Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Recently, the Australian Advertising Standards Bureau received numerous complaint letters regarding a certain television commercial. As a result of the complaints, the television commercial is no longer being broadcast. The commercial featured a young professional man who climbed onto the top of a moving bus and then car surfed for some distance before being catapulted off the bus into the surf. The advertising watchdog organisation agreed with the concerns expressed by the public that the depiction of the car surfing had the potential to influence viewers to do the same thing. While the depiction in the commercial itself was relatively harmless, in the real world car surfing is very dangerous and one mistake will almost certainly lead to serious injury or death. Even at low speeds, a car surfer can lose balance and fall awkwardly. A knock to the head can cause irreparable injury.

It is vital that all people, our youth in particular, are strongly discouraged from car surfing. There have been several car surfing incidents that have been reported in recent years in the local media in my electorate on the Sunshine Coast. On the weekend just passed, a young man from Landsborough became the victim of a similar situation. He had jumped onto the back of a slow-moving freight train to hitch a ride home late on Friday night. Tragically, as the train failed to slow down at his usual stop, he jumped off, he landed hard and he suffered fatal injuries. As a father, my heart goes out to the family of that young man.

Younger Australians will always be adventurous. They are enthusiastic about life. They are determined to experience new things and learn about life. The majority of them are living at home and are free of many of the burdens that come with raising a family and having to meet the demands of a mortgage. They are in the prime of their lives and enjoying all of the experiences that life has to offer, and of course that is the way that it should be. However, as I have said in this House on at least one previous occasion, our children do need the advice of parents to help guide them to become well developed, mature, adult citizens, but they also must be allowed to have their own experiences and make their own mistakes. Mistakes are perhaps the most important learning tool we have, though we do not enjoy making them. They help us develop and we often look back on our mistakes and give thanks for what we have learnt through them. But car surfing or train surfing are experiences we hope that people will not attempt.

We must sit down with young people and talk to them, explain the dangers, explain the physics, if we have to, of the human body being at the mercy of forces of motion and of gravity and let the tragedies of the past help us to teach young Australians that car surfing or train surfing is not cool, that it is dangerous and can be potentially fatal. The media—television shows, advertisements and even movies—must act responsibly and ban any portrayals of car surfing. The media is very influential but the influence must be for the good rather than irresponsible. Lives of young Australians depend on it.

Parenthood is perhaps the most difficult job in the world and, if that is not the case, it is certainly very close to the top of the list. It is important that the media outlets, which are entertaining our young people, are also mindful of the power that they have and ensure that they assign considerable importance to the needs of young Australians.

Younger Australians are an important section of the community on the Sunshine Coast, which is celebrating another successful Mooloolaba triathlon which occurred last Sunday. I know my good friend and colleague the honourable member for Fairfax, who is in the chair, also closely follows the Mooloolaba triathlon which used to be in his electorate previously. Sadly, neither the honourable member for Fairfax nor I had the opportunity of participating this year.

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