Page 4080 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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Pursuant to standing order 99A, the petition, having more than 500 signatories, was referred to the Standing Committee on Environment and Transport and City Services.
Motion to take note of petition
MADAM SPEAKER: Pursuant to standing order 98A, I propose the question:
That the petition so lodged be noted.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.02): I am very pleased to be able to speak to this petition initiated by Canberra businesswoman Peta Swarbrick. As the petition says, on 15 August 2019, Alan Jones, on his 2GB radio show, said, in relation to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: “I just wonder whether Scott Morrison is going to be fully briefed to shove a sock down her throat.” Here is another quote from Alan: “Now I hope Scott Morrison gets tough here with a few backhanders.”
Ms Swarbrick was one of the many women appalled by that comment and then horrified to see Alan Jones’s face on our buses. Ms Swarbrick wrote to all female MLAs in this place seeking support for a petition to get this ad off our buses, and I was happy to support her by sponsoring this petition. I am confident—in fact, I know—that I am not the only one amongst the female MLAs in this place who would have supported it; it is just that we have rules that mean only one of us can do so. I am not trying to claim any sort of exclusivity. I am supporting other Canberra women in this regard who are finding the face of Alan Jones on the bus not what they want to see.
Like most Canberrans, I find Mr Jones’s views appalling and harmful, and I do not want to see people who make a point of making sexist public comments promoted on our buses. The ACT government should not promote a journalist who is blatantly sexist and well-known for repeat misogynistic and other hate-mongering dog whistling.
The petition calls for a ban on advertising of people who make publicly sexist and discriminatory comments. In Jones’s case, this is not a one-off. We are not talking about silencing sensible debate or questioning. We are talking about the ACT government not endorsing a product—which is what Jones is in this context—that encourages violence against women in positions of political power, or violence and distrust of non-white-skinned people, whether Aboriginal or Middle Eastern. He has been successfully sued for defamation of an Aboriginal woman. He has been found by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to be in breach of the radio code of conduct.
Transport Canberra’s advertising guidelines already say that we do not accept some ads, including political or religious advertising, tobacco products, and antisocial messages or offensive messages. Since 2015 the policy has restricted the promotion of junk food, alcohol, gambling, fossil fuels and weapons.
The petitioners believe, quite reasonably, that in Alan Jones’s case his comments would not meet the standards that we set for bus advertising. In promoting the show,
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