KEY POINTS:
I have always thought that Sue Kedgley was the ultimate yummy mummy. She's an overachieving, intelligent blonde - a former beauty pageant contestant who hung up her 'Miss Victoria University - Runner-Up' sash years ago to devote every hour of the waking day to doing Good , with
a capital G. Less the hour it takes to blow wave her hair straight every morning.
She's the mother I was always terrified of when I was waiting outside the school gate - passionate and articulate and bossy and always trying to drum up support for various different causes - fundraising for a shade sail for the playground or campaigning for our decile 10 school to sponsor the kiddies at a decile 1 school further down the line.
Our privileged loin fruit could bring in old toys and clothes and a week's worth of pocket money and in return their social consciences would be raised. You know the mothers I mean.
To be fair to Sue, and to all yummy mummies everywhere, my bristling antagonism was always more about my insecurities than their hail fellow, well-met heartiness.
Even if I had a Trelise Cooper cashmere cardi, and $400 jeans, my cardi would have a soup stain, and I'd be too fat for the jeans. It's just the way the world's divided. Some of us have it, some of us don't - and Sue Kedgley definitely has it. And in her latest campaign, she's on a winner.
Sue has been the Greens' foodie spokeswoman for years. Of course she has. Let's face it, she's probably had more dinner parties than Nandor's had herbal cigarettes. And like any accomplished cook she cares passionately about the food she serves to her carefully selected and balanced dinner party.
As do we all, we members of the bourgeoisie. Those who are dangling off the end of the food chain in terms of household income probably can't afford to care too deeply about the provenance of their peaches - if it's 10 cents cheaper, it's 10 cents cheaper and can everyone just back off, because at least the kids are getting fruit. But those in the middle classes want to know what they're eating and where it's come from.
I'm no exception. Naively, I assumed that as New Zealand is a country of primary producers, we would produce what we needed to eat and sell what was left over.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. And if only I'd listened to Sue, I would have had the scales cast from my eyes years ago.
When you go to the supermarket next, have a look at the labelling. You'll have to look hard but persevere and you'll find it. I guarantee most products will tell you that they're made from imported goods.
But it's anybody's guess where they've come from. Now Sue wants mandatory country of origin labelling on some core foods and for the first time, the public is right behind her. Of course we should know what we are buying.
Then, after a bit of research, we can make an informed choice. For example, I am most reluctant to buy any product that comes out of China.
It's a big country, I know. There are bound to be some bright-eyed boys who've formed agricultural companies churning out vegan organic lovingly nurtured products.
But when the head of China's Food and Drug Administration has been executed, just last month, for taking bribes that allowed dodgy companies to offload their even dodgier products on to an unsuspecting market, when a spokeswoman for the Administration admitted that, as a developing country, China's food and drug supervision work began late and its foundations are 'very weak', when the Chinese farming sector is comprised of 200 million farming households made up of just one to two acres of land, and who lack incentive to improve their farming practises as they don't own their land, well.
You can understand why a woman would be cynical.
Remember the flash buggers at the rugby who were fed Korean oysters instead of Clevedon?
How many of them would have scarfed down their body weight in the delicious little molluscs if the country of origin had been clearly labelled?
Sue's quite right - it's all about choice - and this bogan's joining forces with the brainy bossy blonde to bring about mandatory labelling for all food.
While I can afford to pick and choose, I really want the opportunity to do so.
