Legislative Assembly

13257 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Wednesday 11 March 2009 ______ The Speaker (The Hon. George Richard Torbay) took the chair at 10.00 a.m. The Speaker read the Prayer and acknowledgement of country. BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Notices of Motions General Business Notices of Motions (General Notices) given. CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS (CARE AND PROTECTION) AMENDMENT (CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT) BILL 2009 Agreement in Principle Debate resumed from 4 March 2009. Ms PRU GOWARD (Goulburn) [10.10 a.m.]: The Opposition does not oppose the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Amendment (Children's Employment) Bill 2009. The bill seeks to amend the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1988 and related legislation with respect to the employment of children. The amendments will extend the existing safeguards relating to the employment of children less than 15 years of age to children aged 15 years and over but less than 16 years and who, in particular, are employed as models. The amendments will include an increase in the maximum penalty for certain offences in relation to the employment of children from 10 penalty units, or $1,100, to 100 penalty units, or $11,000. A consequential amendment will also be made to the code of practice in the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection Child-Employment) Regulation 2005, which will include children between the ages of 15 to 16 years. It is useful to remember the background to this amendment bill. In 2008 Kirstie Clements, the editor of Vogue, called for a 14-year-old model to be pulled from the Australian Fashion Week. That raised concerns about the presentation of young girls generally who were dressed and made up in a way that was inappropriate for their age. The existing laws sought to protect children less than 15 years old but presented a gap for those between the age of 15 and 16 years. The purpose of the amendment is to address that issue and introduce the same safeguards. The Opposition will be supporting these amendments, recognising the potential for the sexualisation of young people, usually girls, and the capacity for them to be included in what are innocuously described as "age-inappropriate" scenes and depictions of events and encounters. It is a particularly high-risk model. It is high risk because the advertising industry now reaches across several mediums and the competitive nature of advertising in the quest for the consumer's attention demands that the shocking, the unusual, the bizarre, the amusing, the black and the angry are all possible avenues for creative directors. Gone are the days when advertising was about associating a product with all that was good and beautiful. In the world of modelling this has been aggressively pursued. In the 1990s, and earlier in this decade, we saw girls so thin they grotesquely challenged the concerns we would otherwise hold about starvation and the neglected or under privileged, to say nothing of fears that those gaunt, frail bodies might act as role models and spur others on to anorexia or bulimia. Feminists have debated the de-sexualisation of women as depicted by these thin models and many, myself included, wondered at the philosophy behind presenting them as debilitated, gaunt, breastless and hipless. Was that just shock value or was it to represent women as "un-sexed", to use that great and ugly expression of William Shakespeare? Some even asked if it was another covert campaign against womanliness. If so, by whom? In the case of thinness the industry carefully and quietly responded. Models remain thin, but not too thin. The heroin chic faded from the fashion magazines. Magazines were suddenly happy to celebrate fuller figures, although that might mean celebrating a girl of five foot eleven who is now a size 10, not a size 6—it is a start. But the debate about the age at which girls can model, and what they should model, is a great deal more 13258 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 11 March 2009 difficult. The most common concern is the exposure of young people to situations that they could not be prepared for and for the sexualisation of girls. Today in our society the sexualisation of girls occurs in the clothes offered to eight-year-olds, the Barbies they play with and the makeup they are brought in huge quantities. It is difficult for parents and communities to decide what is a bit of fun and what is overstepping the mark. Modelling, particularly photographic modelling, inevitably puts a huge premium not on childishness, but on youth—the quality of skin is prized by photographers. Chemicals, soft lighting, the use of Photoshop and surgery can only do so much to restore skin to its unblemished state. Painted up, it does not seem difficult to make a girl of any age look incredibly knowing or incredibly innocent, but it is rather more difficult to hide the ravages of time on the epidermis. There are understandable reasons why the advertising industry pursues the young, but there is also the very public and distorted nature of the life lived by a teenage model. Even if not a national or international celebrity, she is pretty closely watched in her home community and she lives a life unlike most of her friends. The pressure on beautiful teenage girls to model, and to earn large amounts of money in doing so, is clearly enormous. It is difficult for families to resist the offer of opportunity and the fame that it brings to their child. The work these young girls are offered frequently takes them away from home and school, inevitably to the detriment of their schoolwork, their sports and social activities with kids who are otherwise just like them. It also comes at a time in their lives when their peers are making their mistakes in private, at least not making mistakes that can be quoted or filmed, photographed and then shown back to them at any moment for decades to come. The price paid by putting them under the public spotlight, and the sexual scrutiny that these girls endure at a time when other girls are struggling with hockey sticks and pimples, is often a very high one. While some survive and prosper, sadly, I have seen others crushed and destroyed by it. For a child of 14 years to become the face of a make-up company or a swimwear company, and be part of the travel, and the parties and the promotional activities that come with all of that, is a price paid for in the girl's childhood. At that point the girl's childhood often ends and no less is true of the 15-year-old. Their childhoods are often all but over and the more sexual, the more shocking their modelling work is, the greater that loss. The community instinctively understood this, which is why the original legislation restricting the work of models under the age of 15 years was so naturally welcomed. Each of us has looked at our own 14-year-old handsome son or pretty daughter and wondered if they could cope, if we could cope, and if we could protect them from that world. Today we are being asked to raise the age to 16 years, so that 15-year-olds are also afforded these same protections. Age 16 is slightly more difficult than age 15 for legislators. Girls especially mature rapidly at this stage, socially as well as physically. Juliet was 14 years old, and some of the great love stories of history involve 15-year-olds. In New South Wales today girls as young as 15 years can still leave school and work untrammelled by the working conditions contemplated in this bill. I understand that may soon change but it is not the case today. Looking around the world, where voluntary codes of conduct prevent girls under 16 years from working as models in certain conditions, where we increasingly recognise the importance of girls and boys enjoying their childhoods before entering adulthood that might now go on to 60 years, where the Australian industry is itself imposing limits on the employment of girls under 16 years, it seems reasonable to extend the limit and we should be proud of doing so. The outcomes for children under 16 years working as models will now, if these amendments are applied sensibly, depend on the common sense of the family, inevitably the common sense of the child's model agent and the Children's Guardian to negotiate work arrangements that reflect the maturity and capacity of the child concerned. They should err, if at all, on the conservative side. We can never be sure how the child will see in 10 or 20 years hence those highly sexualised, provocative and improper depictions and enactments, though the child model seemed comfortable with the photographs and the work involved at the time. We need to remember that what we see is the result of hours and hours of work on construction, lighting, discussion between many people on the set, mostly men, and commentary that sometimes a girl of 15 should not be subjected to. We can never be sure of the impact all of that might have, even on an apparently confident young 15-year-old. That is true even of the most collected, self-assured and admired girls. We have to remember that life is not only a long journey but also a very complicated one. The Opposition supports these amendments that will ensure that the Code of Practice on issues such as work times, supervision, travel and the balance between work and school will be applied to 15 year old young 11 March 2009 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 13259 women going on 16—although they might think going on 26! The Code of Practice also includes work directions, which looks at the appropriateness of the role the child has been cast in.

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