Qld govt slaps ban on junk food ads

Leftist authoritarianism again.  NO food is junk.  They all contain nutrients but vary in which ones. Salt, sugar and fat are all good for you

A ban on advertising of junk food on billboards and spaces owned by the Queensland government will be enforced in a bid to help people make healthier choices.

Junk food advertising will be banned from billboards, train stations and transport owned by the Queensland government.

In a move aimed at helping Queenslanders make healthier choices, the ban will apply to outdoor spaces and other sites, excluding stadiums.

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles says change won't be seen in big sporting venues for a number of years due to complexities with contracts.

Foods will be ruled in or out based on their salt, sugar and fat content.

The move is part of the state government's program aimed at increasing the number of Queenslanders with a healthy body weight by 10 per cent by 2026.

"This is really about the government saying were going to lead by example," Mr Miles said on Sunday. "And this is one way we can do that."

Mr Miles said the ban would apply to about 2000 billboards, which rake in millions of dollars each year for the government.

Lyn Hamill from Diabetes Queensland says reducing children's exposure to bright and colourful packaging of unhealthy foods will mean they will want them less often.

But the state opposition says the ban is a distraction from an emergency department crisis. "We think the government should be focusing on hospital beds not billboards," Liberal National Party deputy leader Tim Mander said. "We want the Palaszczuk government to get its priorities right.

SOURCE  






Australian chefs pledge to no longer serve unsustainable seafood

Keeping fish stocks healthy is a laudable goal but very large areas of Australian waters are national parks in which fishing is prohibited so the panic is unfounded.  The restaurateurs will end up giving their business to some of our many Vietnamese restaurants if they are not careful.  Viets are brilliant cooks -- including seafood

Chefs from 40 leading restaurants across Australia have pledged to no longer serve unsustainable seafood as part of the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s (AMCS) new GoodFish Project launched today.

All the restaurants have agreed not to source or serve seafood that is red-listed as “Say No” in Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide - an independent scientific analysis of seafood production researched and published by AMCS.

World-renowned Australian chef Ben Shewry, owner of Attica in Melbourne, is also announced today as the project’s official GoodFish Ambassador. Attica is currently ranked the 20th best restaurant in the world.

Chef and GoodFish manager Sascha Rust said: “Chefs have an incredible ability to talk to people through food. We are trusted guides for society on how we eat and what we eat.

“Chefs that are coming onboard with GoodFish are sending a very clear message. This community does not want to support practices that are damaging our oceans and putting the long-term sustainability of the oceans and food they love at risk. Instead, they want to be able to celebrate great seafood that’s sustainable.”

Shewry’s restaurant Attica was ranked 20th in “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants” awards for 2018 - the only Australian restaurant to make the list, independently judged by chefs, restaurateurs and critics.

Shewry said he was "absolutely thrilled and honoured" to be asked to be the GoodFish ambassador having first started using Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide some 10 years ago to guide his sourcing.

He said: "The GoodFish project aims to build a community of chefs in Australia to come together to work on this problem. We have a moral responsibility. We need to understand the ingredients that we are cooking with, and no more so than what comes from the oceans."

"In my position as a chef, I have a big influence on what people eat and what other people cook because our restaurant is well known.  If I don't have have what I would call a clean menu - if I don't have best practice, the most sustainable menu I can have in terms of shellfish and seafood - then I am contributing to the problem."

So far 40 restaurants across the country have signed up to GoodFish, including Alanna Sapwell (Arc Dining, Brisbane), Alejandro Saravia (Pastuso, Melbourne; Uma, Perth), Ben Devlin (Pipit, Pottsville), Thi Li (Anchovy, Melbourne), Jacqui Challinor (NOMAD, Sydney) and the team behind Three Blue Ducks (Byron Bay, Sydney and Brisbane).

Rust added: “Our aim here is to bring together a strong community of voices to protect our oceans so they can continue to provide joy, and food, for generations to come.”

Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide, which celebrates its 15th birthday in 2019, covers some 92 per cent of all the seafood consumed by Australians, including locally-produced and imported species.

The guide has three colour-coded classifications, where consumers and chefs are advised on green-listed “Better Choice” species, and to “Say No” to red-listed species and “Eat Less” from an amber list.

Adrian Meder, AMCS Sustainable Seafood Program Manager, said the guide assesses fisheries and aquaculture operators on a range of practices, such as the stock status of the species, the methods used to catch or farm them, and impacts on other marine wildlife and habitats.

He said: “Chefs are real arbiters of our seafood choices and the best chefs are closely connected to the supply chains from the ocean to the plate. That so many of them are now using Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide to make sure their customers get the best seafood choices is not just a testament to the guide, but to them as guardians of the future of food.”

The guide assesses some 160 wild caught and farmed fish choices covering more than 92 per cent of the seafood consumed by Australians. Some 50 fish choices are green-listed, 53 are amber and 57 are coded red for “Say No”.

