Shadow minister wants more experiments on government messages sent to households
Andrew Leigh MP, Shadow Assistant Treasurer
A Labor politician has said he would like to see more behavioural studies carried out on marketing material sent out by Government.
Andrew Leigh, shadow assistant treasurer, believes analysis of peoples’ responses to information will provide more scope to “tweak” the message.
He said the right presentation of messages could result in more revenue through payment of fines, or ensuring better information is sent to people about services that are relevant to them.
“I think the philosophy of tweaking is increasingly common,” he said. “We would like to be experimenting on most letters that we send out.”
Leigh, Federal Member for Fraser in the ACT, was speaking at the Marketing Science Ideas Xchange conference in Sydney, and said the field of behavioural economics had “taken off”.
The former professor of economics at the Australian National University said more people in Government were getting the idea, and provided insights into ways the scientific method will affect policy making in future.
On top of smarter enforcement letters, he believes ministers and departments will look at how messages are framed, what defaults are presented in responses, and how they can make information simple for a time poor society.
Kevin Bradford
Nearly one in two Australian adults struggles to read and write. Basic tasks like filling in a job or loan application are beyond them. Government figures show 8 million Australian workers lack reading, writing or numeracy skills to train for jobs.
Government messages are too hard for most people to grasp. Long sentences. Long words. Abstract words. And passive voice. To name a few reasons people ignore such messages.
Government writers need to compose messages a sixth-grader understands.
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They did Paul, and we ended up with Abbott!
Mind you, I thought Leigh said “I think the philosophy of twerking is increasingly common.”
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