Federal bureaucrats have scrambled to erase the Prime Minister's "exciting time" catchcry from a Government website, amid claims it amounted to political advertising.

Labor in February this year referred the Government's $28 million Ideas Boom ad campaign to the Auditor-General.

The Opposition claimed the use of Malcolm Turnbull's "exciting time" phrase was inappropriate in a taxpayer-funded promotional blitz.

The Ideas Boom homepage originally prominently featured the phrase: "There's never been a more exciting time to be Australian."

But on March 8 this year the slogan was swapped for: "Welcome to the ideas boom."

The original slogan had been changed to "Welcome to the Ideas Boom" ( Innovation Department )

An Innovation Department email trail, released under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, shows public servants told a website developer to "fix" the site by removing the "exciting time" phrase "urgently".

"Small thing (but important to change): on the 'about' page can we replace 'There's never been a more exciting time to be an Australian' with 'Welcome to the Ideas Boom'," an email at 8:02am read.

The Department also phoned the contractor before sending a follow up email at 12:01pm.

"We noticed that the 'There's never been a more exciting time to be an Australian' line of text has not been replaced on the website (as per email below and mentioned in the phone call this morning).

"Can we please get this resolved urgently? This is a high priority for us.

"Can you please give me an ETA on when this will be fixed?"

Documents show department knew phrase was inappropriate: Labor

Labor's "Waste Watch" spokesman, Pat Conroy, said the documents showed the department knew using the "exciting time" phrase was wrong.

"Someone in the department, and maybe even the minister's office itself, realised that it was completely inappropriate for the Prime Minister's political slogan to be the centrepiece of a $28 million advertising campaign," he said.

"Clearly they cottoned on too late that they couldn't make it as directly obvious as linking the Prime Minister's key slogan into a publically-funded advertising campaign."

The Innovation Department campaign ran across television, online, social media and print.

The advertising spree came after the $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda was launched last December.

Innovation Department silent on why change was 'high priority'

The Innovation Department did not directly respond to questions from the ABC, instead referring to a response it provided the Auditor-General.

"The website was in the process of being redeveloped in early March 2016," the department said.

"The line 'There's never been a more exciting time to be Australian' was originally included on the innovation.gov.au website.

"On March 8 the line in question was replaced with 'Welcome to the Ideas Boom'.

"[This] is the campaign tagline that had been promoted heavily ... and, therefore, achieved a high level of awareness and recognition amongst target audiences."

It sounds like a scene from the ABC comedy Utopia: Labor

Mr Conroy said the emails sounded like something from the ABC's public service satire, Utopia.

"I think there would have been a lot of panic, a lot of sweating on website developers paying attention," Mr Conroy said.

"I could almost picture a scene out of the ABC's Utopia, realising they'd incurred the displeasure of department, in fact, possibly even minister's office.

"It would have been a scene of high tension and possibly comic relief."