The Australian Christian Lobby calls on the Federal Government to consider Berlin’s proposed ban on sexist advertising which extends to all images in which women are protrayed as “beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive, or ruled by their emotions”.

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The NSW Government has missed an opportunity to protect children from the harms of online pornography by rejecting the recommendation of a cross-party inquiry to push for internet filtering.

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MEDIA RELEASE



Thursday 31st July 2014



The Australian Christian Lobby has congratulated the Queensland government for leading the way in Australia in responding to community concerns regarding sexualised outdoor advertising.



ACL’s Queensland Director Wendy Francis welcomed the government’s commitment to introduce fines to penalise advertisers that do not comply with the industry’s code of ethics.



The commitment was made in the Queensland Government response to the Health and Community Services Committee Report No. 36 Inquiry into sexually explicit outdoor advertising.



Ms Francis said classification issues generally fall to the federal government but it has failed to act on the recommendations from numerous inquiries and reports.



“The state government has responded to the community concerns around sexualised outdoor advertising and found a way it can help bring outdoor advertising in line with community standards by introducing fines for offenders,” Ms Francis said.



“This is part of its overall commitment to make Queensland the safest place in Australia to raise a child,” Ms Francis said.



“The sexualisation of our everyday environment is contributing to a culture where there is an increase in sexual assaults, eating disorders in young children, and depression”, she said.



Ms Francis said today’s announcement would mean companies like Wicked Campers, which has consistently ignored the self-regulated Advertising Standards Board’s rulings, would face fines.



Whilst Ms Francis said today’s announcement was a step in the right direction but she said more still needed to be done.



“The Advertising Standards Board is a self-regulated body. Currently, they alone hand down rulings against its advertisers and there is no recourse once their decision is made, making it difficult to keep advertisers accountable to the community,” she said.



“At the very least we need a government avenue for people to go to if their complaint to the ASB is unsuccessful”, she said.



ENDS

The Hon Robyn McSweeney is a Liberal member of the Western Australian Legislative Council since 2001, representing the region of South West. In this interview with the ACL's Katherine Spackman she discusses the report by the Children's Commissioner looking at the sexualisation of children. Ms McSweeney was on the committee which tabled the report in parliament. Listen to the interview below and read the related blog post on the issue.

MEDIA RELEASE



Monday, 24th February 2014



ACL has released an exclusive video interview with Tasmanian Liberal Leader Will Hodgman about his position on issues of concern to Christians in the lead up to the state election.



ACL’s Tasmanian Director Mark Brown said Labor Premier Lara Giddings declined the opportunity to be interviewed but has said she would supply a written response to the questions.



Mr Brown said the 20 minute interview is available to watch on www.tasvotes.org.au.



“Mr Hodgman gives his position on a number of issues including unemployment, education, abortion, marriage, anti-discrimination, gambling, sexualisation of society and health,” he said.



If elected in March, Mr Hodgman gave an undertaking to amend anti-discrimination legislation to allow for a general exemption so faith-based schools would have the freedom to select staff and students who shared their ethos.



“On the issue of abortion, Mr Hodgman has indicated his concern at the legislation passed late last year which infringed on a doctor’s right to freedom of conscience,” Mr Brown said.



Mr Brown said ACL was providing opportunities for Christians to make an informed vote this election with its Strong Economy, Strong Communities Breakfast event tomorrow and Meet Your Candidate Forums being held around the state over the next two weeks.   



“Tomorrow’s business breakfast will discuss the importance of a strong Tasmanian economy to strong Tasmanian families and communities with economist Professor Ian Harper, local innovator and business strategist Professor Jonathan West, and Mission Australia’s Noel Mundy,” he said.



“The five Meet Your Candidate Forums provide an opportunity for people to meet their local candidates and understand the values and ideas that they’ll bring to the job if elected,” he said.



The website also has a conscience vote history table of current sitting MPs showing how they voted on issues including surrogacy, marriage, adoption, abortion and euthanasia legislation in the past three years.



