Printing and production

You may use your annual budget for office expenses (office expenses budget) for a range of printing, production, distribution and communications activities. Your PBR obligations, including the dominant purpose and value for money tests, apply to expenses claimed for these activities. In addition, a number of specific conditions apply to expenses claimed from your office budget. 

All expenditure against your office budget is included in your expenditure reports. 

Claimable expenses

The following printing, production, distribution and communications expenses may be claimed against your office budget.

Printing and production of materials

• Printing (must be on paper no heavier than 700 grams per square metre, or flat magnetised material), including postal vote applications and business cards.
• Distributing postal vote applications, including reply paid envelopes (see ‘postal vote applications^’).
• Creating matter for inclusion in printed material, electronic material or audio posters, including translation services, design, artwork, photography, video, and sound production and recordings.
• Content development, editing and proof reading services (where it relates to the creation of material for inclusion in printed or electronic material).
• Producing and maintaining audio posters.

Use of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms

You should follow the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet's Guidelines for using the Commonwealth Coat of Arms if you wish to include it in printed or electronic material. For example, the Commonwealth Coat of Arms must not be used with political logos.

Cost sharing for printing and distribution

You may enter into a cost-sharing arrangement for the printing and/or distribution of material produced jointly with another Commonwealth or State parliamentarian, provided that you only claim your proportion of the office expenses incurred and the material complies with your PBR obligations. Likewise, when distributing material using your office expenses budget, you may include material that has been produced by a state parliamentarian or local government representative, provided you only claim your proportion of the distribution costs and the included material complies with your PBR obligations.

You should take care to ensure that the dominant purpose of producing and/or distributing the material is your parliamentary business. Expenses of one parliamentarian cannot be bestowed upon another for the benefit of the other. For example, a member of the House of Representatives cannot meet the full costs of production and distribution of a publication under his or her office budget on behalf of a senator, even if the senator and member share a constituency, or vice versa.

If you enter into a cost-sharing arrangement for printing/distributing material with another parliamentarian, you must ensure that all material included in the distribution complies with the conditions that apply to office expenses.

Postal vote applications (PVAs)

There is no prescribed limit on the number of PVAs and reply-paid envelopes that may be printed for a federal election or referendum using your office expenses budget, however, you must comply with your PBR obligations. This would include consideration of the number of PVAs required for your constituents. Constituent is defined in section 5 of the PBR Act as a person enrolled to vote or resident in your electorate (state/territory for a senator).

You must not distribute material, including a PVA, which solicits a vote for a person other than yourself or provides instructions on how to complete a ballot paper (see 'Conditions applying to office expenses').

Due to your parliamentary business obligation, the delivery address for a reply-paid envelope for PVAs should be your electorate office, Parliament House office, ministerial/office holder office, or a post office box associated with such offices.

The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 requires a PVA to be in the approved form, i.e. as approved by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) by notice published on the AEC’s website. See AEC Guidelines for the Reproduction of PVAs.