Page 4446 - Week 12 - Thursday, 26 October 2017
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This was not the only concern about advertising. As Liam Lilly stated:
Canberra has the biggest ecological footprint in Australia … We don’t need more advertising to promote mindless consumerism and convince us to buy more things … Advertising is the fuel of the consumer economy; and it has a direct link to rising material aspirations, environmental destruction, consumer debt, and the number of hours we work … Effective advertising makes us feel inadequate, further adding to rates of depression, anxiety, and mental illness.
There was only one submission from a local business in support of billboards, and none of Canberra’s business groups made a submission. This almost total absence of submissions suggests a similar level of interest in having more billboards amongst the Canberra businesses.
Quite a number of submitters raised concerns about the ACT government’s growing use of what are effectively mobile billboards to fund transport services. I am referring here obviously to the advertisements on the sides of buses, and most particularly to the full-wrap billboards, such as we have just had with the rainbow one and the Floriade ones, which fully cover the bus. They make it very difficult for passengers to see out of the bus at night and can lead, as I know from personal experience, to passengers missing their stop because they cannot see. The estimates committee was also told:
One of the other things we are experiencing is that some of the all-over bus wraps sometimes block the drivers’ ability to see who is there.
It is unacceptable that bus billboards are reducing drivers’ ability to safely board passengers and reducing passenger comfort.
In response to the community’s overwhelming concerns about billboards and advertising signage more generally, I make the following additional recommendations: that the ACT government respond to the clear expression of community concern by explicitly prohibiting billboards in the Territory Plan; that the ACT government review all billboards and third-party advertising on its property and reduce it, in line with community expectations; that the ACT government phase out bus-wrap billboards which cover the windows of buses, in recognition of the concerns of bus users and drivers; and that the ACT Government tighten advertising signage regulations in the Territory Plan to prohibit third-party advertising on all signage, reduce the maximum permitted size of other business advertising signage and close loopholes that allow billboards and other very large signs on the grounds that they are temporary or ancillary usage. I commend the report to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Education, Employment and Youth Affairs—Standing Committee
Statement by deputy chair
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (11.59): Pursuant to standing order 246A, I wish to make a statement on behalf of the Standing Committee on Education, Employment
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