Editorial: Don't trust me- I'm a celebrity

Former All Black Colin Meads. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Opinion

It would be a particularly thick-skinned or stupid celebrity - and such types are far from unknown, it has to be said - who would offer to endorse any sort of financial instrument between now and when hell freezes over.

But in case any of them are still inclined to get the idea into their talking heads, a law being drafted down in Wellington might make them think again.

Justice Minister Simon Power this week announced plans for a regime that would make anyone who made misleading statements in a product disclosure statement or advertisement liable for a fine of as much as $1 million.

The failure of the financial product would not on its own be grounds for liability; the endorser would have to have made a misleading statement to be in the gun.

There is richly stocked hunting ground here for more than just the legal profession: sociolinguists, philosophers and masters of rhetoric might all have a view on what constitutes a misleading statement.

Former newsreader Richard Long's pronouncement that Hanover Finance had "the size and strength to withstand any conditions" became self-evidently misleading when the company collapsed; but All Black legend Colin Meads' endorsement of Provincial Finance as "solid as" before its 2006 failure is more problematic, not least because he didn't say what it was as solid as. He may have had a marshmallow in mind.

In an ideal world we would not need a law to persuade celebs to spurn such offers. As we remarked at the time of the Hanover collapse, they have no business selling the credibility established in one field to market a business in an entirely different one. This is particularly true in the Long case, since the credibility he sold belonged not to him but to the job he once did.

People who buy a heat pump because a former cricket captain says it's good may be considered as deserving everything they get, but there is ample consumer protection available if the heat pump doesn't work.

The investment of one's life savings is a somewhat more serious matter. Celebrities have no business spruiking products that can ruin families for a generation or two. The sooner they stop - or one of them gets expensively nailed - the better.