Wicked Campers — infamous for their derogatory slogans across Australia and NZ — has made a new enemy in the form of the South Australian Labor Party as a result of their latest display.
With one-liners that cover everything from misogyny, fellatio, abduction and racism to possible allusions to paedophilia, the campervan rental company has very much cornered the market on confrontational advertising (check out Travel Weekly‘s rundown of the top 10 worst).
The latest addition, advising that “masturbation is the only thing that isn’t taxed, regulated or illegal”, has led to an opposition bill before Parliament that would allow authorities to deregister vehicles if a company fails to act on rulings by the Advertising Standards Bureau.
The bureau ruled last month that the van had breached the advertising industry’s code of ethics, but as of yet, no action had been taken to remove it from the road.
With over one hundred individual cases lodged against Wicked Campers, SA shadow minister for the status of women Katrine Hildyard has seen enough.
Hildyard released a joint statement with the Coalition of Women’s Domestic Violence Services of SA in relation to the motor vehicles (offensive advertising) amendment bill 2018, introduced to Parliament last year.
The statement, which can be read in full here, says: “We are deeply committed to preventing and ending violence against women and girls and to ensuring our community is free from disrespectful language and behaviour towards women and sexism.
“The slogans on Wicked Campers that promote violence against women, including murder, and that deeply disrespect women are utterly unacceptable.
“We support the private member’s bill moved by Shadow Minister for the Status of Women Katrine Hildyard MP to give power to the Registrar of Motor Vehicles to refuse to register, or to deregister, Wicked Campers and other vehicles that have had complaints upheld against them by the Ad Standards”.
Wicked Campers is no stranger to legal action, having already been the cause for a bill in Queensland that disallows offensive slogans to be displayed on vehicles.
However, transport minister Stephan Knoll is less convinced of Hildyard’s proposal, having previously stated that the law would not be effective unless nationally coordinated.
Wicked Campers was previously able to circumvent the Queensland bill, as the vehicle in question was registered in South Australia.
Though a response from Wicked Campers has not been made apparent, a page of its website from April 2015 that has since been removed stated that it had “employed a team of highly-intelligent, socially-conscious super monkeys to closely monitor the subject matter featured on our vehicles and scream loudly when offended”.
