Ausstralia - Cheers to healthy pegs

Cheers to healthy pegs
By Mike O'Connor
November 30, 2008 11:00pm
THE communists, Jews, Papists, drug pedlars, devil worshippers and extra-terrestrials finally have triumphed, their conspiracy to subvert the state now complete.
Within days dogs will begin mating with goats, children will start sprinkling ground glass on their parents' breakfast cereal and birds will fly backwards.
Beelzebub himself is now among us – for, from today, there will be fluoride in our drinking water.
W.C. Fields once said: "I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it."
Apparently enough Queenslanders agree with him, at least with regard to recycled water, feelings that caused an increasingly nervous Premier Anna Bligh to perform a number of tyre-screeching, political U-turns last week.
Bligh may have hopelessly miscalculated the political cost attached to the Government's arrogant insistence on building the Traveston Dam and similarly failed to sense the electorate's distrust of recycled water.
She did, however, score one goal in the water debate, and it was on fluoridation, an issue which her predecessor Peter Beattie lacked the courage to confront.
Beattie was content to leave the matter to be decided by local councils, thus avoiding any confrontation with the rabid, anti-fluoride protesters who, by comparison, make anti-abortion campaigners appear lamb-like in their demeanour.Queensland kids may have had the highest rates of tooth decay in the country, but this was of no concern to Beattie.
Three years ago, I wrote in this column that it was not unusual for children from the city's less-affluent suburbs to have half a dozen teeth extracted at once because of advanced decay. I also quoted a survey of primary schoolchildren at Inala which showed two-thirds of pupils had more than seven teeth that needed to be either extracted or filled.
Beattie's reply was to flash his own, well-tended teeth at the cameras and say it was up to local government.
The Queensland Government today became the last in the country to introduce fluoridation, a sad reflection on those in whom we place our trust.
Those worried that by week's end they will have begun to glow in the dark should relax, for the evidence in favour of fluoridation is overwhelming.
Townsville was until today the only city in the state with fluoridated water. It has had it since 1964 and has a 65 per cent lower rate of tooth decay than Brisbane, according to the State Government.
So positive have been the dental health benefits of fluoride that the beverage industry, sensing a marketing opportunity, now wants to add it to bottled water.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand has said there are no public health or safety concerns and has asked for those parties opposed to an application by the Australian Beverages Council to add fluoride to bottled water to state the basis for their objections.
Another facet to the debate has been revealed in New South Wales where some parents, fearful of bacteria levels in Sydney tap water following giardia contamination scares, have been giving their children non-fluoridated bottled water rather than fluoridated tap water.
As a result, decay rates have increased.
"There is evidence of a slight increase in the decay rates being experienced in the under-five and under-six age group, I'd say it's because there's been less exposure among them to tapwater," Australian Dental Association NSW president Tony Burgess said. Bligh then, got it right and made a decision for which she deserves to be applauded.
Perversely, had she proceeded with her plan to introduce recycled water regardless of dam levels and public opinion, then the good achieved by fluoridation may well have been undone by well-meaning parents giving their kids bottled water to avoid being exposed to contaminated tapwater, no matter how small that chance might be.
Deputy Premier Paul Lucas is now dashing about proclaiming that the Government's policy reversals show that it is a "listening government".
One can only hope that he is joking although, worryingly, the minister is not known for his sense of humour.
The Government listens only when the opinion polls start shrieking like an airliner's ground proximity warning system – Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!
The Traveston Dam proposal was based on suspect science from the outset and how handy was it that on cue, the Co-Ordinator General Department's cavalry galloped in to the Premier's office with an assessment that gave the Government an excuse to retreat from its endlessly stated determination to build it.
The dam was bad science propelled by bad politics and the recycled water issue a panic move by a frightened Government that was poorly sold.
Thanks to fluoridation, however, our children and their children can now look forward to improved dental health.

Rabid?