Mr Brown said the majority of Tasmanians identify themselves as being of the Christian faith.



“Elections are a good time for Christians to positively influence society through electing people of good character who share their desire to see a more moral, just and compassionate society,” he said.



Mr Hodgman’s interview and other election resources are available at www.tasvotes.org.au.

Tasmanian Labor Senator Helen Polley recently delivered a speech on healthy body image to the Senate. It explored the government's need to place tighter regulations on digital enhancement of media images, and the importance of addressing the sexualisation of children and young people through highly sexualised advertising.



ACL has recently launched a renewed national campaign to make outdoor advertising G-rated, in a bid to see the removal of sexually explicit material being displayed in public areas.



You can read Senator Polley's speech below:



I put it to you, my parliamentary colleagues, that the mounting body of new evidence from Australia and overseas needs to be reviewed and considered with a view to introducing more realistic and enforceable regulation of the advertising industry. We need to decide as elected representatives what is more important for our society: that the advertising industry flourish unfettered, regardless of whose welfare they might be putting at risk, or that we show enough concern for younger members of our society at vulnerable stages of their development to examine the research and introduce legislation which protects their right to healthy development.



Click here to read the whole speech.

Melinda Liszweski from Collective Shout talks about clothing company Supre's new advertisement for "jeggings" featuring topless girls. Listen here. Transcript here.

In brief:

• ACL in the media over sexualised bus shelter ads,


• Report the abusive Facebook attacks on ACL’s Qld Director Wendy Francis (see links below),


• Support Wendy Francis’ Facebook page calling for Outdoor Advertising to be G-rated.

As you may or may not have heard, the ACL’s Queensland Director Wendy Francis has been front and centre of the debate about the contents of billboards and outdoor advertising around Brisbane.

The issue for ACL has always been the sexualisation of children not the issue of homosexuality. Exposing inappropriate billboard content from condoms to erection problems has been a concern of Wendy’s and the ACL’s for a long time.

The latest effort to see the Adshel Rip and Roll condom ad removed from bus shelters is a part of this campaign. We don’t think too many parents would want their children exposed to in-your-face sexualised condom advertisements while waiting for the school bus.

We are disappointed to see Adshel cave to pressure from the highly organised homosexual lobby and reinstate the billboards. This shows a disregard for children and the right of parents to explain sexual concepts to their children at a time parents deem appropriate, not advertisers.

Wendy has written to the Advertising Standards Bureau and billboard companies complaining about numerous billboards in the past. She was successful in causing a Vampire Diaries poster at bus shelters around Brisbane to be brought down which featured two men leaning over a vulnerable young woman biting her neck. One of these ads was at the Brisbane Boys College. Yet, that didn’t make the news.

ACL lodged a submission to a House of Representatives inquiry in February 2011 and then Wendy appeared on ACL’s behalf at the committee’s hearing in Melbourne with our Victorian Director Rob Ward renewing calls for outdoor advertising to be G Rated. You can read an article she wrote about that submission by clicking here.

Wendy is not new to the issue of the sexualisation of children through inappropriate outdoor advertising and neither is ACL. We made submissions in 2008 to two Senate Inquiries examining broadcasting standards and the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media.

Wendy has done a tremendous job in speaking out on the issue of inappropriate advertising as it effects children. We are concerned at the level of abuse that has been levelled at her and the ACL.

We are coming to you late in the game but we need your practical support in several ways. Firstly, Wendy has a fan page set up calling for Outdoor Advertising to be G Rated. We need to work on our social media efforts, after yesterday, and ask that you would support this group and show that there are people willing to be activated in the social media. Please go and ‘like’ it now.

We also need you to speak up against the obscene and hateful language on Facebook and express the view that this is no way to debate in a civil society.

There are three offensive Facebook pages targeting Wendy we’d like you to report:

• The Facebook account set up called “Wendy Francis is a Homophobe”,


• “Wendy Francis is a bigot”,


• And more seriously, “Wendy Francis is a F*** Idiot” (WARNING: this contains obscenities.

