Thank You, 59,500+ of you for sticking with me these past 6 months. As we finalise wrapping our presents and imagining our bright eyed kids opening up their gifts Christmas morning, there are still hundreds of HB ads in family friendly shopping centres that are being Exploitive AND Degrading to women. Not my opinion, but the rulings of the ASB of the latest 2 HB ads. Both the "Office Party" and "Santa-Kids" campaigns have been found to breach Sections 2.2 AND 2.4. Time to party you might think? Not so fast. Both these ad campaigns have been allowed to run their full course before the ASB ruling! The advertiser's response despite upholding complaints against the Santa-Kids campaign, "current posters will remain displayed in our windows until out Christmas campaign is complete." The current self-regulated system was designed for a body of honest, decent and cooperative retailers who merely want to do good business. It has no way of handling recalcitrant members. To rub salt into the injury, both instances will be recorded as a compliance on the ASB register! So, not only are Westfield unwilling to show good corporate citizenship, the very regulatory system that Westfield depends on for its advertising standards does nothing to protect the public from exploitative and degrading ads. That is why I've been taking this fight to our parliamentarians in the hope that reasonable minds will prevail. The ASB and AANA fall under the oversight of the Minister for Communications and Arts, who at the moment is Senator Mitch Fifield. You can write to Senator Mitch Fifield directly to express your concerns about how the current self-regulated system is failing us here: Minister@communications.gov.au To reiterate, the problems with the current system are: 1. The ASB upholds complaints but the offensive ad has already run its course and done its damage. There is a lag time of typically 3 months before the ASB publishes their decision. Advertisers know this and exploit it because they know that there are no penalties or sanctions and the advertisers intended for the ad to run for that duration anyway. Update - the ASB recently ruled that the Honey Birdette ads “Office Party” and "Santa-Kids” breached BOTH sections 2.2 AND 2.4 of the Code, after the ads had run their course! Please find attached both these determinations. 2. The ASB has no mechanism to deal with repeat offenders. Each new ad is treated like a fresh new case even if it may be in a string of consecutively offensive or similar ads. Update - these last 2 determinations will make 5 out of 5 ad campaigns that have breached AANA Code within the last 6 months. There is nothing stopping them from repeating the same thing again the next 6 months. 3. It is a reactive system fully dependent on the public to complain before anything can be done. This does not prevent further breaches and is a great impost on the public, not the paid regulators, to be vigilant. Update - ASB and AANA have allowed these repeated offences over the last 10 years, and seem to be happy with the status quo. Perhaps, like my local representatives, yours would also be too happy to support you with your concerns. Thankfully we live in a vibrant democracy where common sense of the common people like you and I will ultimately prevail against the greed of corporations. Have yourselves a very Merry Christmas with your beloved family and kids. We do this to make it a better world for them. Chat more in 2018!