Wollombi music festival in northern New South Wales has banned “pathetically unfunny and misogynistic” Wicked Camper vans from their 2019 event – the latest in a series of actions taken against the car hire company.
Wicked Camper, known for courting controversy, has a range of camper vans available across the country emblazoned with provocative graffiti and images. Since 2009, according to the Advertising Standards Bureau, more than 70 of them have been subject to complaints for messaging deemed to be offensive to women, LGBT communities and others.
The website doesn’t release images of which vans are currently in circulation, but there are hundreds available, with past slogans including: “A wife: an attachment you screw on the bed to get the housework done”; “I don’t like small cars or real big women but sometimes I always find myself in them”; “A man would be interested in a woman’s mind if it bounced gently as she walked”; “The best thing about oral sex is the 5 minutes of silence”; and “Save a whale, harpoon a Jap”.
Splendour in the Grass have discouraged ticket holders from arriving in offensive vans, and some politicians have called for local- and state-wide bans of the vehicles – but the organisers of the Wollombi music festival believe themselves to be the first festival to ban the vans outright, for slogans which they called “misogynistic” and “demeaning”.
“We’ve actively discouraged people from hiring [Wicked Camper vans] and encouraged patrons to look elsewhere, but this year we’ve decided to ban them full-stop,” they said in a statement. “Not just if a van has a demeaning slogan. If ANY Wicked Camper turns up at the fest they won’t be welcome.”
In a subsequent post on Facebook, they said: “Disrespecting and degrading women isn’t funny or libertine, it’s just disgraceful. We look forward to being one of many festivals doing the same thing.”
Wicked Campers did not respond to Guardian Australia’s request for comment.
The ban enacted at the Wollombi festival is the latest in a long line of actions that have been taken against Wicked Campers. In 2014, following a petition signed by more than 119,000 people, the Senate passed a motion for one van’s slogan to be removed: “In every princess is a little slut who wants to try it just once.” The company’s founder John Webb issued an apology at the time, explaining “we are a ‘cash for chaos’ kind of company”, and encouraging renters to tape or paint over slogans they didn’t like.
But less than 12 months later he overturned this invitation, which had led to people “completely destroying our vehicles”, he said. Webb issued a statement saying the company would now “prosecute any person or persons who paint, cover or in any way damage” their cars.
Since 2009 the self-regulatory ABS have found more than 70 vehicles breached the advertiser code of ethics, including 18 vans in 2018; but in 20 years, according to their website, only four vans have been modified as a result of these cases. Wicked Campers do not respond to the majority of complaints – such as one in 2015, involving a van whose slogan read, “70% of Preists [sic] who’ve tried camels prefer young boys”.
“I am the foster mother of a child who has been sexually abused,” read one complaint, “so this is extremely real to us.”
The ASB CEO, Fiona Jolly, said the system relies on advertisers respecting the judgments of the Ad Standards community panel, who decide on which complaints should be upheld.
“Wicked Campers is one of the rare advertisers in Australia that has chosen to operate outside the system and ignore determinations of the panel,” she said.
In 2017, new laws were passed in Queensland and Tasmania which state that the ASB can now refer complaints to the state transport department, which can give a vehicle 14 days to remove the slogan before the van is deregistered.
The new law resulted in the de-registration of one van earlier this month, whose slogan was found to be transphobic and humiliating to women: “You’re not a woman until humans come out of your vagina and trample on your dreams.” But the law does not apply to vehicles registered outside the states of Queensland and Tasmania, making it difficult to enforce.
This loophole has led some politicians to call for the laws to be applied nationally, with a new petition signed by 7,800 people encouraging all state governments to “end Wicked Campers’ mobile misogyny once and for all”.
The ASB told Guardian Australia it was working with other governments to expand the “regulatory backstop” implemented in Queensland; they have also written to the deputy prime minister, seeking support for a national approach.
“We look forward to … bringing Wicked Campers in line with the rest of the compliant advertisers in Australia.”
