The facts presented in this video are startling. It’s time the Government regulated alcohol advertising and took New Zealand’s heavy drinking culture seriously.

Have your say on regulating alcohol advertising on yourshout.org.nz by 18 February 2010.

Several witty people kept submitting pictures of watermelons, but I like this one better:

What’s going on in this one?  Are they looking in each other’s eyes or breaking up? I desperately want to know the back story:

And this one is a sweet switch of generations, reminding us of the other place that lots of new Green support is coming from this election:

I do however wonder how Aila and her photographer father must feel having had her image used without her consent. As toad notes, it’s an interesting approach to private property rights from a party with such a strong proclaimed position on them.

Edit – I’ve just found the Act attack ad here It’s apparently not Aila but another photoshopped model, so ignore my last comments – But they’ve obviously been saving money on production costs as well as creative ideas.

Mr Carson, who came up with Labour’s “Keep it Kiwi” and “This one’s about trust” campaigns, says the key to advertising a political party is to pit yourself against your opposition. In the commercial world, you want to be positive about your product. In politics, you want to malign your rival.

All parties should and do criticise each other on various issues and sometimes more generically they will criticise each others’ very reason for being.  But when parties have only 15 or 30 seconds of advertising time to get their message across and they choose to use that to abuse or denigrate their opponents it shows a lack of vision and commitment to improving things for New Zealanders.

Under MMP attacking the opposition rather than promoting yourself misses the point.  Labour voters who enjoy denigration and abuse of political opponents would be better voting New Zealand First – Winston is better at it.  If however they want a positive, practical vision they can choose Green.

Each week the ABC pits two of Australia’s advertising agencies against each other in a  challenge to sell the unsellable.  This week the brief was to build support for invading New Zealand.  Follow the link and check out the ad on the right.

Another interesting question time today with Bill English asking the Minister of Justice about the authorisation requirements for election advertising and, in particular, giving the Green’s Proud to be Green billboards a bit of airtime on Parliamentary TV by waving round a photo of one of them.

While I support the Electoral Finance Act as an improvement on the old law, there were always going to be problems with it and one of the problems is that the financial agents of parties and third parties are required to put their residential addresses on material rather than a business address.

This is a bit silly because the purpose, to prevent people hiding behind false addresses, can be achieved using business addresses without exposing financial agents to threats from nutters.Initially there was confusion about this and the Electoral Commission told parties that they could use a business address, which the Greens did with the Proud to be Green billboards. Subsequently the Electoral Commission then issued a ruling that it should be a residential address. Uggh.

So in question time Bill English sought leave to introduce an amendment to the Act to change this provision back to the business address. This is a very sensible patch on the Act. Leave can only be allowed if not a single member objects and none did. So now theoretically Bill can introduce such an amendment. It would be good if it was fixed. MMP in action!

The logic for intervention is clear. Political parties that do not support restricting the marketing of unhealthy food to our children should just come out and admit that they have succumbed to pressure from the food industry. Where are their priorities? Do they really value commercial profits over the health of our kids?

I guess some people will be arguing that those 82% of parents and grandparents want to restrict freedom of speech. But, a bit like the Electoral Finance Act, this regulation on the fast food industry would be a restriction on advertising, not on freedom of speech. Ronald McDonald would still be able to approach as many children as he liked, on a one on one basis, to discuss the nutritional merits or otherwise of happy meals. He and his peers would just need to cut back a little on the US$10 billion he spends making sure his message gets more glamour and coverage than healthy food receives.

“This Government has made health promotion and disease prevention a priority.”

But the somewhat unimpressed Obesity Action Coalition called on the government to ‘declare war on obesity‘.

And the Health Select Committee’s chairperson, Sue Kedgley, said:

“Half-hearted measures won’t work. The clear message heard by the committee is that healthy options need to be easy options.”

The big recommendations that did not make the cut were the committee’s proposal for an independent commissioner, for greater regulation on advertising unhealthy food to children and a move towards a ‘traffic light’ food labelling system that indicates the recommended frequency of consumption for each product. The United Kingdom Food Standards Agency has successfully used this system to change food purchasing behaviour there.

But one of the smaller recommendations not to make it past Cunliffe’s office is extending the Fruit in Schools programme to all schools.  Instead it will only be extended to decile two primary and intermediate schools.  Fruit in Schools is a programme that was developed in 2005. Currently 56,000 school students in 270 schools receive one piece of fresh fruit each per school day. In return, the school community collectively agrees to support healthy eating, being physically active, sunsmart and smokefree.  

The select committee heard evidence that this programme not improves children’s health by increasing the amount of fruit they consume, it also improves learning outcomes in schools.   If it is having that kind of benefit it would seem worth extending to all schools as per the recommendation.  Obesity, diabetes and good learning are not just low decile issues.