NSW Premier Mike Baird — News Ltd cast member

If ever you needed further confirmation that News Ltd is the Liberal Party’s unofficial PR department, it came on the weekend on NSW television, writes Peter Wicks from Wixxyleaks.

ON THE WEEKEND, I saw something on television that I found quite disturbing.

It was not the fake enthusiasm of an X Factor judge, nor was it the announcement of yet another NCIS — as show that will have a gazillion spin offs just like CSI (maybe they should just do one called WTF).

What disturbed me was, in fact, a commercial.

We all hate to see our taxpayer money wasted, particularly on commercials. However the commercial I’m referring to was not a government commercial — although some have commented that the company being advertised could be confused for the Coalition’s marketing department.

The commercial that disturbed me so much was the current commercial for News Ltd’s Sydney tabloid the Daily Telegraph and can be viewed below:

For some of those on the train, it must have been a culture shock being on public transport.

And I know what you may be thinking, but it was not the sight of Andrew Bolt and Miranda Devine that made me uncomfortable — although it’s true I normally do find them and their extremist far-right views rather disturbing.

It was actually the guy sitting opposite them who really disturbed me.

It would seem that while the taxpayer pays his wages, the NSW Premier is off filming commercials for News Ltd.

Frankly, I have significant reservations about whether that is a good use of taxpayer funds. Then again, Baird is the guy that, as NSW treasurer, managed to misplace a cool billion dollars, so I guess he probably considers donating his taxpayer billed time as a political favour as small change.

For years, there have been theories about how News Ltd is biased towards the Coalition, now News Ltd have embarked on an advertising campaign that seems to be suggesting Premier Baird is of their team.

If anyone ever needed confirmation of News Ltd’s bias — this is it.

Also alarming is who they have Mike Baird associated with in the commercial — Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt. Andrew Bolt has already been found by a court to have breached the law in his racial vilification of a minority group and Devine is also known for her anti-Islamic scare mongering and angry rhetoric.

If they had sat a woman in a burqa near that particular group it could have ended in one of those racist rants that keep coming out on YouTube. It must comfort Tony Abbott to see one of his Party’s premiers sitting there smiling with a couple of the country’s finest “preachers of hate”.

Preachers of hate, by Peter Wicks AKA @madwixxy. http://t.co/oXNtnYARpe
— IndependentAustralia (@independentaus) October 10, 2014

For those of us in the public, we can now align Premier Baird with the extreme-right views of those he spent his taxpayer-funded time sitting with for this commercial.

I wonder if Premier Baird was paid for his time and if he intends to declare it in the pecuniary interests register, or if he intends to refund back to the taxpayer whatever he was paid, considering he was being paid by the public at the same time.

Given that this commercial was shot using taxpayer-funded public transport, I hope the Premier ensured that the taxpayer sent an invoice to News Ltd for the leasing of their property at a reasonable rate, rather than at mates’ rates. After all, public transport is meant for hitchhikers and freeloaders.

News Ltd and the Coalition are making a mockery of the public and have formed the assumption that the public are too stupid to realise it.

Elected officials are supposed to be there to promote the public’s interests, not there to promote a private enterprise for political favour.

Given Mike Baird has so much time to spare, I shot him an email to see if he’d take part in a promo for Independent Australia.

I’m not holding my breath for a positive response.

I note that, as yet, there is no commercial for the Herald Sun featuring the Victorian Premier.

Is the Napthine Government too poisonous even for the home of phone hacking?

You can follow Peter Wicks on Twitter @madwixxy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License