing out money and favours in an election year? Let’s give millions to those poor media moguls – why should Helen Coonan have all the fun?

That seems to be the thinking in Premier Dilemma’s bunker as he blows more taxpayer dollars to tell taxpayers what a good job he’s doing before the March poll. It’s just one more similarity between the Federal and NSW governments.

When about the only thing going for Labor is the Liberal Party, several million for the major media outlets won’t go astray. As Andrew Clennell reported in the SMH, the NSW government was the nation’s seventh biggest advertiser in the year running up to the last election. The Federal government was the fifth.

It is a very tacky business from a government that is at least as cynical as John Howard’s. The only small mercy is that Dilemma agreed to a Peter Debnam demand that government television advertising should cease on February 16, five weeks before the poll.

(In case you’ve missed him, Debnam is the failing Liberal leader who got the job because the Lib’s right wing threatened to knife the fella who actually had a chance of winning, Barry O’Farrell.)

But never mind, the money will still roll in for the newspapers and radio stations until the last minute. How bad is it? The SMH:

In November the Iemma Government spent more on an advertising campaign for the State Plan – $2.6 million – than it had on the plan itself.

More than $10 million was spent last year on what has been termed political advertising, including the Water for Life ads, State Plan ads, police recruitment, the CityRail campaign and anti-Federal Government ads.