Canberra Liberals Leader Elizabeth Lee has called into question a $25 million contract for ‘media placement and advice’ in the Chief Minister’s directorate that will have the capacity to specifically target Canberrans with messaging and collect their data.

The contract with global company Universal McCann comes just 18 months out from an election and includes a number of capabilities such as ‘optimisation and reporting of digital campaign and data collection, for on-going and insightful audience optimisation and campaign reporting’ and ‘to use, interpret and maximise use of digital data’.

Ms Lee said it is very concerning that this contract, worth a significant amount of taxpayer money, includes capabilities that will allow the Labor-Greens government to not only micro target Canberrans with specific information but find out more about them through ‘data collection’.

“This substantial contract is effectively using $25 million of taxpayer funds to not only specifically micro target Canberrans with messaging but to collect data and ‘encourage behaviour change’,” Ms Lee said.

“The previous contract of this nature with a local Canberra company was worth just over $8 million and did not include the capabilities to use social media to execute deep dive analytics and microtargeting.

“While it is important for the ACT Government to ensure messaging around specific government services reaches those who need it, a $25 million contract for fairly specific purposes of microtargeting and collecting data from residents will no doubt be very concerning for many Canberrans.

“This contract includes a number of subcontractors listed that specialise in analytics and data gathering. Make no mistake. This is a $25 million re-election war chest for the Chief Minister and the Labor and Greens parties leading up to the 2024 election.

“These capabilities will allow Labor and the Greens to use millions of taxpayer funds to know a lot more about individual Canberrans right down to name, age, suburb and what they engage with online, and there seems to be little transparency as to how this information will be stored and used,” Ms Lee concluded.

The contract which will begin on March 1 2023, and expires in February 2026 however there is no provision around when the money can be spent and how early.