Yesterday as debate raged around the price of replica adidas All Black rugby jerseys, the National Party caucus gave the green light for a parliamentary select committee inquiry into milk prices to be launched.
One would have struggled to work out which was the more important issue as the media poured
over the adidas-retailer argument, ahead of the now "old hat" milk debate.
The price debates are, of course, completely different.
You don't need to buy a replica All Black jersey. It is a luxury item. And for the many Kiwis struggling to make ends meet in the current economic climate, the debate over whether to pay $220 for a Rugby World Cup replica All Blacks jersey, or the mere $170 for the now discounted version at Rebel Sport, or even the $100 online, is not one they will be holding in the run-up to the big tournament. Where and how they will watch the games could be.
Milk on the other hand is a staple of life. Imagine Weetbix, ironically an All Black brand, without it.
But its cost, however that is morally and financially justified, is hurting the household budget.
On Monday night when my 9-year-old twins asked for a milkshake I gladly obliged with big glasses, but when their 16-year-old sister and her friend chimed in I gave the wasteful teenagers smaller glasses.
Watching the milk drain out of that 2 litre container wasn't as easy as it once was, or was for my parents' generation.
As a milk boy in the 1970s I remember delivering as many as 16 pint bottles to large Hastings families for the princely sum of 64 cents. As the subsidies came off the numbers went down, but milk was still in plentiful supply in even modest income families.
Of course, back in the 1970s there was no such thing as replica All Black jerseys either. The only people who had the black jersey with the silver fern played in them. But with the onset of professionalism has come the PR, marketing and merchandising whizzes - and German giant, adidas, as a key All Black sponsor.
I have no problem with that, and no issue with the jerseys which I would expect are of excellent quality and will last, because I have the choice to participate or not. But where milk is concerned I definitely want to know what makes up the current prices we pay, and I want to know that without the spin.
