Ensure advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful

A robust and competitive economy requires freedom of commercial expression - the freedom to promote legal products and services through advertising and sales promotion techniques in ways which are legal, decent, honest and truthful.

Publishing media, together with advertisers and their agencies, have maintained a self-regulatory system for more than 30 years which has gained the respect of the public and legislators alike and which, in 2005, was expanded to include broadcast media in a one-stop-shop to handle consumer complaints.

Government should:

	Reaffirm its support for the voluntary self-regulatory system of non-broadcast advertising and sales promotion
	Ensure that future co-regulation of broadcast media does not threaten the proven self-regulatory system of non-broadcast media

The Government should not:

	Seek to impose ever more stringent controls and bans on commercial freedom of expression through banning advertising which is legal, decent, honest and truthful about legal products and services
	Seek to inhibit unnecessarily and unreasonably the use of data legally held for direct marketing activity