Ali Mau's fairness questioned

She is set to be the face of the new-look Fair Go, but who is the media man questioning her fairness?

Mother-of-two Alison Mau sizzles in the new television commercial for Fair Go which TVNZ insiders are calling "dead brilliant".

The TV star, who separated from her husband Simon Dallow and is in a happy relationship with hip hop dancer Karleen Edmonds, will be the new face of the long-running programme that's set to get a drastic makeover. Think sexier, think spicier, think Desperate Housewives meets consumer affairs.
 
The new commercial has just been shot and it's considerably saucier than the look of the old Fair Go.

Mau's sultry tones sliver suggestively over the tagline: "Don't buy a lemon, watch Fair Go and get the juice."

The blonde bombshell is set to become TVNZ's new McSteamy, which is just how the network wants it. Just ask Tiger - sex sells.

The new-look Fair Go ad hits our telly screens on Wednesday and the show kicks off on May 5.

Coincidentally, also on that date, a meeting will be held at the Broadcasting Standards Authority to review a complaint laid with TVNZ's Complaints Committee regarding Mau's Breakfast outburst on February 15.

The Committee declined to uphold it and the complainant, a well-known media man who doesn't want to be named, was not satisfied with the decision and has taken it to the BSA, which is expected to make a formal ruling around June.
 
You'll remember Mau blasted Woman's Day and its editor Sarah Henry for a story and a series of paparazzi photographs that were published in the magazine. Mau complained about being stalked by a paparazzi photographer in a blue Corolla.
 
The complaint to the Committee argued the broadcast was unfair to Woman's Day and to the unnamed photographer. But the Committee disagreed. They insisted there was an inconsistency in what the complainant stated and what Mau claimed.

"Given [Mau's] beliefs about the timing of photos, the Committee felt it was a reasonable assumption on the part of the presenter that her children may well have been under observation, if not actually photographed" the Committee ruled.
 
The media man scoffed to Spy: "Since when do news organisations work on 'reasonable assumption'?

"For the presenter of Fair Go to be saying she can make such damaging claims based on 'reasonable assumption' would be laughable if it weren't so serious.
 
"It's a huge irony that Ali Mau will sit in judgement of people on Fair Go. Ali the crusader for justice? What a joke!"
 
The media man said he went to the BSA because he felt using 'statement of opinion' was just an excuse to hide behind so "you can falsely accuse a magazine of stalking her children for a month and launch a public campaign against the editor for doing it".
 
But the Committee disagreed, arguing Mau's response was aired during a segment on the Breakfast show called What's in the Mags thereby making it an "established vehicle for comment and opinion, the more so as the presenter was the subject of the magazine spread in question".