When public services become PR: How charities and corporations blur the line between care and self-promotion

Cirque du Soleil-style balls, high teas, golf days and luncheons at the horse racing: revelations about Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service’s big spending on lavish fundraising events highlights broader questions about the outsourcing of essential service delivery.

“What began as a tin-rattling charity drive in local shops and surf clubs has evolved into a full-blown corporate machine for Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service, raising concerns among former staff about whether fundraising efforts have diverted the service from its core mission,” Nine media reported earlier this month.

It’s not the first charity providing an essential public service to face such questions.

Cricket’s so-called “pink test” is one the feel-good stories of the summer. It raises money for the breast care nursing charity linked to former fast bowler Glenn McGrath and his late wife, Jane, who tragically died of breast cancer. Strip away the emotion, though, and the charity is an expensive and inefficient way to provide nursing care.

Nearly two years ago, your correspondent revealed that, leaving aside direct government grants, the McGrath Foundation was spending more on fundraising and marketing than it was spending on breast care nurses.

It’s latest published accounts are a little less transparent than they used to be, but that still seems to be the case. The money it spent on fundraising last year barely exceeded the money it raised from fundraising activity.

The McGrath Foundation gains free publicity from cricket broadcasters equivalent to tens of millions of dollars in advertising.

Each year, cricket commentators implore viewers to dig deep and donate to the worthy cause, so the charity can raise the money it needs to deliver its target number of nurses. They never mention that the McGrath Foundation has hoarded a huge surplus – more than enough to achieve its goal.

None of this is to deny that the McGrath Foundation has done a lot to raise awareness of the issue or to question its training of nurses. But the reality is the McGrath Foundation largely recycles government funds. More than two thirds of the money it spends on breast care nurses comes from government grants.

Governments could cut out the middle man and fund the required nursing services directly. But that wouldn’t allow the politicians to gain kudos by association, and bask in the warm inner glow of the feel-good story. It wouldn’t allow charity board members and public figures to associate themselves with the worthy cause. It would deny corporate sponsors the same opportunity.

No company has milked its association with an essential public service more than Westpac.

In his Quarterly Essay, Dead Right, Richard Denniss describes “one of the more outrageously disingenuous pieces of PR imaginable”: a TV ad featuring two actors pretending to drown to illustrate Westpac’s supposed generosity to the community. As the father and son cling to an esky near their sinking yacht and the rescue helicopter hovers overhead, an earnest voiceover tells viewers that the father “doesn’t bank with Westpac. Not all Australians are with Westpac. But we’re with all Australians.”

The ad omits to mention that the reason the helicopter picks up non-Westpac customers has absolutely nothing to do with the generosity of Westpac and everything to do with the fact that it is publicly funded to provide exactly that service.

Westpac’s marketing and spin-doctoring gurus must be fuming at Nine’s expose on Westpac Rescue (which operates from Newcastle to the Queensland border and is distinct from the Westpac-branded helicopter service in Sydney and other states).

For years, for a relatively modest sponsorship, the bank has gained enormous publicity. Yet many people are unaware that the lion’s share of the funding comes from government.

Although taxpayers, not bank shareholders, contribute the vast majority of the service’s operating budget, this is noted nowhere in publicity.

Westpac may be the most glaring example, but it’s not alone. Fossil fuel and mining companies love to launder their brands through associations with worthy endeavours and essential services. Rio Tinto gives the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Queensland a small share of the money it needs and gets its name on planes operated by the trusted charity.  Queensland Police Service let the gas company Santos display its logo on police vehicles in Queensland as part of its sponsorship of a road safety campaign. The state’s police commissioner denied it created a conflict of interest for police who dealt with protests against Santos’s coal seam gas extraction.

Junk food is in on the act too. McDonald’s promotes itself to children by sponsoring services for sick kids and hospitals, even though eating too much of its product might land you in one.

Doubtless, the latest revelations about the lavish fundraising efforts by one arm of the Westpac-branded marketing show will outrage people. Yet in some ways, they are merely a symptom of the gross inefficiency of the broader model of service delivery: where government covers the vast majority of the costs, a charity tops it up through expensive and inefficient fundraising, and a corporation claims the credit or shares in the glory.

You might imagine the scrutiny and the revelations would prompt a rethink. On the contrary, government is doubling down.

It wants to “partner” more with business and NGOs to deliver basic services. The Commonwealth has handed the McGrath Foundation far more money not just for employment of breast care nurses, but to “lead delivery” of a new Cancer Care Nurse Service.

There are certainly cases where working with a charity lets government draw on specific expertise and enhance service delivery. But too often, that’s not the case.

It would be far better to cut back the billions in subsidies we provide to fossil fuel interests, and to reduce tax breaks for the rich, so government has more money to fund and run the public services citizens expect in a functioning democracy.