Now the nanny state wants control of YOUR chocolate bar: Calls for graphic tobacco-style warnings on junk food - with claims 80% of Aussies will be overweight by 2025

Just a small problem:  How do we decide what is "junk" and what is not?  A big Mac was once said to be junk because it contained fat.  But fat is now said to be good for you. A big Mac may be unprestigious but there is no certainty that it is bad for you.  Its bad name seems just pure snobbery

There are calls for graphic warnings, similar to those on cigarette packets, to be introduced on junk food packaging to fight skyrocketing obesity rates.

Health experts want graphic images including fat-covered hearts, to be branded across junk foods after it was revealed 80 per cent of Australians would be overweight by 2025 if drastic action wasn't taken.

The call comes after a study found images like fatty hearts or decayed teeth displayed on packaging would successfully deter someone from making unhealthy choices.

Speaking on Sunrise on Thursday, commentator and lecturer Jane Caro supported the idea. 'It would literally put you off your food,' she said. 'It's proved very effective with [cigarettes] it's something we should look at with junk food.

'I think all of society has to come together and make junk food as socially unacceptable as cigarettes have become.'

Melbourne's 3AW presenter Tom Elliott disagreed. 'Can you imagine going to a kids party and having to display all these pictures of diseased organs?' he said. 'If you have it on junk food how do you separate it from kids and adults. 'If it's up there at a Maccas and kids are being taken to Maccas, kids are not going to enjoy the experience too much.'

The University of Melbourne and Cancer Council Victoria study, which was published on Thursday, found negative text combined with explicit images, was twice as effective at sending a message, than negative text without the image.

For the study, 95 hungry participants were shown colour pictures of 50 different snack foods ranging from chips, chocolate bars and biscuits to nuts, fruits and vegetables.

They were asked to rate on a scale how much they would like to eat each food at the end of the experiment.

In addition, participants' brain activity was monitored with electrodes attached to their heads.

The results revealed the warning labels prompted participants to exercise more self-control rather than act on impulse.

'The study shows that if you want to stop people choosing fatty and sugary packaged foods, health warnings actually work,' said study co-author, Dr Stefan Bode.

'It sheds light on the mechanisms in the brain that underlie the effects of health warning messages on food processing,' Dr Bode said.

Cancer Council Victoria behavioural researcher Dr Helen Dixon said the graphic images worked because they 'disrupt' the strong cues - like taste - that images of junk foods elicit. This then allows a person to consciously consider the health implications of their food choices, she explained.

Obesity Policy Coalition executive director Jane Martin says the use of packaging should be used for good, not for bad. 'This research demonstrates that powerful, relevant information on food packaging can influence people and push them away from junk food,' said Ms Martin.

'Poor diets and being above a healthy weight are risk factors for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. To address this Australia needs a comprehensive strategy, which should consider improved labelling,' she said.

The public health advocates have called on the government to make the graphic labelling mandatory, as part of the revised Health Star Rating System.

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Is Bill Shorten going to bring back the boats? Labor leader under pressure to bring 1,341 asylum seekers being held offshore to Australia within 90 DAYS if he's elected PM

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is under pressure from his own party to bring more than 1,300 asylum seekers to Australia within three months if Labor wins the next federal election.

A pro-refugee group from his own Victorian branch is demanding an end to offshore immigration detention, despite such a policy causing a dramatic surge in boat arrivals when Labor was last in government and the deaths of 48 people at Christmas Island.

The motion, revealed by the Guardian Australia, called on a Labor government to 'close offshore detention centres, transit centres and other camps on Manus and Nauru within the first 90 days, and to bring all the children, women and men who are refugees or seeking asylum remaining there to Australia'.

The cross-factional Labor for Refugees group within Mr Shorten's party is putting forward an urgency motion at this weekend's Victorian conference calling for all remaining asylum seekers to be transported to the Australian mainland within three months.

The activists are demanding an end to the detention of asylum seekers at Christmas Island, Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island of Nauru, which would see 1,341 boat people brought to Australia.

