Companies advertising unhealthy food and drinks would pay a levy towards anti-obesity education campaigns under a plan being pushed to the Turnbull government by weight loss entrepreneur and football team co-owner Scott Penn.
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While the federal government remains staunchly opposed to new taxes on foods high in sugar or saturated fats, Coalition MPs have been told about the benefits of forcing advertisers to contribute a percentage of their promotional budgets to a new campaign fund to promote healthy eating.
Mr Penn, a co-owner of the Manly Sea Eagles NRL team, former senior Weight Watchers executive and founder of Biggest Loser advertiser SP Health, said telling Australians to eat less and do more exercise was not working because 60 per cent were obese or over weight.
"We have a reputation on a global scale of being bronzed Aussies, healthy and fit, but the problem is we're actually in the top five globally of overweight and obese," Mr Penn said.
"Manufacturers and junk food companies have spent a lot of money targeting their core consumers and that's fine, provided we can raise money to try and educate people about nutritional values as part of a multi-faceted approach to improve health," he said.
Even a small, percentage based levy for companies advertising foods high in fat, salt and sugar could raise millions.
A Sydney University study released last month found there had been no reduction in unhealthy food and drink advertisements since voluntary self-regulations were introduced in 2009.
Of all food and drink commercials broadcast during peak children's viewing times on the three major free-to-air channels, 44 per cent were for unhealthy products, with 21 per cent for fast food.
Chocolate and confectionary ads appeared at a rate of 0.7 per hour, while McDonalds and KFC accounted for 73 per cent of fast food advertisements.
Mr Penn said the levy should apply only to products with no nutritional value, with the final amount determined by government in consultation with advertisers, industry groups and health experts.
"These are treat products that shouldn't be part of the daily diet but which are fine to have occasionally. With people literally having them everyday, it is starting to have a dramatic impact on the health of Australians," he said.
"We're really only on the precipice of diabetes and significant obesity diseases impacting the health system. That is going to get far worse over the next 20 years."
The Liberal MP for the Sydney seat of Mackellar, Jason Falinski, said the plan had merit. He spruiked it inside the most-recent Coalition party room meeting in Canberra.
"One of the behavioral economic issues that people are facing is there's significantly more information around about junk food or food with little nutritional value," he told Fairfax Media.
"It's widely seen and often promoted – especially to children and young adolescents – which is where eating habits get formed and there is nowhere near the same amount of information about more nutritional food options.
"We all talk about people making better choices but what we're actually finding is in some cases it's not possible for everyone to achieve those choices. They have limited information, they have limited options and the cost and convenience of food that isn't nutritionally valuable makes it very hard."
An Australian Association of National Advertisers spokeswoman said there was no justification for a tax on the advertising of any food.
"We are unaware of any credible study that shows that such a move would have any beneficial outcome," she said.
