Health Taskforce wishes you all a long, dull life with nanny
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Yesterday’s National Preventative Health Taskforce’s report is a monument to why elites think the average Australian needs a nanny to hold their hand through daily life. The three core chapters of the report analyse the great sins of our time — obesity, alcohol and smoking — and recommends Australians need help to stop making the wrong choices about what they put in their mouths. The problems and solutions are entirely predictable. According to the taskforce, people get fat because they eat too much and don’t exercise enough. The taskforce’s solution — the government needs to make sure people eat less and exercise more. I could go on, but you get the picture. Any taskforce member would be rightly offended if another Australian recommended they needed many of the measures they included in their report. But it hasn’t stopped them paternalistically arguing that we don’t know to exercise or eat chocolate responsibly. For example, the taskforce has recommended that the government should legislate to introduce healthy workplace programs and phase out vending machines that dispense afternoon treats. The taskforce could have been creative, but instead they are just rehashing the same measures for food and alcohol that were used to attack cigarettes — advertising ban and tax increases. And by recommending tax increases on alcohol and tobacco, the taskforce is clearly on the same wave length as our parliamentarians. After the report’s release, some Opposition MPs argued that volumetric taxes should be introduced so a magnum of champagne opened for a family celebration attracts a higher tax rate than those piccolos that people drink on the train on the way to the horse races. But if the taskforce has its way, tobacco won’t just face tax increases, but the removal of all forms of advertising, including on the packets. The taskforce’s recommendations steal the thunder of Family First Senator Steve Fielding, who recently introduced the aptly titled Plain Tobacco Packaging (Removing Branding from Cigarette Packs) Bill 2009. The Bill stipulates the exact size of a cigarette pack — 69-72 millimetres wide x 87-90 mm high x 21-24 mm deep — and also requires the removal of any branding images and that a pack can only be wrapped in a wholly transparent plastic. That stops pesky cigarette companies putting branding on the plastic surrounding it. But the most absurd measure in Fielding’s Bill is that a plain packet cannot even be white. It has to be Pantone 154 known in layman’s terms as poo brown. Considering the Australian Parliament isn’t known for its gym-junkie, teetotalling MPs, it seems a bit rich that they are now going to legislate to make sure we are. Understandably, the report isn’t being sold because of its economic benefits, but that its recomendations could help save up to 800,000 Australians from an early death. The taskforce has clearly decided it would be better if we all had long, dull lives, rather than somewhat shorter, but more interesting ones. But the real shortcoming of this report isn’t what it recommends. It is what it doesn’t. Rather than 316 pages of nanny-statism, it could have had one simple recommendation — Australians should take responsibility for their choices and should accept the consequences. But that’d be too hard for the Government to legislate. Tim Wilson is director of the IP and Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs |
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34 Comments
Neither Tim Wilson nor more importantly the Task Force points a finger at those who create the problems for the poor SODs - the Smoking Obese Drinkers. This is ‘blame the victims’ stuff - and probably their kids. All that time and effort by this middle class public health mafia to tell the victims of the profit maximising booze, fags and fast foods industries that it is all their own fault! And we are going to make you pay - literally!
What about a tax on the profits of the perpetrators - the profit maximising booze, fags and fast foods industries?
Clearly the “doing nothing and leaving it up to individuals” approach isn’t working.
This article is just dogma masquerading as analysis. Tim Wilson presents no evidence as to why the government should just leave things as they are but there is plenty of evidence that doing things like limiting advertising or controlling branding on cigarette packs does work to get people to cut down their smoking, bad eating habits etc.
Here’s some evidence on smoking warnings http://www.psychiatryupdate.com.au/article/australian-cigarette-warnings-worlds-second-best/489015.aspx and here’s some on junk food advertising http://www.endocrinologyupdate.com.au/article/banning-junk-food-ads-most-cost-effective-solution-to-obesity/493627.aspx
The only reason to not take these measures is to protect private profits. If Tim’s definition of the “nanny state” simply means when the state is putting evidence-based public health measures over private profits, then we should all be pro-Nanny State!
All well and good Tim, but how do you propose we cover the forecasted increases in health-related costs driven by those individuals who choose to eat rubbish, drink excessively and smoke like a chimney? Increase taxes perhaps?
Not vending machines! I love vending machines! (Sorry, flippant).
Once again the IPA demonstrates that the free market is the furthest thing from their minds.