However Bill Shorten said Labor was committed to offshore detention and clarified that state conference motions on border protection weren't binding on national policy.

'Labor's policy on asylum seekers is clear – we will never let the people smugglers back in business,' a spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia today.

'Labor believes in strong borders, offshore processing, regional resettlement and turnbacks when safe to do so because we know it saves lives at seas. 'Resettlement in Australia for those on Manus and Nauru is not an option.'

When Labor last won an election from Opposition a decade ago, it immediately ended the Howard government's Pacific solution.

This led to a surge in boat arrivals, rising from just three in the 2007/08 financial year, to 117 in 2009/10.

Or put another way, the number of asylum seekers surged from 25 to 5,327, figures from a Parliament House research paper showed.

The policy change also coincided with the deaths of 48 people, mainly asylum seekers from Iran and Iraq, as their boat sunk and washed on to cliffs at Christmas Island in December 2010.

Former federal Labor leader Mark Latham described the Labor for Refugees motion as a 'sickness inside Labor'. 'Labor For Refugees want to repeat all these errors, all those deaths,' he told his 64,892 followers on Wednesday.

'It's a tragic example of people losing their marbles in life, blindly putting ideology, a borderless world, ahead of practical policy lessons and common sense.'

The surge of boat arrivals in 2012 led to then Labor prime minister Julia Gillard reopening the Manus Island detention centre.

Since then, seven asylum seekers have died there, including a Rohingya refugee this week.

Ms Gillard's Labor predecessor Kevin Rudd took back his old job in a party room coup in 2013 and soon declared boat people sent to Manus Island would have 'no chance' of ever being settled in Australia.

Department of Home Affairs data shows there were 330 asylum seekers detained at Christmas Island and 269 at Nauru as of March 31, 2018.

It listed a zero figure for Manus Island, however that was because the detention centre there, which previously housed 742 people, was closed down with its residents transferred to the nearby, low-security Lorengau facility.

Were Labor for Refugees motion to become government policy, 1,341 asylum seekers would be brought to Australia.

The Australian mainland is already housing 1,059 asylum seekers, including 101 in Bill Shorten's own Melbourne electorate of Maribyrnong.

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Pauline Hanson claims immigrants are forming 'dangerous ghettos' in Sydney - after Labor leader said white families have been forced to leave a suburb that took in 6000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees

Pauline Hanson says immigrants are forming ghettos in parts of Australia and the situation is becoming so bad there will be 'no-go zones' that even the police will avoid.

Appearing on the Today show on Thursday, the One Nation Party leader praised New South Wales Opposition leader Luke Foley for starting a conversation on the 'white flight' from parts of Sydney.

Mr Foley said on Wednesday white families were being forced out of western Sydney suburbs, such as Fairfield, after it took in 6000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

'I've been saying this and I said it 20 years ago. I said there'll be places in Australia that we won't even recognise as being Australian,' Senator Hanson said.

'I said they're forming ghettos and that is exactly what is happening and people are starting to talk about it.'

Senator Hanson again backed the NSW Opposition leader, and claimed 'people are forced out of their homes that they grew up in'. 'They don't want to live in these suburbs anymore because [immigrants] are not assimilating,' she said.

Senator Hanson warned the situation would only become more extreme as the Australian government accepted more immigrants.

'There'll be ghettos here, and there'll be places like there are in France and Sweden and other countries around the world that will be no-go zones,' she said.

'We won't even go in those places, the police will be told not to go in those zones. Even now, the police don't want to go in those areas. 'Good on Luke Foley, because it needs to be debated.'

Senator Hanson acknowledged it was a sensitive subject, but said it was an important conversation people needed to stop tip-toeing around.

'Let the people have their say. Stop shutting us down because the lefties believe that you're offending people,' Senator Hanson said

Mr Foley said on Wednesday he was particularly concerned about Sydney's south-west suburbs taking in a disproportionate number of refugees and forcing white Australians out.

