Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I ask that the Greens’ support for the Labor amendment be recorded. I seek leave to move Greens amendments (1) and (2) together.

Leave granted.

I move Greens amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 4813:

(1)    Clause 3, page 1 (line 9) to page 2 (line 2), omit the clause, substitute:

3  Schedule(s)

Schedule 2—Amendment of Children’s Television Standards

Children’s Television Standards 2005

These very important amendments are to begin, in a real way, tackling the problem of obesity in our Australian community. It is a coincidence that there is an international conference on the global problem of obesity taking place as we sit here, with 2,000 delegates and 300 experts in the field contributing to that debate. It is now apparent that, in this age of extraordinary plenty, populations around the world have been led to an eating and obesity epidemic which is going to have massive impacts on those populations and the individuals who are caught up by obesity.

It is estimated that in Australia the impact of the current obesity problem, if converted to dollars, is about $11 billion per year. That figure comes from the Institute of Health Economics and Technology Assessment. That breaks down to some $2.5 billion in treatment of obesity and $9 billion in indirect costs, including lost productivity, absenteeism and unemployment. What is not costed is the psychological impact of obesity on the individuals who are overweight, and who have great trouble tackling that in our consumer society, and also the impact on the families and others who are left behind when people die because of obesity.

The news is getting worse. More than half of Australian adults and a quarter of Australian children are overweight already. The projections are that, as far as children are concerned, more than half of them will be overweight by 2025. The consequences of that are enormous, because a pattern of obesity allowed to unfold in childhood makes the probability of obesity, with all the health problems that come from that, very difficult to handle in adulthood. The impact on the future economy of this country would be extraordinarily expensive if that were to be the one measure that was used—and it is not for me.

The minister has already said that prohibiting the pushing of junk food to children on Australian television is not going to make any difference. But her own comment on a British reference to Sweden and Quebec having gone down this path was that the information is inconclusive at the moment. What is as obvious as the noses on our faces is that the pushing of junk food at children, who are unable to discriminate between fact and advertising, is a terrible thing to do in an obesity epidemic. Yet in Australia, in the last year for which we have figures—that is, 2004—over $400 million was spent in that year alone by junk food sellers pushing their products onto Australian children during children’s TV hours.

This involves not just sweets and chocolates, but sugar-concentrated aerated drinks—the Coca-Cola phenomenon, which has seen the Coke brand become the most lauded and the most widely distributed in the world. But when one stops and thinks about it, one has to ask: what benefit have Coca-Cola and that particular product brought to the world? The answer to that question is: whatever else, it is part of this now global epidemic of obesity. It is partly Coca-Cola. Like McDonald’s, breakfast cereal producers, sweets producers and a whole range of junk food producers, they are using children’s television hours to increase their sales. One does not have to know much about advertising to know that if advertising of $400 million a year were not more than rewarded by an expansion of their profits of more than $400 million a year, they would not be doing it. So we can see that the reward for the advertising—the pushing of junk food on television—is billions of dollars in extra sales of those food items. Over 90 per cent of the advertising is for junk food. It is for foods which cause obesity.

The Minister for Health and Ageing, Mr Abbott, has said that he is not interested in this ‘soft option’. In fact, he opposes it. The question I put to Minister Abbott is: where is your hard option? It seems to me that the minister for health, who is letting down Australia’s children and who is more interested in defending the big advertising budgets of the big junk food corporations than he is in the health of our children, is failing in his job. Mr Abbott is challenged to come out with the hard options. We do not have any. We have had a couple of government senators in the debate this morning point to TV advertising for fruit and vegetables and some advertising about exercise, even though studies in New South Wales show that exercise is not the problem. In fact, kids have been getting more exercise in the last decade, but they have been getting fatter. The problem is the taking in of calories, the taking in of food—although it must be said that the more exercise we can encourage everybody in our society to take, the better.

The Prime Minister has announced that $116 million over four years is to be spent on what I would call a ‘blancmange campaign’. Mr Abbott calls the amendments to the legislation that the Greens have before the Senate at the moment ‘soft’. If that is the case, his program is blancmange. There is also $6 million dollars per annum for advertising. That is $35 million per annum, a proportion of which will go into television advertising. That is less than one-tenth of the amount that the food cartels and companies are using to push junk food at kids. The government is being outspent by more than 10 to one. One does not have to be very good at maths, let alone at logic, to see not only that the government is simply throwing good money up against bad money from the corporations—and it is ultimately the taxpayers who are losing out there—but also that the government dollar is being overwhelmed by the private sector. And the private sector is winning, because it is selling the foods which it keeps advertising. It is our children who are losing.

The government ought to be right behind these amendments, and the Greens do not intend to allow the matter to stop here. I agree that we need a multifaceted approach to tackling this huge problem of obesity. Professor Philip James, the head of the International Obesity Task Force, said on the AM program this morning that obesity is, according to the World Health Organisation:

... the biggest unrecognised public health problem in the world.

It is the biggest unrecognised health problem in the world, and if it is going to be tackled then our nation is in the box seat to tackle it. But the government cannot even get itself to first base and to say, ‘We have to stop pushing junk food at kids during kids’ television programs.’ It is outrageous. It is a dereliction of duty by the minister for health that he is not only not supporting this legislation but also has no alternative that will have the traction that these amendments would have in tackling this problem.

Other countries do have a multifaceted approach. Other countries prohibit junk foods—either in schools altogether or in school tuckshops. Other countries are moving to take particularly dangerous ingredients out of foods. This morning the AM program also heard from a Danish expert how the Danes have removed from their food chain particular fatty acids which are inimical to the health. Nobody has stopped eating over there and nobody is the worse off for it, but everybody is better for it. But McDonald’s, for example, can keep putting into Australian food those particular ingredients which are not permitted in Danish food. We are seeing the Australian community suffering from an ideological impasse. The ideology of this government is that it will not stand up to corporations which are in the business of advertising and pushing junk food. It would rather leave the health of our children to those corporations. That is just inexcusable.

The Minister for Health and Ageing says, ‘Leave it to parents and individuals.’ What an extraordinary statement that is: that the most vulnerable kids in our community, I submit—that is, the kids who, for no reason of their own, might have the least parental supervision—can be left with no support because the minister says that he is not going to act to ensure that they at least do not have junk food pushed at them by corporations who have the profit bottom line driving their motivation in children’s television viewing hours. Where would we be if that same ideology—that it is up to the individual and parents to ensure the wellbeing of children; that we simply do not legislate for the protection of children; that it is a matter for parents—had been kept by governments all the way down the line? That went out some time in the 16th century and it is time that Tony Abbott caught up with that. There is a community responsibility for the health of our younger generation and there is a government responsibility. It ought not to be that the Greens, in bringing in amendments like these when this hidden epidemic is becoming a very public epidemic, are getting not only rebuff from the government but also no satisfactory response from the government and no alternative from the government.

Mr Abbott stands indicted. The Prime Minister has echoed his sentiments. They are both wrong. Australian kids deserve a better deal. Australian kids deserve to be protected from junk food advertisers pushing their wares at them in children’s television viewing hours. The Prime Minister ought to be more responsible. He talks about families and sends bundles of money in the pre-election period to families but abandons them when it comes to kids watching TV and having harmful products pushed at them, as junk foods are. It is an abrogation of prime ministerial and ministerial responsibility by Mr Howard and Mr Abbott. I challenge them: where is your hard option if you do not like this Greens soft option? They have no option. The government stands indicted. (Time expired)