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WA Premier Roger Cook has taken an extraordinary swipe at the state’s largest creative agency after it was revealed 30 per cent of the next major tourism campaign for the state will be produced on the east coast.
The Brand Agency has been tasked with producing the next iteration of Tourism WA’s Walking on a Dream campaign, with Cook confirming that about 30 per cent of the production would take place outside WA.
Some of WA’s next tourism campaign will be produced over east.
“It’s pretty disappointing, right? And we know that in WA, we’ve got some great production crews, and I’m sure that work could have been undertaken in Western Australia,” he said.
“They’ve assured us that of that production crew, 70 per cent will be sourced from Western Australia, but I just invite them to reflect on the fact that WA has great production, great people working for creative industries. I can’t see a need to export that sort of work.”
When asked whether he could reverse the contract, Cook said it had already been struck, and he had only found out about the outsourcing of work on Thursday.
Deputy Liberal leader Libby Mettam said the issue showed the government wasn’t listening to its own Made in WA message it took to the March election.
“This program was meant to be about selling a message about backing Western Australia, and yet the Premier isn’t,” she said.
“It’s extraordinary hypocrisy, the fact that they are looking outside WA to sell this important message highlights the fact that the Premier is not listening to his own message and is not backing the expertise that we have here in this state.”
Independent Commercial Communications Businesses lead Mark Braddock said on ABC radio on Thursday morning that, by their calculations, five of the last eight major productions from the WA government had been sent over east.
“For us, it’s all about keeping taxpayers’ money in the state and building our production ecosystem that allows the state to service the government’s policy commitments,” he said.
“At the moment, our local production companies are really struggling and for us it’s about maintaining those West Australian-owned and run businesses.
“They’re the biggest client for us in the state, and they’ve made a commitment to supporting local and we would just like to see that policy align with practice.”
The Brand Agency was the agency behind the Walking on a Dream campaign which was launched in 2022.
In March last year, it won a five-year contract with Tourism WA to continue delivering its creative services.
The Brand Agency was approached for comment.
Tourism WA was approached for comment.
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