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Lost alcohol advertising report deserves more

An agency report examining the case for alcohol advertising reform, and recommending far-reaching changes was handed to the Commonwealth Government in April 2014.

17 months on and not a word – well not at least until the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to elicit the Australian National Preventive Health Agency’s (ANPHA) final report, Alcohol advertising: The effectiveness of current regulatory codes in addressing community concern. Had FARE not done so the report would likely remain overlooked in the Ministerial in-tray.

The report calls for the loophole that currently allows alcohol advertising before 8:30pm during live sport broadcasts on weekends and public holidays to be closed, and for Pay TV alcohol advertising practices to be brought into line with free to air TV.

The expert report confirms what we already know: the current system for regulating alcohol advertising is broken.

The loophole that increases children’s exposure to alcohol advertising is the most glaring and egregious shortcoming, but is far from the only failing of the current system.

In fact, the comprehensive report includes a total of 30 recommendations where reform is urgently needed. Among those, a call for government to legislate to control alcohol advertising and marketing if industry fails to voluntarily remove the live sports broadcast exemption.

Reaction to the report tells us much as well.

As reported in The Guardian, according to the Health Minister, Senator Fiona Nash, the report had merely been ‘overlooked’.

ANPHA was the Government’s principal adviser on preventive health before it was closed down by the Abbott Government.

It had been commissioned to report on the effectiveness of the regulation of alcohol advertising and had released a draft paper in February 2014. A particular focus of the report was on the exposure of young people to alcohol advertising. It found this was high and ongoing.

Senator Nash said in The Guardian report, “I do have concerns around the advertising of alcohol during sporting events which is watched by many children”.

Unfortunately, the Minister went on to say “the issue around it is genuinely complex and more research and work is required”.

ANPHA provided the Commonwealth Government with its best advice – hopefully government might have given it fair consideration, perhaps even referred it to other State and Territory leaders and health ministers.

It would have been received with interest by New South Wales Premier, Mike Baird, who has shown himself engaged and outspoken on the issue; recently expressing publicly his concern about alcohol advertising and sport.

This is all the more damning in the knowledge that as the government sat on its hands “overlooking” the findings, Free TV Australia has been busy proposing changes to its own code which would, if implemented, expose children to even more alcohol advertising.

Reaction from Free TV Australia was also enlightening.

Chief Executive Julie Flynn arguing, not that the loophole exists, but instead attempting to deflect any criticism with an argument that it was not the intent of the loophole to expose children to alcohol advertising, saying “the regulations were implemented to reflect viewing demographics and community standards”.

Well I’m sorry, but it doesn’t really matter what the intent was. The reality is that this loophole is exposing children to harmful alcohol advertising. A point well made in ANPHA’s report, and further reinforced by recent findings.

New research from Monash University’s Professor Kerry O’Brien published just last month shows that Australian children and adolescents in fact receive millions of exposures to alcohol advertising when watching AFL, NRL, and Cricket on television. It found that a cumulative audience of 26.9 million Australian children and adolescents watching these sports are exposed to a staggering 51 million instances of alcohol advertising, with nearly half (47 per cent) of these broadcast during daytime programming between 6am and 8.30pm.

Free TV are also fond of the ‘level playing field argument’.

That argument goes like this. Rather than Free TV raising its standards, Julie Flynn thinks the bar needs to be lowered further to put Free TV on the same footing as other platforms and channels.

She says, “any further alcohol restrictions would lead to regulatory bypass – ads will simply move to those platforms which are subject to less onerous restrictions”.

Thanks Julie, the ‘lowering the bar’ stuff is quite aspirational!

It does bring us back neatly to the once hidden, misplaced, shelved, buried, overlooked ANPHA report.

Far from lowering the bar even further, the report recognises that the current self-regulatory framework is failing our children. That it’s leaving them exposed to harmful alcohol advertising. That the entire system is broken, and needs to be addressed.

As a matter of urgency, the Commonwealth Government must establish an independent review of Australia’s broadcast and digital alcohol advertising guidelines. It is important than such a review does more than simply identify and acknowledge the failings of the current self-regulatory framework. Much of that work has already been done. What is needed now is the introduction of an effective alcohol advertising regulatory regime.

Michael Thorn

Michael was was Chief Executive of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) from January 2011 until November 2019

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