$117,272.46. That’s how much money Immigration Minister Scott Morrison and his assistant Michaelia Cash have spent in the last year effectively Googling themselves – a number that’s sure to rise today now the Immigration portfolio has been exposed for the SEO stickler that it is.
Adding to that not inconsiderable sum is a piece in today’s Herald, which details how Morrison and Cash spent $62,484.30 and $54,788.16 respectively from September 3rd, 2013, to the same date in 2014 employing media monitoring and print clipping services like iSentia to trawl newspapers, TV and radio transcripts for mentions of their name.
For a healthy comparison with someone of a similar portfolio and high profile during the same one year period, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop spent a relatively tidy $6728.69. Google Alerts and Command + F, on the other hand, cost nothing.
A spokesman for Mr Morrison has seen fit to release a statement addressing contention over the inflated sum, reading:
“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.”
Which is all very well and good – you’d hope in one year of government the Coalition would’ve spent less than the previous government did over four full years. That would only make sense. It’s the amount that’s going to be spent between now and the next three that we really have to look forward to.
As a show of good will toward any future ~efficiency dividends~ that surely need to be made in the Immigration Minister’s media monitoring budget, I’ll be embedding SEO friendly ‘Scott Morrison’ tags into however many more articles I publish here for the remainder of the working today [see below].
TGIF, Scott.
via SMH
Photo by Stefan Postles/Getty Images
