Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I rise to support the member for Mackellar's Broadcasting Services Amendment (Healthy Kids Advertising) Bill 2023 to prohibit the advertising of junk food to Australian children. As a paediatrician and parent, I am acutely aware of the fact that one in four of our children is obese or overweight. Obesity is one of the leading causes of chronic health disease in adulthood. It costs us $6 billion a year in healthcare costs, quite apart from the sad fact of the lives lost. Research has found strong associations between advertising of non-nutritious foods and rates of childhood obesity. Today's children consume multiple forms of media, often simultaneously. Some spend more time in front of a computer, television and games screen than any other activity other than sleeping. Most children aged less than six can't distinguish between programming and advertising. Children aged less than eight do not understand the persuasive agenda of marketing. Advertising directed at children this young is, by its very nature, exploitative.

Marketing of food to children on the internet is even more complex, since the boundaries between content and advertising are often even less clear than on television. Children have a remarkable ability to recall the content of ads. They develop product preferences after as little as a single exposure. Those ads affect what they ask their parents to buy and they affect what we buy our kids. Our kids see as many as 170 junk food ads every week and pay attention to them. In January 2022, two youtubers with a massive online following released a drinks brand, Prime Hydration. In its first year, Prime Hydration generated US$250 million of sales worldwide. Most of those sales were to young men. The secret to that success was the savvy use of online algorithmic networks and scarcity marketing. This is not a product for hydration and is not a product which is a sports drink. It contains high levels of sugar and caffeine, and they have potentially significant cardiac and cognitive side effects. You might not know about Prime, but your children do.

We don't allow tobacco advertising and we won't allow vaping to be advertised on our TVs, on our radios or online, but we are letting junk food harm our kids just as much as nicotine does. As a doctor, I've promised to first do no harm. As a politician, I have to act on behalf of my constituents. So I commend this bill to the House.

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