KEY POINTS:
Whatever else may be said about the Government's announced plan to give itself more weapons in the war against obesity, it may not be faulted on the grounds of political courage. The Public Health Bill provides new ways for the Cabinet or the Director-General of Health to act
against suspected causes of disease - and obesity is plainly one of those.
Even health groups backing the provisions would have forgiven the Government if the bill had been quietly shuffled into the too-hard basket until after the election. But, languishing in the polls and with the fight of her political life on her hands, Prime Minister Helen Clark - a former and very good Minister of Health - has decided to tough out the ridicule by her political opponents.
National's health spokesman, Tony Ryall, proved up to the task of concocting the obvious soundbite when he said this was "Helen Clark getting into your pantry". It plugged neatly into a widespread public perception of this administration as too ready to interfere in private lives, but it quite avoids the issue.
The bill, should it become law, will not automatically ban or even limit access to or availability of unhealthy food - which is surely what Ryall intends us to understand by his wisecrack about the Prime Minister. It portends both less and more than that. It would allow for regulations "to reduce, or assist in reducing, risk factors associated with, or related to, non-communicable diseases". Opponents need to state clearly what they find objectionable about that aim.
Health authorities already have widespread powers - including the power to detain people and require them to take medication - to contain the spread of communicable disease. The cheap argument against extending it to non-communicable disease is that it is not the business of the state to protect people from themselves.
But self-inflicted disease may not so glibly be classified as a private matter. When the taxpayer, of whose money the state has a duty of stewardship, is picking up the cost of treating illness, the state has a legitimate claim to exercising some controls over the incidence of it.
The same philosophy underpins laws making it harder for us to injure ourselves - such as the requirements for motorcyclists to wear crash helmets and motorists and their passengers to wear seat belts. The brief but vociferous chorus of "freedom-to-choose" opponents of those laws was silenced when they were asked whether they would be prepared to pick up the cost of their own trauma treatment and rehabilitation.
The principal target of the law as it is proposed is obesity: it would enable controls on the accessibility, display, advertising and marketing of some foods. This may mean that some sugar- and fat-laden processed food may not be so obtrusively displayed or that fast-food chains may not so easily be able to do sponsorship deals that target kids or at-risk groups.
And even that must be seen in context: the bill provides for voluntary codes and even allows that non-voluntary codes would, for the first three years, be non-binding. It is hard to think of a less hardline approach to a crisis.
For a crisis it is. Our incidence of diet-related cardio-vascular disease is high by international standards and we face epidemic levels of the largely preventable Type 2 diabetes which is hugely aggravated by obesity and has the potential, at the current rates of increase, to cripple our stretched health systems within a few years.
The Government has no business telling manufacturers of foodstuffs what they may make or consumers what they may eat. But it is not doing so. Health Minister David Cunliffe says that "there are still many conversations to be had" before the bill becomes law. The fewer phrases like "nanny state" and "Helen Clark getting into your pantry" that pepper those conversations, the better.