It is basic economics that market externalities, like pollution or products which have public health negatives, should be taxed to recoup the drain they place on the public purse. If Tim was genuinely in favour of free markets, rather than being a bought-and-paid-for spokesman for the tobacco and alcohol industries, he’d be all in favour of bringing in such taxes and cutting market-distorting taxes (e.g. payroll, stamp duty) to compensate. High sin taxes also have the potential to cure the mess the state-govt-run public health system is in, by both increasing funds and reducing demand.
As it is, his argument not only fails to cover the economic basics, but doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. What about the tobacco and alcohol companies “taking responsibility for their choices and accepting the consequences”? What, exactly, is “more interesting” about dying of lung cancer? Or suffering from chronic obesity and the associated heart attacks and diabetes? Try telling someone who’s seriously overweight “I bet it makes your life more interesting!”. At least you’ll find it easy to run away from them afterwards…
“The taskforce has clearly decided it would be better if we all had long, dull lives, rather than somewhat shorter, but more interesting ones.”
Bwahahaha.
1984 - state control…moving to Italy soon. Honestly, and they want us to eat what they say too…..
Oh Jesus
You can pry my cheeseburger from my cold, dead, disgustingly sausage-like fingers. - Tim Wilson
A large thick-shake. If you can keep it.
I absolutely agree with Amy and Jamesh.
As for this little gem:
“The taskforce has clearly decided it would be better if we all had long, dull lives, rather than somewhat shorter, but more interesting ones.” - Tim Wilson
What utter drivel, as if we all need smoking, junk food and binge eating & drinking to make our lives interesting. Please, take me to MacDonald’s, my life is so dull without it. This sounds very much like big corporate marketing their rubbish products to an ill-informed public… and trying desperately to keep that public as ill-informed as possible by objecting to any attempt to enforce proper labelling, responsible advertising, educating the public about nutrition etc. This attitute is emphasised in the title of the piece, and the sentiment implied, ie that smoking/drinking/junk food = make my life fabulous and interesting, is exactly the kind of rubbish advertising that needs to be got rid of… it is not an argument for anything.
Great piece Tim.
As for Jamesh’s comment about costs, if people had to face the true costs of their health care, we’d all be, literally, better off.
This is the opposite policy to the laissez-faire pro-business stance of the previous Coalition (Liberal) govt, with Tony Abbott as the ‘Health’ Minister frequently speaking about how he didn’t intend to do anything about anything, that ‘what people put in their mouths’ is a private choice, etc etc. I suppose that’s what we expect from an economically ‘Liberal’ party which was set up to champion the interests of small and big business over the interests of the general community.
So appalling was Abbott’s indifference to public health that Labor-run state education and health depts along with parents groups started proscribing junk food at schools and substituted fresh snacks such as carrot sticks, rather than packaged foods which generally involve pulping wheat grain into mush, adding an overload of flavours, flavour enhancers, preservatives, emulsifiers, etc, cooking it up in an industrial oven into a funny shape and stuffing them into sealed bags for consumption in many weeks time. (This industry is, apparently, the ‘influential food processing lobby’ pissing in the Liberal Party’s ear and pocket.)
We have already seen a ‘Don’t get fat’ advertising campaign from the new Labor govt, with no real message except using the fairly emotional device of a dad getting into his 30s and 40s and becoming breathless and out of shape to the point where he can’t play with his daughter anymore.
I suppose we get the point, and the out of breath father could imply he is smoking along with overeating and getting insufficient exercise, take your pick. No real mention of health consequences, simply that he can’t keep up with the kids any more, what a shame, you don’t want to have that happen to you, do you? — it’s a common belief amongst public health advertising specialists and advertising agencies who work with them that it’s fine to trick the public in order to get the result you want, kind of like Soviet-era propaganda, the actual reason can remain a mystery because it’s too boring and won’t get their attention, and the public are too stupid to understand, not like us bright advertising people (the ‘A’s).
The optimal approach could be somewhere in between the nanny state and the Abbott state.
(The ‘Free Trade’ people at the IPA of course are some sort of apologetic right wing ‘thinktank’ (sic) for big business and the fascist state, in its original definition of rule of the people by big business vested interests in collusion with a captured government — nothing to do with free trade particularly. God knows who funds them, it would be too terrifying to find out.)
