EDITORIAL: Junk-food edict's a fat lot of use

Education Minister Steve Maharey's edict banning "junk food" in school canteens might seem a small thing. But, like a peanut or a bee sting, it has provoked a furious allergic reaction.
The ban is symbolism, nothing more. And it clearly makes no difference to the backslapping Greens, with their gluttony for busybodying in other people's private lives, that the ban will have no effect on child obesity.
The Government will cop the flack. And so it should because the public have despaired of gesture politics. The ban might be a small thing, but it looms large because while the preoccupation with behavioural modification by statute persists, far bigger issues continue to go unaddressed.
Many teachers don't like the ban and it is not hard to see why. While they may concede that schools ought to lead by example, it takes little imagination to predict a roaring trade at the local bakery, before and after school (even if students are confined during lunch hours so they can be dragooned into healthy eating). There's nothing quite like prohibition to stimulate the appetite.
Furthermore Mr Maharey's assurances that "it's up to schools" to meet the "guidelines" are empty if the Education Review Office will be monitoring compliance, as indicated.
There has to be a limit to schools being made de facto parents. As an arm of the state they are being used to compensate for the laziness and ignorance of just a few in the rude presumption that those vices are common to all.
That is one way of getting around having to pass moral judgments on people's lifestyles. It is also easier to blame corporate food manufacturers than to criticise the decisions that people make. Such regulation for behavioural "improvement" is an intrusion that devalues the worth of personal initiative.
Would it not be wiser for the government to recognise that schools are preparatory to real life? Instead of treating children and their parents as hapless imbeciles or perpetual victims it should acknowledge that schools should be helping instil the virtues of moderation and making informed, responsible choices.
Or does it propose, as the next step in its war against flab, to dictate what everyone is allowed to eat outside school hours, too?