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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3189 ..

MS GALLAGHER (continuing):

does not permit advertisements for guns, tanks or other instruments of war and bans all advertisements for toys between 7.00 am and 10.00 pm. The European Union's television without frontiers directive, which was last updated in 1997, bars advertising within any children's television program running for 30 or fewer minutes. Despite these restrictions, there are few, if any, restrictions on junk food advertising other than the restrictions that apply to commercials generally.

Australia recognises that children require different standards of television and that they need extra protection from advertisers. The children's television standards recognise that by having specific content and broadcast standards, as well as certain restrictions and requirements for advertising. Despite these standards, Australia has the highest level of advertising to children and, among industrialised nations, Australia has the highest number of food ads per hour and has the highest level, jointly held with the United States, of advertising for sugary breakfast cereal. A substantial proportion of the advertising directed at children is for food, with McDonalds, Nestlé, Kelloggs, Mars and Cadbury being the most prolific advertisers.

Our advertising and broadcasting standards recognise the time when children are likely to be watching television and that children deserve quality, educational and entertaining TV. The standards also recognise to a limited extent that children, being generally more gullible, need some protection from representations made in advertising. The standards also recognise that children should have limited exposure to themes of a violent, sexual or otherwise disturbing nature. There is, however, no requirement that advertisements support educational or healthy lifestyle themes and there is no requirement that there be a proportional amount of free advertising space devoted to community or government messages to promote good health and physical activity.

The current ABA children's television standards, or CTS, sets out both C and P bands as the designated periods when children are likely to be watching television. The C band, which is for children of primary school age, is from 7.00 am to 8.00 am and 4.00 pm to 8.30 pm, Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 8.30 pm on Saturday, Sunday and school holidays. The P band, which is for children of preschool age, is from 7.00 am to 4.30 pm, Monday to Friday.

The standards then go on to provide a formula for the number of hours per year a commercial television station must broadcast C and P-rated programs. There are various formulations for when exactly these programs must be broadcast, but they must amount to a total of 390 hours of dedicated children's programming-130 hours a year of P programming and 260 hours a year of C programming. These shows must be broadcast in the relevant band. A broadcaster must designate periods within the band in which the broadcaster will not broadcast anything other than C or P-rated programs and the advertising restrictions relate only to these periods, not to the whole band.

Standard 13.2 states that there will be no advertisements during P periods. That means that for half an hour each weekday there are no advertisements broadcast, despite the fact that the P band is 91/2 hours long. This is because the restriction applies to the period, not to the whole band. There is a lesser restriction for the C period, in which there can only be five minutes of advertising during each half hour. However, a closer look reveals that this restriction does not apply after 6.00 pm and that Australian children's drama

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