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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-07 Daily Xml
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Mobile Phone Ban

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:27): My question is to the Minister for Education, Training and Skills. Is the government's mobile phone advertising campaign going to include newspaper, TV and radio advertisements and, if so, why? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Last Tuesday, the minister announced a $900,000 media campaign to promote the government's mobile phone ban. In the same press conference, while defending the Sam Smith influencer concert, the minister said:

The world has changed. It's not like it was when you could take out a full-page ad in the newspaper and do a TV commercial and an ad on the radio and that was it. Lots of people don't follow that line of media.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Florey! The minister has the call.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Elizabeth! The member for Badcoe is warned. The minister has the call.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:28): I thank the member for Morialta for his question. There are a few things I would like to say as perhaps opening remarks around the importance of this advertising campaign or awareness campaign around the mobile phone ban in high schools.

First of all, its genesis was in a meeting that the Premier and I had with the Secondary Principals' Association towards the end of last year. We sat down and took the opportunity, as I had the board of SASPA in for dinner on a sitting night, to thank them for the work that they do. I know the member for Morialta would join me in thanking them for their incredible efforts, particularly over the last few years, and we got on to talking about the proposed mobile phone ban. Both the Premier and I were very, very keen to hear the input from the Secondary Principals' Association about whether they supported the ban, their insights—because they had been part of the consultation into what we could do to make sure it was successful in any school setting.

One of the points that was made very clearly by a number of members of the SASPA board was that an awareness campaign that involved advertising, like that to which the member for Morialta refers, would be useful for a number of reasons including a perception out there amongst parents, grandparents and carers that their child's school might be being targeted, instead of it being a system-wide policy—which of course it is; it is already in place at about 30 per cent of our public schools that have secondary enrolments, and by term 3 it will be in place across 100 per cent—but also to encourage those parents, grandparents and carers to actually have the conversation themselves with their teenage children about why the government has taken this important step.

This is not like some other advertising that governments may have done in the past. There is a place for that, but this is really not just about making people aware of an election commitment that we are delivering. This is more about making sure that we have those parents, those grandparents and those carers as allies in our rollout of the campaign.

We know that no-one likes to be separated from their mobile phone, least of all high-school age children. It is not an easy thing to do, but we have seen already the feedback very clearly from a number of schools in that 30 per cent category that have already brought the mobile phone ban into effect from the start of term 1. We are already clearly seeing the benefits of the ban. We are seeing students socialising and playing sport more regularly in recess and lunchtime and we are seeing a reduction in things like bullying and harassment.

I am happy to speak more specifically about the second part of the member for Morialta's question, which was in reference to a question I was asked about the Sam Smith advertising. What I spoke about specifically in my answer there was around how we attract interstate visitors to South Australia. I was not referring to a mobile phone ban. I was talking about the way that people get their suggestions and inspiration for things like travel and spending their hospitality dollar, which of course in South Australia we are very keen to get. I don't think it's fair to conflate the two into the one issue. On the one hand we have a mobile phone ban, which is already yielding—

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Florey!

The Hon. B.I. BOYER: —some really fantastic results, and I can tell the Speaker that with every new school I go to, every principal I speak to, every parent I speak to, and classroom teacher, I am more resolved to get it done. This awareness campaign that has rolled out from 28 February and is running until August—across the web, television and radio commercials, outdoor, digital and social media—is a really important part of making sure that this isn't just left up to classroom teachers, it isn't just left up to principals, who have enough on their plate already, but this is something we ask our whole community to be a part of.

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