Because Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide is fully independent of government and industry, Meder said it remains the most used and trusted source of information for the seafood-loving Australian public.

Via email from media@amcs.org.au






Antisemitic Labor Party candidate believes Palestinian falsifications

Such falsifications are as old as the hills.  You would have to be naive to believe them

Star Labor candidate for Curtin Melissa Parke has quit after a controversial speech which outraged the Jewish community.

Speaking to pro-Palestinian activists last month, Ms Parke described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as 'worse than the South African system of apartheid'. 

Ms Parke also claimed she 'remembered vividly' when 'a pregnant refugee woman was ordered at a checkpoint in Gaza to drink a bottle of bleach', The Herald Sun reported.

She made the comments at first-ever meeting of the Western Australian Labor for Palestine group in March and stepped down on Friday night.

The bleach burned the woman's throat and insides but her baby was saved, according to Ms Parke. 

Ms Parke is a former lawyer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and has worked in the Gaza Strip.

She said she did not want her views on the Middle East to distract from electing a Labor government.

Her speech was called 'nothing more than a laundry list of slanders, including discredited conspiracy theories and downright falsification' by Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein.

Ms Parke withdrew from the race for the Perth seat of Curtin, which was vacated by former foreign minister Julie Bishop.

It is considered a safe Liberal seat because it has been held by the party since 1998.

The former Fremantle MP resigned from her seat in 2016 after nine years to spend more time with family.

SOURCE  







Bill Shorten’s entourage hints at a female-voter problem

Does Bill Shorten have a problem with female voters? Will they have a problem voting for him, as prime minister?

Put your ear to the ground, there’s a bit of chat out there — on the hustings, around the place — that women don’t much like the Opposition Leader, and the reason he is so rarely seen in public without a woman by his side is that the ALP knows it. This is despite the ALP proudly being the more feminist of the two parties.

Chat is one thing. What do the polls say? Well, there was a bit of a leak from Liberal Party headquarters about nine months ago that suggested Shorten was particularly unpopular with young women (his rating was -77 with female voters under 35).

Presumably the ALP’s own internal polling says much the same.

But that was nine months ago, and a lot has changed since then, not least those that occupy The Lodge: the Turnbulls have been replaced by the Morrisons.

The woman with the highest profile, and the greatest success to date — first female foreign minister, first female deputy leader — in the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop, has quit, as has Kelly O’Dwyer. Julia Banks has turned on her own, describing Liberal colleagues as bullies. So maybe Shorten’s position has improved?

The best polls — Galaxy and Newspoll — detect ambivalence about the Labor leader, but it’s not gender-based. David Briggs, managing director of YouGov, says women prefer Morrison to Shorten, but so do men, and by a greater margin. “There’s a seven-point gap between Morrison and Shorten among women voters,” Briggs says. “With men, it’s nine points. So there isn’t really a gender story in the polls.”

And yet there absolutely is a gender story on the hustings.

Shorten has surrounded himself with women, from day one. Sometimes it’s his wife, Chloe; sometimes it’s his deputy, Tanya Plibersek; sometimes it’s his “bus captain” Kristina Keneally. Yesterday, in Boothby, he was with candidates Nadia Clancy and Emily Gore, and health spokeswoman Catherine King; in the marginal seat of Reid last week, he had King, Penny Wong, Jenny McAllister and Julie Collins by his side. What’s he playing at?

It’s in part a reflection of electoral reality: you’re seeing a lot of Labor women on the hustings because the ALP is committed to running a lot of women.

For example, it’s running four women in the four seats the Coalition unquestionably needs to hold in WA: Melita Markey, Kim Travers, Hannah Beazley (daughter of former federal Labor leader, now WA Governor Kim Beazley) and Mellisa Teede are contesting Pearce (3.7 per cent), Swan (3.6 per cent), Stirling (6.2 per cent) and Canning (6.8 per cent) respectively.

All their opponents are men: Attorney-General Christian Porter is defending Pearce, Andrew Hastie is defending Canning; Steve Irons is the incumbent in the marginal seat of Swan; and Vince Connelly was preselected to contest the seat of Stirling ahead of four women.

So there’s reality, and then there’s perception. There is a perception that the Coalition is a sexist party. It isn’t committed to gender parity among candidates; it won’t entertain quotas (Morrison has appointed more women to cabinet than there have ever been in cabinet but that hasn’t seemed to have cut through).

The perception that the ALP treats women with respect, and the Coalition treats them with contempt, is a clear point of difference between the parties, and Shorten’s working it for whatever it might be worth. He’s announced his intention to appoint a female governor-general if elected (fun fact: the last woman in that role was his mother-in-law).

He’s also made much of the fact that Australia will have a female deputy prime minister if he’s elected. In fact, Pilbersek is running less like a deputy, more like a vice, as in president, as if this were a US-style campaign. She’s at least as high-profile, and as personally popular, as Julia Gillard was under Kevin Rudd, circa 2007, but maybe not let’s not go there.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here