Page 2362 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 August 2006
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As I said earlier, a lot more can be done at a local level. The government must rethink its sporting budget. Now that sport and recreation comes under the larger umbrella of a big new department perhaps some additional steps could be taken. The government must do a number of things in an area where it has dropped the ball.
We will combat childhood obesity by ensuring that young Canberrans become physically active, are encouraged not to eat junk food and do not constantly sit in front of the television or play with computers, which they tend to have a habit of doing. We must improve our system and ensure that children have an opportunity to participate in sporting activities. The 150-minutes of compulsory physical activity that I introduced did not cost much money to run. We are not talking about big money items; we are talking about exercising a bit of common sense and doing a lot more in our own community.
I deliberately focused on the important physical side of the equation, as that is something that we as a community can do. We must ensure that our kids become more active, thus combating the scourge of obesity that if left unchecked will add many millions of dollars to our health bill. We require a holistic approach to this problem. The federal government can do a number of things but we can do a lot more at the local level. Parents as well as the government can do a lot more in this area. Obesity, one of the biggest problems facing our society, is a problem that must be addressed. This motion is timely as it enables us to reflect on what we can do to overcome childhood obesity.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.37): This topic is dear to the Greens’ heart. I am not sure whether Ms Porter is aware that Senator Bob Brown has tabled an amendment to the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill (No 1) 2005 that seeks to add the following paragraph on page 8, after line 20, to schedule 2, which relates to children’s television standards:
(e) advertise food or beverages unless the Minister for Health, having determined that such an advertisement is beneficial to the health of children, allows such an advertisement.
I will give a bit of background to that. Working in the Greens’ Senate office now is a person who used to work for the Australia Institute, Richard Dennis. He did quite a lot of research on this issue and put together a couple of papers. I do not know whether Ms Porter’s office had access to those papers, but some of the data that she used certainly is a little similar.
There are a couple of approaches here. One is the relationship between the amount of time people spend watching TV and their eating habits and the other is just to look at issues round the world. One of the papers was based on an analysis of data coming from a poll conducted by Roy Morgan Research which provided detailed information on more than 3,500 children 14 to 17 years old. Information was obtained and correlated on their television viewing habits, their attitudes to advertising and their consumption of junk food. The data ended up showing that nearly 20 per cent of children aged 14 to 17 are watching four or more hours of television a day, which does not surprise me as I know how hard it is sometimes to get children away from TV.
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