Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will be supporting this amendment. As you can probably tell from my contribution to the second reading debate on the bill and from our proposed amendments on children’s television standards, we are deeply concerned about what we believe to be an obesity epidemic in our children. The Greens believe that an easy-to-use system—and one that children can participate in—is necessary. My sister has studied food technology at university. She has three children and, as you can probably appreciate, she pays close attention to what is in food products. However, she has great difficulty going around the supermarket with three kids under the age of 10 and trying to explain to them why they cannot have certain products while she is reading in depth the back of a product and trying to interpret it. Reading a book while having three kids in tow does not work very well. Can you believe that? The kids frequently come very close to winning the nagging competition. An easy-to-use system that is quick to use and that also engages your children so that they could learn as well would be very useful. We say to the government: ‘Please take this on board and get moving on it because it is essential.’