Sydney Radio Segment: 3rd February, 2011

PM Celebrity Crushes

The New Zealand Prime Minister’s performance a couple of weeks back during a interview on our national sports radio network was an interesting affront to established norms of political behaviour.  Quizzed by Tony Veitch - a man whose career resurrection, phoenix-like from the ashes of spousal abuse, is distasteful enough in itself - John Key favoured listeners with a list of the young ladies he would not mind sharing a haystack with.  After betraying a certain amount of envy for Tiger Woods’ position (”there are…benefits that clearly come with the job”) and indicating that being Shane Warne would be nothing to sneeze at either, “…given his current liaisons with Liz Hurley”, Key gave the electorate unprecedented insight into the Prime Ministerial fantasy life.  Hurley was a “definite” in his dream date top three,  Jessica Alba was equally “hot” and Angelina Jolie “not too bad”.

The reaction of Green MP Sue Kedgley to these testosterone driven ramblings was nothing if not predictable.  She labelled Key’s comments boorish and unbecoming of a Prime Minister.  As interesting as it would be to speculate on who former Prime Minister Helen Clark’s favourite actresses are, Kedgley probably had a point.  Ms Clark would never have answered such a question even if Tony Veitch had the guts to pose it to her.

Booze & Fast Food Labelling

Retiring do-gooder Sue Kedgley has also urged the immediate adoption of labelling on alcohol containers as advocated recently by an independent panel commissioned by the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council.  The panel’s newly released report, “Labelling Logic”, recommends that generic messages like “Alcohol Can Damage Your Health” be affixed to all drinking receptacles.  One might counter such alleged logic by suggesting that no label or message could possibly improve on Oscar Wilde’s 19th Century observation that “alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication”.  However, according to the wowsers on the panel the labels would be part of a “comprehensive multifaceted national campaign targeting the public health problems of alcohol in society”.  New Zealand’s National Addiction Centre director Doug Sellman argues that labels are needed to counteract the “misleading and deceptive messages” the liquor industry puts out through advertising.  Perhaps they might also effect the widely held belief - backed up by this correspondent’s empirical evidence - that consuming alcohol leads to a bloody good time.  That tends to be why we drink it.  Quality of life over quantity every time.

Smoke Screen Used by Big Tobacco

Staying on the theme of politically correct labelling, a Christchurch Student Job Search is in legal strife after putting up a poster advertising work for 15 smokers.  The offending paperwork, an advertisement looking for workers to trial a new brand of cigarette and be paid $50 for their services, has been seen as a smoke screen for the promotion of tobacco.  Canterbury Community and Public Health Smokefree Enforcement and Health Promotion officer Cindy Crampton-Cairns says it probably breaches the Smokefree Environment Act.  SJS spokeswoman Lorna McConnon points out that her organisation “made the advert clear to…[students] and what they were required to do and it was their moral choice about what to do from there”.  Personal responsibility for actions is irrelevant in such cases though with the law presuming yet again that people cannot think for themselves.