+1 Amy, JamesH and Kathryn also…
We haven’t covered some real nanny state stuff about salads having to be served in restaurants for every meal by law in places like Finland.
I worked in the Fed Dept of Health in the Howard years, and there wasn’t much to do, I can tell you… every pro-health intiative or idea was quashed, as it wasn’t in some business lobby’s interest…
but there’s always an irony in that the Liberal Party in govt doesn’t believe it should exist ; )
“Australians should take responsibility for their choices and should accept the consequences.”
If we follow this assertion to it’s logical conclusion, all people should pay for their healthcare required from smoking, excess eating and drinking. Insurance companies should also be able discriminate against people because they live unhealthy lifestyles.
“Great piece Tim.”
I’ll ignore the cronyism and ask a simple question: what was great about it, Bernard?
Funny Sean, I worked in the Dept of Health during the Howard years, and I had more than enough to do.
Mind telling me what, Bernard, avoiding repeated nursing home scandals? At a time when Howard slashed 10,000 APS jobs, I would remind everyone, presumably you were backfilling for them all. The mad monk was the worst health minister… ever. I can point to a number of flawed ‘strategy’ papers which I am even now assisting the Labor govt to remedy.
For such a great piece I would love to see some evidence that what is being proposed will not work. Why should business be able to do what they want with little restriction when it is harmful to the health and economy of the country?
I’m an SD (not a SOD) ie a Smoking, but not Obese, Drinker. I’m sick of being told that if someone passes near enough to me as I stand the specified distance outside my workplace in a force 9 gale (braving the elements for a lungful of nicotine) to catch a sniff of my cigarette they will instantly drop dead from passive smoking. Enough! This has gone far enough! In my jurisdiction (the ACT) the hospitals now proudly proclaim they are ‘smoke free’ (ensuring that yours truly will be treatment free, whatever ails me in the future, because I won’t be welcome there).
People DO pay - financially and in other ways - for the health care costs of their ‘bad habits’. They also pay for the medical consequences of their genetics, accidents, infectious diseases, mysteriously caused chronic illnesses, the environment they live in etc. We all get sick eventually and does it matter how, in the end?
I am sick of buying cigarette packets bearing gruesome photos of people’s eyeballs exposed by metal prods, bearing the message ‘Smoking causes blindness’. Smoking may cause some kinds of blindness, but MANY things cause blindness, and ANY photo of an eye operation is going to look gruesome. Ditto any photo of heart bypass surgery. Ditto any photo of lungs. These images are misleading and exploitative.
And if someone could tell me - PLEASE - how to stop smoking, feel free. I’ve tried - and paid for - everything I’ve ever heard of so far.
Don’t start me on drinking -
Just leave me alone to stumble through life. I’m eating my greens as fast as I can.
Ah Moira I have no illusions that a whiff of your second hand smoke will fell me in an instant, but I’ll cross the road to avoid your stench. Not sure that knowing you stink to high heaven will help you quit, mind you.
Anyway sin tax >> nanny state bans on vending machines. We need to make fresh and less processed food much more cost effective than feeding the family at Macdonalds. But this is in a country where we prefer to provide tax breaks for car usage while letting public transport decay, so I can’t see anything intelligent happening in public health in the near future.
Not sure what your point is Bernard. Raising taxes on smokes, drinks, and trans fats IS making people face the true cost of their health care; with the added benefit that it lowers those costs by doing so. It’s no different to a health insurance provider charging smokers higher premiums, which AFAIK most of them do. This is hardly Nanny-Statism. Nanny Statism would ban smoking entirely. Sin taxes say “take responsibility for your choices - pay for them”.
Serve salad, but if it’s the unimaginative assortment of lettuce that masquerades as a salad, then I for one will be leaving it!
“The taskforce could have been creative, but instead they are just rehashing the same measures for food and alcohol that were used to attack cigarettes — advertising ban and tax increases.”
That’s because those tactics are proven at cutting smoking rates. In countries where cigarettes are taxed punitively, smoking rates have plummeted. In countries where cigarettes remain cheap, smoking rates remain high. It’s no coincidence.
On this point though, might I ask whether you are a genuine libertarian, believing that all drugs should be legalised, have their prices determined by the ‘free market’, and an open license to be promoted as creatively and persuasively?
How far down the rabbit hole does your ideology go, Tim?
