Ms Kathryn Walsh:

I will address Deputy Munster's questions. The code for regulation is the BAI's Children's Commercial Communications Code from 2013. It is the only statutory regulation that we have on junk food marketing and it is only for broadcast and radio. It has been effective. We would like to see the watershed extended but some lessons from that could be brought across to online issues. Since the BAI will be subsumed into the media commission, we do not want to see the existing statutory regulations lost. We want to see it brought to online issues and learn there. We could lead the way with regulation on that.

To address how advertising technology is being used, much online marketing happens because of how data and advertising technology are used. It is used to surveil people and follow them across their Internet and social media experience. Regarding undue commercial exploitation, we need to look at it through a lens of children's rights. We do that by looking at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and at Article 36, which states: "States Parties shall protect the child against all other forms of exploitation prejudicial to any aspects of the child’s welfare." When we are looking at commercial exploitation, we need to look at how welfare is impacted, including health and psychological development. This advertising has a detrimental effect on children's health. As I pointed out at the beginning, State-funded research shows that 85,000 children on this island will die prematurely because of being obese and overweight. An obesogenic environment is contributing to that and we must deal with it. That is why I think that issue of undue commercial exploitation needs to be teased out further, recognising that advertising, surveillance, and the identity resolution processes need to be looked at in detail and recognised.