Page 5584 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009
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words, they do not listen unless it is a warning—whether it be a health warning or a personal safety warning such as the police, emergency services or health authorities would issue that states: “This is an alert. You need to be alert; you need to take care; you need to ensure that you are protected; you need to ensure that you protect your family”—that is, that it is an issue around personal safety or wellbeing.
There is that other range of advertising that governments use where they are seeking to change opinions, attitudes or behaviour. For instance, it might be a road safety campaign, a public transport campaign or some other health campaign. The impact and the effect of the advertisement are diminished dramatically to the point where it is probably not even worth running the campaign if the effect, in terms of catching people’s attention, is destroyed at the outset by an acknowledgment.
This applies most particularly to electronic advertising. All of the experts will tell you this. Any advice you wish to take from the advertising sector in relation to this issue will tell you that if you want to destroy the impact or effect of an advertisement, just say at the head that this advertisement is brought to you by an arm of government. It is guaranteed to destroy the advertisement. That is what all the experts will tell you: diminishing the impact, diminishing the effectiveness; essentially rendering the ad a waste of time and money.
We think that this particular proposal, most particularly relating to electronic advertising, that advertisements be headlined by a notice, is almost like saying, “Warning: this is a boring ad bought to you by government; do not bother listening.” That is the effect of it. That is the effect of that notice. That is all the advice I have, and I accept that advice. That is the advice through my officials from the industry. It is that this is not a good or wise thing to do. So we do not support this and we do not believe it should be supported. We believe that this is a proposal that will impact significantly on the value. That is the advice we have.
I take advice on these things. I have taken advice on this and that is the advice. If you have contrary advice, I would be interested in hearing it. But it is the advice that I have. It is technical, expert advice that this is not a wise thing to do. That is the only basis or reason on which I make these comments. I do not deny and I do not dispute, particularly in relation to the health example which the Leader of the Opposition just displayed, that it is there for a good purpose and it has had a good impact. But I think when we look at different forms of advertising, most particularly on electronic media, we do need to be careful that we are not diminishing the entire purpose of the advertising campaign. I foreshadow that I will be moving my amendment.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.52): The Greens will not be supporting Mr Seselja’s amendment. Along the lines that Mr Stanhope has just spoken about, I do have a real reservation about the notion of putting the government notice or the government label up-front on an advertisement, particularly on radio or television.
Mr Seselja has used a print example, which I think is different. But I think that particularly for television and radio, the potential for switch-off, switch channels or whatever—and therefore the failure of a government ad to have an impact—is very high if there is a bit up the front that basically says, “Here is a message from the ACT
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