Independent senator David Pocock is urging the government to fix a gap in the law that allows alcohol to be advertised during children’s television programs when streamed rather than using a traditional TV aerial.
Pocock has identified 28 complaints about alcohol being advertised during programs including Lego Masters, Australian Idol and The Voice and during the broadcast of Carols in the Domain around segments featuring Disney characters and The Wiggles.
Made between 2020 and this year, the complaints were all dismissed because the programs were being viewed via an app, online or on a smart TV, using an internet connection rather than a TV aerial.
The commercial television industry code of practice restricts alcohol advertising until after 8.30pm during programs broadcast on traditional TV.
But the code does not apply to programs accessed via broadcast-on-demand apps on smart TVs or other devices.
“Advertising beer during the Wiggles and Grey Goose [vodka] during Lego Masters is way out of step with community expectations,” Pocock said.
“Marketing alcohol to children in this way only exacerbates the harms they are already exposed to through lax gambling and junk food advertising laws.”
The ACT senator has proposed closing the loophole through an amendment to communications legislation due to be debated in parliament this week.
The Greens’s communications spokesperson, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, said the rules on what can be seen on TV programs – and the advertising surrounding them – should be the same regardless of how they are accessed.
“Advertising regulations are only as good as they are fit for the modern world and currently they’re not,” she said in support of Pocock’s amendment. “We need to fix them.”
But the Coalition’s position on Pocock’s amendment is unclear and the government is opposing it. A spokesperson for the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said the bill currently before parliament was the wrong place to address the issue.
“The government is working to address the gaps and inconsistencies in the existing regulatory framework applying to media services in Australia through its broader media reform process … while avoiding a range of unintended consequences associated with piecemeal amendments,” the spokesperson said.
Pocock’s 28 examples of alcohol advertising complaints come from the complaints register linked to the Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code (Abac) scheme.
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The most recent involved a complaint about a beer advertisement screening during Lego Masters on the 9Now app. The adjudicating panel – led by former Keating government attorney general Michael Lavarch – criticised the complexity of alcohol regulations through overlapping practice codes.
“Given the mix of government and industry influences and requirements in place, it is accurate to describe the regime applying to alcohol marketing as quasi-regulation,” Lavarch’s panel said in its findings on June 7.
It noted the exemption for broadcast-on-demand apps meant that as the complainant had viewed the Lego Masters program on the 9Now app, it was not in breach.
It also examined the complaint with reference to the Abac code, which puts extra conditions on alcohol advertising in digital media. It says broadcasters must take steps to restrict accounts registered to minors from accessing programs via an app when alcohol ads are being shown, and that the ads are only allowed during programs in which the audience is “expected to comprise at least 80% adults”.
In response, Lion Beer Australia said although Lego products had historically been marketed at children, “their product range is now targeted at and used by people of all ages” and therefore the program was not primarily aimed at minors.
The Abac panel said the Lego Masters program would appeal to minors because Lego itself still did, despite its expanded marketing to adults.
However, it agreed that the program was not primarily targeting minors and that the necessary restrictive steps had been taken.