ARTICLES
Children’s Health Hit for Six as Industry Fails to Regulate Alcohol Ads (continued)
Furthermore, there is a lack of transparency and independence
in the system. There was no public consultation to inform the
development of the placement rules, and the alcohol industry
itself is heavily involved in administering the current scheme.
There is no monitoring of alcohol marketing in Australia, and no
penalties are applied when companies do breach the rules.
In November 2017, the ABAC Scheme introduced what it called
'placement rules'. They require alcohol marketers to:
1. comply with existing industry codes (such as the CTICP)
regulating placement;
2. use available age restriction controls to exclude minors from
the audience;
3. place alcohol ads only where the audience is reasonably
expected to comprise at least 75% adults; Our findings are in line with recent research from the University of
Sydney that found significant weaknesses and limitations in the
ABAC scheme system as a whole.
4. not place alcohol ads with programs or content primarily
aimed at minors; What we need to do
Self-regulation by industries such as alcohol or tobacco does
little to reduce children’s exposure to marketing. Government
intervention is essential if we want Australian kids to be protected
from alcohol advertising.
5. not send alcohol ads to any minor by email.
Where do these rules fall short?
The objective to “avoid the direction of alcohol marketing towards
minors” is too narrow to be at all effective. It ignores the fact
that children are still exposed to many alcohol ads that aren’t
directed at them. Nor does it reflect recommendations from the
World Health Organisation for “comprehensive restrictions” on
exposure to alcohol advertising.
For starters, the Federal Government needs to remove the
exemption in the CTICP and alcohol sponsorship of sport. That is
the main focus of ‘End Alcohol Advertising in Sport’, a campaign
of several sporting and community champions to encourage
alcohol advertising to be phased out of professional sports.
The alcohol industry has demonstrated that it is unable
to effectively control alcohol marketing. For this reason,
statutory regulation by Governments is the necessary step
to ensure children’s exposure to alcohol advertising is
minimised.
The rules don’t cover many key forms of marketing, including
sponsorship, and they rely on weak existing industry codes. They
do nothing to address the exemption in the CTICP, meaning
alcohol ads are still allowed during sports broadcasts.
Our research found the panel dismissed complaints about
children seeing alcohol ads during test cricket and one-day
matches, and the Australian Open tennis. The panel decided the
placement did comply with the CTICP: the adult audience was
over 75%, and the sports were not aimed at minors. All but one
of the 24 placement-related determinations published in the first
six months of the rules were either dismissed or found to be “no
fault” breaches.
This article was first published in ‘The Conversation’ on 17th
December, 2018. SEN, and the Science Teachers’ Association of
NSW are grateful to ‘The Conversation’ for its generous policy of
encouraging the republishing of its many fine articles. We also
thank the authors, Julia Stafford and Hannah Pierce, for supplying
this article, thereby agreeing to that policy. – Editor.
Age restriction controls and an audience threshold of at least
75% adults do little to prevent alcohol ads from being placed
where children will easily and frequently see them. Since only
22% of the Australian population are in fact aged 0-17 years,
programs with broad appeal easily attract over 75% adults.
43
SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 68 NO 1