Alarm bells ring over curbs on drug ads

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - The New Zealand advertising industry faces an assault from Australian bureaucrats wanting to export heavy regulation of drug promotion across the Tasman.

Rules governing the advertising of drugs, medicines and treatments are among the key areas to be dealt with by a proposed transtasman therapeutic goods agency under consideration in Wellington and Canberra.

The new agency would act as a regulator for both countries, determining the rules and codes governing the pharmaceutical and medical products industry, from clinical trials to natural health products.

A decision on its future is expected within six months.

But a furious battle, led by the Advertising Standards Authority, is being waged against proposals in Canberra to end New Zealand's less-restrictive therapeutic advertising codes and replace them with a far more heavy-handed Australian approach.

The industry also warns that if Australia has its way on thera-peutic goods, other areas oflikely transtasman harmonisation such as financial, liquor andcar advertising will also fallto similar leaden regulation.

"Some of the suggestions in Australia are just amazing," said authority executive director Glen Wiggs.

'One suggestion, for example, was that if a journalist wrote an article, say, in the Herald about health and mentioned a drug, it would need to be pre-vetted by a Government agency.

"Everyone from New Zealand opposed such an outlandish suggestion, but it got support from the Australians you would not believe ...

"There is still concern. If infact what they're saying comesto pass and there werethese draconian laws in Australia, our days would be numbered.

"As soon as it happens on one side of the Tasman it's supposed to be harmonised, and it's going to happen on the other side."

So concerned was the Advertising Standards Authority that it drew up an aggressive battle plan to enlist industry heavyweights - including such major transtasman media muscle as the Murdoch, Packer and O'Reilly empires - in a campaign to subvert the Australian push.

The plan included transtasman media briefings at boardroom level, direct approaches to Australian industry organisations and consumer groups to "generally infiltrate the system", and even enlisting influential American groups hostile to any erosion of the freedom to advertise.

The aim was to persuade the United States to lean on Canberra, warning that proposed therapeutic advertising restrictions would be viewed as a restraint on trade and could damage Australia's bid for a free trade agreement with Washington.

Wiggs said the confidential draft proposal, prepared about six weeks ago, had not been adopted and had been overtaken by events at a series of transtasman meetings, key among them a report prepared by an independent Australian consultant, Michael Codd.

Initial New Zealand suspicions of Codd, engaged by the Australians, were calmed by his credentials: head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and Cabinet secretary for six years, directorships with, among others, MLC, Qantas and Telstra, deputy chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, and present chancellor of the University of Wollongong.

Codd gave a verbal rundown of the findings he intended to include in his interim report, to be presented next month, at the last transtasman meeting - to the delight of the New Zealanders.

"His findings in a nutshell were that the New Zealand model is excellent and will continue, and that the Australian model is terrible and needs complete reform," Wiggs said.

"He basically encouraged the Australian industry to have a model based on the New Zealand model - in other words, a replica ...

"If not, there will be heavy regulation, much more dastardly than they have now."