Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Fossil fuel advertising

Tim READ (Brunswick) (19:13): (1316) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education. The action I seek is that the Victorian government ban fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship in public schools. Currently the Department of Education has two key policies limiting what certain private companies and organisations can do in schools. The sponsorship policy sets out rules for school sponsorship activities, like contributing money in exchange for logo placement or public acknowledgement, whereas the advertising policy regulates things like a company buying space in a school newsletter or a billboard at a sporting event. In both cases the department’s policy rightly stipulates that no arrangement can be entered into with tobacco companies, gaming venues or companies selling or promoting alcohol. Additionally, the advertising policy blocks anything involving violence or other content inappropriate for school-age children, while the sponsorship policy blocks companies promoting firearms and unhealthy food, as well as religious organisations, political parties and unregistered charities.

The reasons for these restrictions are obvious. Schoolchildren should not be subject to marketing from any company or organisation that is inappropriate for their age and development, including predatory, harmful industries that threaten their health and wellbeing, especially not on school grounds. But at the moment fossil fuel companies are free to sponsor and advertise in schools to their heart’s content. Fossil fuels – now there is a harmful industry that threatens children’s health and wellbeing. According to the UN, by the time a child in primary school today reaches retirement age they will be living in a world 3.1 degrees above pre-industrial levels if we keep letting fossil fuel companies have their way. That means instead of pottering in the garden and taking the grandchildren out for ice cream, they will be struggling to survive in a world of even more brutal heatwaves, bushfires and floods, trying to remember what the Great Barrier Reef was like and watching millions flee as major cities around the world sink below sea level.

Currently Ampol is sponsoring a schools competition where each state winner receives a $1000 gift card to spend at the petrol station. BP uses Minecraft to market its brand and petrol stations directly through the video game’s links with the STEM curriculum in dozens of Australian schools. Coal and resources lobby groups offer free education materials and teacher training full of greenwash and spin, including books for kindergarten children and educational programs about so-called renewable gas. It is all part of normalising this harmful industry to make it appealing for kids, just like the tobacco companies used to do. But this government can take an important step to stop it by updating the sponsorship and advertising policies to stop fossil fuel companies marketing themselves in our public schools.