'It's all right to come up with a grand gesture of we'll take 10,000 Syrian or Iraqi refugees but where's the practical assistance?' he told The Daily Telegraph.

'I'm saying, what about that middle ring of suburbs that have experienced, if anything, just a slow decline. In terms of employment, in terms of white flight - where many Anglo families have moved out?'

'I'm not prepared to see the people of those suburbs denied opportunities that are taken for granted elsewhere.'

In January, it was announced at least half of the 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees coming to Australia would be settled in Fairfield City Council, a trouble-prone area with nine per cent unemployment and high levels of drug use. 

Fairfield and the surrounding area is home to more than 200,000 people, many from non-English speaking backgrounds. Fairfield has settled 75 per cent of the Syrian and Iraqi refugees moving to western Sydney.

One of the fastest growing areas in Australia is Cobbitty-Leppington in Sydney's south-west, due to high immigration. Iraqi-born residents make up more than a third of the recent arrivals, which is more than 10 times the Sydney average of three per cent.

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Sexism? Medical clinic comes under fire for charging patients an EXTRA $7 to see a female GP

Patients have been left outraged after a medical centre charged MORE money for them to see female GPs.

The Melbourne clinic, Myhealth North Eltham, has come under scrutiny after it was found charging patients more for standard consultations with female GPs than it does for a consultation with male GPs.

A sign displayed in the clinic showed the discriminatory pricing policy - and it's attracted criticism online.  

The photograph was uploaded to Twitter with the caption: 'This is so f***ed. My friend goes to Eltham North Clinic in #Victoria, and they've just instituted extra fees for female doctors because "women's issues take longer". Surely this is illegal ... if it's not illegal, it's still outrageously sexist.'

The post was shared online by the user's followers, who also vented their anger.

One user said: 'If you're asking people who are paid 30 per cent less to fill that 30 per cent wage gap, it doesn't help. It means even greater financial inequality for those at the bottom.'

Another added: 'I don't think this is the scandal you think it is. I'd pay more to see a female colleague knowing they get ~30% less take home pay than their male counterparts. On top of fewer opportunities, and institutional/societal sexism.'

According to Fairfax, Federal Health Minister Greg is calling for an urgent investigation of the matter.

Kristen Hilton, Victoria's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner told The Guardian, the Melbourne clinic may be breaking the law and it can be considered discriminatory for charging patients more to see female GPs.

'It is against the law for doctors to treat someone unfavourably because of their gender,' Ms Hilton said.

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Claims emerge that a mass exodus is afoot at 2Day FM with staff refusing to work with controversial feminist host

Tensions at Sydney radio station 2Day FM are reportedly reaching 'breaking point' after an insider claimed that people just 'can't work' with host Em Rusciano.

The Daily Telegraph reported that 'several people' had departed the show while others were seeking new employment.

A source told the publication: 'Things are at breaking point, people just cannot work with her [Em's] energy. There have been... casualties at the hands of Em Rusciano.' 

The insider added: 'The audio producer is now working on another show, the publicist is refusing to work with her and one of the producers has told the company that they are looking for other work.'

Meanwhile, Em's previous co-host Harley Breen departed the show last November following just one year on air.

The comedian herself has spoken out about the changes at 2Day FM.  Talking to Wil Anderson on his podcast last week, Em expressed her frustrations at the radio station.  Em, 39, claimed the breakfast program was 'her show' and that she has 'taken all these big ego hits' since new co-hosts Ed Kavalee and Grant Den­yer were brought in at the beginning of the year.

She said: 'It was hectic. It was the Em Rusciano Radio Show - it was my show! 'And then all of a sudden Ed's anchoring and the show's called "The 2Day FM Breakfast Show."'

The mother-of-two confessed she was 'hurtling towards an implosion in the next six months' and said the solution to her problems could be to 'leave' morning radio for good. 'I don't think I'm suited to breakfast radio - I struggle with it,' Em added.

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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