The Government Doesn’t Trust You to Think for Yourself

Spend too much time scrolling through bad news on social media and there is now a name for it: “doom scrolling”.

Apparently, algorithms feed us content, advertisers manipulate our emotions, misinformation influences our thinking, and social media companies know us better than we know ourselves.

The solution increasingly offered by government? More regulation. More oversight. More control.

Perhaps we should ask an uncomfortable question: Who is watching the people who want to do the watching?

There is nothing particularly new about influencing people. Newspapers have been doing it since newspapers existed. Television networks choose which story leads the six o’clock news. Editors decide what makes the front page and what disappears onto page 27.

There is an old newsroom expression: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Long before anyone had heard of an algorithm or doom scrolling, mainstream media understood that bad news sells. Television bulletins could devote night after night to the same murder, disaster, scandal or political controversy because audiences kept watching.

Advertising has always worked on similar principles. Repetition, emotion, celebrity endorsement and saturation are hardly inventions of Silicon Valley. Launch a blockbuster movie and suddenly it is everywhere. Run a major sporting event and you cannot turn on a television, radio or website without seeing it.

We understood what was happening. Someone wanted our attention.

Social media has turbocharged the process. Algorithms learn what interests us and give us more of it. Watch one video and another appears. Click one story and suddenly your feed fills with the same subject.

That might deserve scrutiny, but does it justify government deciding what consenting adults should or shouldn’t be allowed to see?

This is where another favourite expression enters the conversation: “The public interest”.

What exactly is “in the public interest”? More importantly, who decides? A politician, bureaucrat or regulator? A government-appointed board? A media executive? An academic? An algorithm?

If an editor decides that showing Australians repeated coverage of a violent crime is in the public interest, how is that fundamentally different from an algorithm deciding that the same story interests you and showing you more of it?

If a government decides that repeatedly advertising one of its policies is in the public interest, why should that be automatically regarded as more legitimate than a private organisation trying to persuade you?

The term “public interest” might describe something genuinely important, but it can also become remarkably convenient when the people defining the public interest are the same people exercising the power.

Before handing them more of that power, Australians should understand something else: Government is itself an enormous advertiser.

Commonwealth government advertising expenditure reached $204.1 million in 2024–25. Of that, digital advertising accounted for about $97.4 million, television $59.3 million, radio $16.7 million and out-of-home advertising $21.9 million.

We aren’t talking about Labor’s election advertisements here; these are taxpayer-funded government campaigns.

Victoria provides another remarkable example. The Victorian Government spent $97 million on advertising in 2024–25: $76.3 million on campaign advertising, $8.4 million on functional advertising and $12.3 million on recruitment. More than $54.6 million went to digital and social media alone.

Some of that is entirely legitimate: Governments need to tell us when laws change; people need bushfire warnings; citizens need information about services, road closures and genuine emergencies.

But where exactly is the line between informing the public and selling the government?

Victoria’s advertising categories include “public safety and behaviour change”, “social cohesion, civic pride and community spirit”, “commercial and economic investment” and legislative compliance.

There’s that phrase: behaviour change. Apparently, corporations attempting to change our behaviour deserve suspicion, but governments doing it with our money deserve a communications budget.

Then things become even more interesting. The Federal Government isn’t merely buying enormous amounts of media. It is also financially supporting parts of the news industry.

The News Media Assistance Program involves $153.5 million over four years, including $99.1 million in grants for the news sector and $33 million supporting Australian Associated Press.

Government is simultaneously a major purchaser of advertising, a financial supporter of parts of the media industry, a regulator of communications and social-media platforms, and one of the principal subjects the media is supposed to scrutinise.

Now it wants a greater role in determining how Australians navigate supposedly harmful, misleading or undesirable information. And inevitably we are told it is “in the public interest”.

This isn’t simply about Labor. For decades Australia has been governed by an increasingly managerial political class in which the two major parties argue ferociously over who gets to operate the machinery of government while rarely questioning why the machinery keeps getting bigger.

Government, regulation, departments, public relations, advertising – all grow.

And regardless of which side occupies the government benches, ordinary Australians are repeatedly told that another layer of government supervision is necessary for our own protection.

Different jerseys. Same game. That is the Uniparty problem.

One side introduces another government intervention and the other side argues about its implementation. One proposes a regulator and the other promises a better regulator. One spends millions telling us about government programs and the other complains about the advertisements until it gets into office and discovers how useful government advertising can be.

Meanwhile the fundamental question is rarely asked: Why does government need this much influence over the information choices of free adults?

Australians are perfectly capable of understanding that Sky News, the ABC, The Guardian and Newscorp each have a perspective, that Facebook, X, TikTok and YouTube use algorithms, and that advertisers want us to buy things.

Welcome to adulthood.

The most powerful influencer in Australia isn’t a teenager on TikTok. It is an institution that can regulate what others say, spend hundreds of millions promoting its own messages, subsidise parts of the information industry, define what it believes is in the public interest — and send you the bill.

Before Canberra protects us from doom scrolling, perhaps it should spend a little more time scrolling through its own bank statements.