Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Barnett for his question and for his very significant ongoing interest in the health of Australian children. The Australian government takes very seriously the issue of childhood obesity. In June the Prime Minister launched the $116 million Building a Healthy, Active Australia initiative, which will tackle the growing problem of declining physical activity and poor eating habits of Australian children. In July the Healthy Living initiative was launched to provide national leadership in combating the growing incidence of obesity.

Part of the Healthy Living initiative is the creation of a task force—comprising the minister for health, the minister for education, and Senator Kemp, the Minister for the Arts and Sport, and me—to take a whole-of-government approach to improving the health of Australian children. The ministerial task force will coordinate the anti-obesity campaign involving government, industry and the community and will hold its inaugural meeting tomorrow.

Helping consumers make informed choices about their lifestyle, particularly about the food they eat, is an important role for industry as well as government. In my own portfolio area we have taken significant action to ensure that we take a balanced approach to tackling obesity in Australia, including ensuring that the media industry acts responsibly when it markets to children and young people. Currently broadcasters are prohibited from showing ads designed to place pressure on kids to ask their parents for a particular product, and food advertising must not contain any misleading or incorrect information about the nutritional value of a product. A review of the children’s television standards currently underway will ensure that any contribution advertising makes to obesity levels will be addressed through well-grounded and evidence based research.

This government wants to support, motivate and educate Australians to build a healthy, active life, and that certainly will not be achieved through regulation or bans. The government, having considered carefully the arguments around these sorts of issues, does not believe that simply banning junk food advertisements will provide the silver bullet to arrest the increasing rates of childhood obesity. It would be good if it were that simple.

The issues surrounding childhood obesity are indeed complex and cannot be attributed to just one factor. The opposition and the Greens and the Democrats want to ban junk food advertising to children and that appears to be their only response to the issue. Yet this conveniently ignores the fact that such a ban would be ineffective. Quebec and Sweden banned food advertising to children 25 and 12 years ago respectively without any appreciable impact at all on obesity rates. Bans are really a soft option for those in this place who are more interested in looking good than doing good. Governments on the other hand need to provide parents with long-term assistance to tackle the issue of childhood obesity. This includes information and support rather than simple political rhetoric or heavy-handed regulation.