Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The Democrats support a ban on advertising food during children’s television times as defined in various codes. We are not so sure about whether this is the right bill to do it—we think it is probably not—and we are also not so sure that you can usefully define which food is beneficial to the health of children and which is not. I think you would spend a lot of time arguing around that definitional point. Our preferred method of dealing with this situation is to simply ban food advertising during children’s television time, which would capture the vast majority of junk food advertising. You could have an exemption for community service advertisements, which would pick up on foods, such as apples, that you might want to advertise as being healthy for children. This obviously will not be passed in the chamber tonight but I point out that, in principle, the Democrats support a ban on television advertising of food during children’s viewing hours but we somehow doubt that this is the most appropriate way to do it. I would refer honourable senators to our private bill, which would deliver on that objective.