The Queensland safe-sex poster campaign was reinstated just hours ago although the message may actually benefit from the national response, says the executive director of WA AIDS Council.
Adshel, the advertising company that initially removed the safe-sex posters, published a statement saying it was reinstating the ‘Rip and Roll’ poster campaign after the Australian Christian Lobby acknowledged it had orchestrated the complaints.
Adshel CEO Steve McCarthy said in the release: ‘It has now become clear that Adshel has been the target of a coordinated ACL campaign.’
‘This has led us to review our decision to remove the campaign and we will therefore reinstate the campaign with immediate effect.’
WA AIDS Council (WAAC) executive director Trish Langdon said the recent exposure may have given it ‘much more prominence than bus shelters probably ever got’.
‘Sometimes when there has been adverse publicity and an organisation is able to put out a well-calibrated campaign about what they were trying to do, you can actually get quite valuable collateral media as a result of that, that you otherwise would not have got,’ she said.
‘That can mean more people get to see the ad or issue and there’s more community discussion than would have ever been generated by the advertisements on the bus shelters.’
Langdon repudiated the claims made by the Australian Christian Lobby about public health campaigns of the sexual health nature sexualising children.
‘I think that buys into the age-old stereotype that all gay men are paedophiles and I just completely reject it,’ she said.
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Benn Dorrington
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