“Considering the Australian Parliament isn’t known for its gym-junkie, teetotalling MPs, it seems a bit rich that they are now going to legislate to make sure we are.”
Only if you’re suggesting MPs will be exempt from these laws, which they aren’t.
Getting to the guts of it, while I believe the government should be pro-actively involved in banning & regulating substances that are hazardous when used as intended, I don’t think they should cross into the territory of policing unhealthy behaviour in adults.
Instead (and I believe there are many recommendations to this effect in the report), the government can provide incentives to encourage healthy behaviour, like designing cities with more green space, and infrastructure that supports & advantages pedestrians over vehicle users for example.
“…We need to make fresh and less processed food much more cost effective than feeding the family at Macdonalds…”
It’s called a GST.
Ralley, do you have any ideas or just making a statement?
“Fresh” food requires land, seed, water, fertiliser, farming machinery, trucks, ships and, most importantly, human labour.
As the popoulation grows it need more of these things.
But alas, the has world stopped growing.
Are the fringe dwellers ready to capitulate on releasing potential arable land for food procurement purposes?
Or should we start growing arugula in our inner city apartment verticalfor stop carping about encroachment on their green wedges?
Or should we start growing arugula in our inner city apartment vertical gardens for the Tenants Co-op weekly salad?
Moira Smith’s comment (3 September 2009; 1:32 am) intrigues me. She decries and objects to the imagery used on cigarette packets in an attempt to discourage smoking whilst at the same time admitting she has tried many times and at some cost to quit this harmful and addictive habit.
Surely the point of the pictures is more to emphasis and discourage new smokers (especially children) from taking up a habit that not only damages your health but that even committed smokers such as Moira apparently wish they had never commenced in the first place.
Obviously Moira wishes her life was a little more dull rather than having to stand outside in all weather conditions to partake in the excitement she experiences from her addiction.
MPM, did you ever consider that highly processed (e.g. McDonalds) food requires more land, seed, water, fertiliser, energy, etcetera, than less processed food because of its higher percentage of meat and fat and its reliance on monocrop agriculture? It might be less labour intensive, but given high unemployment rates in rural and regional australia, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Who are these obese, alcoholic smokers that are causing all this panic? The answer, alas, is that it’s largely (but not exclusively) the proles. Take a trip out to one of the far-flung suburbs and have a look at what goes into the shopping trolley. Some of us may argue that our right to consume alcohol, junk food and even ciggies in moderation should not be curtailed simply because a portion of the population is too dumb to look after its own health (Maccas ain’t addictive - bingeing on it is entirely voluntary). Others may say that they’re human beings and, if we’ve all got to make sacrifices to help them, then that’s what we’ve got to do. Personally, I’d be happy to make a few sacrifices if I thought that it would make a difference - but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
‘BatteredPav’ in his (anonymous) response to my comment bypasses the discourse of vigorous debate and descends to the language of the playground. It’s not the personal insult as such that bothers me as much as his vivid demonstration of a disturbing new phenomenon. Perpetrators of what Tim Wilson in the introduction to his piece calls ‘the great sins of our time — obesity, alcohol and smoking’ are now fair game for the sort of disrespect and intolerance that might even be actionable were it directed at other sections of society.
Let noone reading this forget that the new NH&MRC alcohol guidelines now recommend that noone should have more than two ‘standard drinks’ a day. (A ‘standard’ glass of wine is far smaller than the one you probably pour yourself when you sit down to dinner.) Once this catches on, many more than me will have pariah status. These guidelines have tightened considerably since last issued in 2001. What will the next version be like?
And Joss Cull, commenting on the ‘excitement’ he thinks I experience from my addiction to cigarettes, obviously has no experience of what an addiction is. (And is a fortunate person indeed, neither to have one nor need one.)
Moira my use of the word “excitement” was a sarcastic repudiation of Tim Winton’s moronic suggestion in this article that those who indulge in activities such as smoking or over eating are leading more interesting lives then the dull ones of those who don’t.
It was in no way meant as a personal attack on you or your addiction. As someone who took up smoking at high school and struggled for years to finally quit in my 30’s I fully appreciate the addictive properties of nicotine and hope that you may yet be successful in your efforts to quit.
Jos, it’s Tim *Wilson*, not Tim Winton. One of them is a famous author.
Oh crap, I didn’t mean that like it sounds.
Thanks Joss for your response, I understand ….
And Jos sorry I got your name wrong (twice!)