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

in reply—I thank Senator Siewert for her presentation of the reasons why this bill, the Protecting Children from Junk Food Advertising (Broadcasting Amendment) Bill 2010 should be passing into law today and I thank all members who have contributed to this debate and Senator Xenophon for his flagged amendment. But it is very clear that the bill will not pass the second reading because we have here the classic alternative in this period of nobody dominating the Senate of the government and opposition—the Labor Party and the coalition—combining to have the numbers to block a piece of legislation coming from the crossbench. We will see much more of this. I flagged this very circumstance on George Negus’s program on SBS last night. It is something that some members of the gallery have some difficulty in getting their heads around. I will come back to that in a moment.

This piece of legislation was brought forward by the Greens three years ago. It was then held over to await a taskforce reporting back after the Senate inquiry. The task force effectively endorsed the parameters of this bill. We have extended the time of prohibition for children’s TV junk food ads. I will quote from that task force report which, in turn, quotes the World Health Organisation. It says:

The World Health Organization has recognised that food marketing to children, particularly television advertising, is an important area for action to prevent obesity and has called upon governments to implement policies and strategies that reduce the impact of foods high in fat, sugar and salt and promote the responsible marketing of foods and beverages …

The general tenor of the argument from Senators Moore and Birmingham, and other contributors, was that this is a cultural problem. It reminds me very much of the now Leader of the Opposition saying that the issue of petrol sniffing was a cultural problem and should be a matter left to parents in Central Australia to deal with—and this at a time when it was known that 400 Indigenous children were addicted to petrol. Subsequent to that the national alarm about the permanent damage petrol sniffing caused to those children became so great that it became mandatory to get rid of the injurious petrol and replace it with non-sniffable petrol. Action was taken by the federal government.

We have a similar situation here—we hear it is a matter of parental responsibility; it does not cover the field; there are other things that should be done. But when it comes to a specific and very important contribution based on medical advice on what we should do if we are going to lessen the rate of obesity—which is increasing in our community and which Access Economics estimates is costing the Australian people $58 billion per annum—the government and the opposition say no, we cannot do that because something else needs to be done; it is a cultural problem. I reject that outright.

This is a clear opportunity to put a restriction on junk food advertising. As Senator Siewert made clear, $400 million to $500 million is being spent on advertising each year but more than that is coming back in profits to junk food advertisers. It is kids and parents who have to contend with that. As Senator Siewert said, why would you spend that money if you were not getting a dividend from it? We know from repeated reports in the Age and other newspapers that the junk food purveyors serially breach so-called commitments to not push their junk food to children during children’s TV hours. But, still, we have this ennui, this inability of government and opposition, the big parties, to act. There is a degree of fear of taking on the all-powerful advertising industry and associated food industries. So be it.

This is a good piece of legislation and it ought to pass the parliament, yet we have this decision by Labor, the Liberals and the National Party to reject the advice of the experts to support the legislation. It would have brought us somewhat into line with Norway, Quebec, the UK and other places which have banned exposing children to such advertising. It will come back to be revisited down the line, when more damage will have been done because of the failure to act now. The Greens will continue to advocate legislative action in this area, because it is the right thing to do. We are proud of this legislation and will continue to foster it in the public arena, where the polls show us that more than 80 per cent of people—in fact some polls show 90 per cent—want this form of legislation. But, of course, we are not going to see that support reflected here today.

This is time for private senators’ legislation, and we are engaged in a very healthy parliamentary process here. I want to comment on an article in today’s Daily Telegraph which talks about the territories legislation which I brought before the Senate and which it was agreed by the Senate yesterday would go to a committee. Simon Benson and Steve Lewis have commented in the Daily Telegraph in a way that misrepresents—with some deliberateness I would think, because they did not speak with me about it—the process of this parliament and Senate deliberation. I would ask the President to look at that misrepresentation and the matters I now draw to the Senate’s attention. The article says:

... the Greens claimed to have Government backing for a Bill to pave the way for gay marriage and legal euthanasia.

I would ask the President to see whether any such claim was made. What we do know is that an AAP report issued at 12.56 pm on 1 March publicly announced:

Labor will back the Australian Greens’ push to restore the rights of territory governments to legislate on such issues as voluntary euthanasia.

That report was wrong, because the legislation would not do that. The Daily Telegraph report says:

The Greens had ambushed the Government by quietly introducing amendments to its own private member’s Bill late on Tuesday night.

Those amendments were circulated on Friday night. I ask the President to look at that matter.