The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Centrelink $4.6 million logo under fire as News Corp paper claims no minister signed project off

Author

By Steven Raeburn, N/A

October 27, 2013 | 3 min read

The Telegraph newspaper has reported that the $4.6 million expenditure on the redesigned Centrelink logo “was not signed off by any minister at all”.The paper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia, claimed that “nobody wants to own up to being the Mr Squiggle who signed off on the expenditure,” and said that the departmental rebrand’s “eye-watering price tag” had been undertaken without ministerial oversight as part of the routine work of the department.“Despite ongoing complaints that Centrelink's call centres are understaffed, the Department of Human Services found millions of dollars for the logo update,” the paper reported.“First, departmental officials commissioned a $30,000 study into a new logo in 2010, when the Rudd-Gillard government merged Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support into one department, during the period former treasurer Chris Bowen was the responsible minister.“But the big cost arrived in 2011 and 2012 when the Department of Human Services decided to take down the Centrelink signs featuring two outstretched hands and replace them with the new rainbow squiggle.”The paper claimed that ministers Chris Bowen, Tanya Plibersek, Brendan O'Connor and Kim Carr had not authorised the exercise.“The department even raised the prospect that the $4.6 million expenditure was not signed off by any minister at all, stating that ‘the changes to signage and minimal logo changes were handled as part of the normal administrative practices of the department' “ the newspaper claimed.The redesign was announced in February 2012.

Centrelink's new logo

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +