MP ”peanuts” on water talk

Peter Farago
SOME politicians have made the analogy when defending their salaries that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
But Member for South Barwon Michael Crutchfield made a monkey of himself last week when he advised listeners of a radio forum that if they didn’t like fluoride then they shouldn’t drink the city’s water.
His unfortunate advice came as a comparison to people suffering severe allergic reactions to peanuts.
Mr Crutchfield said people with peanut allergies simply avoided peanuts, so people who didn’t like fluoride could do the same with water.
This advice was welcomed in Geelong like a slab of bourbon and Coke delivered to Eddie McGuire’s Lexus Centre office marked “For Alan”.
While Mr Crutchfield’s argument has merit, it also has flaws.
Many people who suffer peanut allergies only have to touch food prepared with them to get an adverse reaction.
Some are more serious, suffering reactions after consuming food prepared with cookware previously used to prepare food containing peanuts.
That’s why food labelling has been tightened to warn consumers of potential peanut content.
It’s the same with people who suffer severe reactions to fluoride – some who more than 20 years ago opted out of Melbourne to escape the chemical.
While their number might be small, for them ingesting fluoridated water is not the only way to get a reaction to the chemical.
But it goes on.
In the same radio forum that pitted Mr Crutchfield against state opposition leader Ted Baillieu, the local MP declared there had never been a water crisis in Geelong.
Listeners across the city would have spat their drinking water out in shock when he uttered those words, wasting litres at the time.
Obviously stage four water restrictions banning taps being turned on outside homes weren’t a clue that things have been a little dry in Geelong’s dams of late.
Nor that Barwon Water storages had dropped to 14 per cent of their capacity before recent downpours.
But Mr Crutchfield was obviously trying to paint a picture of a State Government in control of the plug at the bottom of the sink.
All the Government had to do was choose the right time to put it in.
That time was obviously after the gurus at Spring Street had read the tea leaves and realised almost every one in the community believed Victoria was in a water crisis.
Oh, and there was the time it took for Bracksy to film that twominute television advertisement with the helicopters publicising State Government’s plan to act.
Now that’s crisis management.