If you have a Facebook profile, click on these links, go to the page and on the left-hand side you’ll find a link that says “Report Page” – you can select “Targets a friend”.

Be courageous and let activists know that this is completely inappropriate, whether they agree or not with ACL’s concern for the sexualisation of children through outdoor advertising. It’s not right to attack people personally and these claims about Wendy are untrue and offensive.

The last 24 hours have been difficult for our communication and to make matters worse, our website went down. We hope that you’ll help us out with this and participate in the debate on social media such as Facebook.

Thank you for your support for the work of the ACL.

Lyle Shelton
Chief of Staff

The Advertising Standards Bureau has discarded a suggestion to make outdoor advertising G rated at public hearings in Canberra this week into the Australian film and literature classification scheme.

The Australian Christian Lobby and other groups have campaigned for advertising to be G rated in an attempt to prevent children from being exposed to sexualised and inappropriate outdoor advertising, which by its nature is always public and almost impossible to avoid.

Ms Fiona Jolly, chief executive of the Advertising Standards Bureau, which is an industry self-regulator, told the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee Inquiry however that, “I don't think that the G rating is the cure-all that some have suggested that it is”.

She is also reported to have said that, “In our view, it is not possible to regulate so no one in the community is not offended and we argue it is also not appropriate or necessary to do so”.

Whilst ACL can recognise that the elimination of offence is quite difficult, a G rating for outdoor advertising is a positive and simple policy that would remove from public places advertising that is clearly unsuitable for children. The idea has strong support from a wide range of child and family advocates.

A number of inappropriate advertisements that are on public display but could and should be removed if a G rating were implemented are presented in ACL’s submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs Inquiry into the regulation of billboard and outdoor advertising – see here.

ACL’s submission to the Senate committee can be found by clicking here. The opening statement made by ACL’s Chief of Staff Lyle Shelton at an earlier public hearing is also available here.

The Senate committee is due to report its findings by June 30.

MEDIA RELEASE

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) today congratulated ACT Greens Party Convener, Meredith Hunter, on moves to introduce a voluntary code of conduct for retailers to help combat the sexualisation of children as well as a proposal to educate students on the dangers of sexualised images on young minds, but said more needs to be done to seriously tackle the wider sexualisation of culture.

The ACL’s ACT Director Nick Jensen said he supported moves for the ACT to become a leader in the fight against the sexualisation of children and welcomed Ms Hunter’s motion calling on the ACT Government to take action on the issue.

“While Ms Hunter’s motion is welcome, it would be great to see her concern extend to Federal Green policies, where there is a push for X-rated material to be sold throughout Australia, support for girls to sell their bodies for sex in prostitution legislation, and opposition to ISP filtering measures to stop child pornography on the internet.

“In reality it is really national action that is needed, particularly in terms of a review of our broken classification system which is allowing children to be bombarded with overtly sexual messages by everything from billboards to films to music videos,” Mr Jensen said.

Mr Jensen, who also works as a chaplain in a Canberra school, said: “Our schools are seeing an increase in a large range of problems linked to children being exposed to sexual images and concepts at a young age. There needs to be a recognition that marketing aimed at selling products to children through sexual advertisements, particularly in teenage magazines, clothing shops and music videos, is not healthy for a child’s development.

“There is a need for more education in critiquing unhealthy media messages regarding body image, relationships, and a healthy sexuality, but also there is a need for the community to take responsibility to allow kids to be kids and not be pressured on all sides from highly sexualised images and messages.”

Mr Jensen went on to say that further steps need to be taken if the issue of the sexualisation of children is to be taken seriously. “Canberra is the centre of the sex industry in Australia and we are at a stage where approximately 50% of girls and 70% of boys under the age of 12 have viewed pornographic material,” he said. “We know from reports such as the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ inquiry in the Northern Territory that X-rated material can have a serious negative impact on communities.”

Media Contact: Glynis Quinlan on 0408 875 979