Legislate for others as you would have others legislate for you

IF politicians are insistent we go on a diet, then why should they be exempt from this state imposed misery, asks James Morrow.

Jacqui Lambie being right. (Pic: Mick Tsikas/AAP)

IT may not happen every day, but when Jacqui Lambie’s right, she’s right.

Speaking in the wake of Scott Morrison’s budget night proposal to drug test dole recipients, the Tasmanian independent suggested that if those on Centrelink should be made to wee in a cup for their supper, why not high-flying MPs as well?

“If they’re being paid by taxpayers on welfare, how come politicians and public servants aren’t getting the same treatment and leading by example?”, she asked rhetorically on Seven’s Sunrise.

“If you think it’s drug-free up here (at Parliament House), you’re kidding yourself”.

Indeed. But why stop at drugs?

Shouldn’t pollies and staffers and bureaucrats of all stripes live by all the other sorts of rules they impose on the rest us? For their own good, of course.

Take food. The NSW Government recently introduced — though imposed might be a fairer word — a “healthy school canteen strategy” on schools across the state.

The “strategy” is all the usual stuff you would expect, though why a carb-heavy lasagne slathered in béchamel gets a pass as an “everyday” food while the humble chicken schnitzel is tarred with the dreaded “occasional food” label are not quite clear.

The idea is that without the loving embrace of bureaucratic advice, Australians would be just a generation away from morphing into a bunch of extras from Wall-E. Assuming, that is, that we could even feed ourselves at all.

If politicians are so worried about our obesity crisis, they might want to start with their own canteen. (Pic: Supplied)

Happily for the future of our nation, at least some students are rebelling against this meddling nonsense. This week the Daily Telegraph reported that a group of students from Revesby’s De La Salle College have launched a Change.org petition to keep hot chips — a verboten “occasional” food if there ever was one, according to the government — on offer in the canteen.

Good for them, but perhaps their efforts are misguided.

Instead, the De La Salle students should be campaigning to make politicians and bureaucrats live by the same rules, again, for their own good. If “everyday” lean chicken sandwiches and vegetable sushi are just the things to get students through the school day, surely they can get legislators through a sitting week.

I asked a colleague who works out of NSW Parliament House about the food on offer at the state’s legislative HQ.

He told me that while the cafeteria where MPs and staffers and others who work in the building eat does offer some healthy options, overall it is “an absolute smorgasbord of heart-stopping goodness” that puts on a daily spread of burgers, pies, sausage rolls, chips, and sweets of every variety.

Clearly the poor denizens of Macquarie Street need an intervention (and perhaps a new form of the Golden Rule: Legislate for others as you would have others legislate for you). It would be terrible if the much-touted obesity crisis were to infect Parliament, after all.

What’s needed is a campaign — call it the Lithe Legislators Strategy, if you like — to ensure those who would make others eat healthy be made to do likewise themselves.

It could even have its own catch phrase: “Won’t somebody think of the pollies?

James Morrow is the Daily Telegraph opinion editor.