Dr. Norah Campbell:

I love Deputy Griffin's question because it is impossible to answer. We will not find information on the spending of junk food brands online in the marketplace, and we will not find conversion rates, information on their growth in this country or information on the number of impressions they make to children online. We will simply not get information from the industry to understand the extent to which children are exposed to this online. That is the reason self-regulation is never going to work. Until we have comprehensive access to that marketing intelligence, we will never be able to make informed decisions about self-regulation and whether it is permissible or possible.

Because public health has been knocking at the door for so long and not receiving any data whatsoever, it has turned to experimental studies and to large quantitative studies in order to prime children and then see behavioural actions afterwards. I will give the Deputy two examples from last year. First, a survey that looked at children in Australia showed that children who engaged with videos of junk food online were more likely to consume unhealthy food afterwards. Second, a very famous experimental study on influencer promotion of unhealthy food showed that if children eat snacks after viewing influencer food marketing, they will eat more compared with children who watch the same influencer marketing non-food items or healthy food items. Therefore, there is a direct experimental correlation between the exposure to this and the subsequent behaviour, and that has been shown in international peer-reviewed journals. However, we will not get access to the online industry for this type of data.