Victoria’s governor, David de Kretser, seems to have a bee in his bonnet about obesity. Or is he just jumping on the same bandwagon that so many others are already fighting for seats on? I became intrigued about this recently when my husband told me the Governor would be paying a visit to his workplace in the not too distant future. To be honest, I didn’t even know the name of the Governor of my state at that point, mainly because the role really doesn’t seem to carry that much power or relevance in today’s society. So Google-fu at the ready, we endeavored to learn more about the direct representative of the Queen of Australia (that would also be the Queen of England) in our state.

For those less than familiar with the hierarchy of Australia’s constitutional office - don’t be concerned. Basically because we are an offshoot of the Mother Land and not (yet) an independent republic, we still have positions of pomp and pageantry such as the Governor General of Australia and the individual State Governors. They don’t really seem to do a heck of a lot more than make a lot of speeches and greet the monarchy when they deign to pay us a visit but the Governor General does have the power to sack the federal government. Yep, the GG can boot the party in power (and consequently, the democratically elected Prime Minister) out of office. And it has been done before…

But enough of the lesson in Australian history and politics, let’s get back to Professor David de Kretser AC. My husband sent me a link to a speech recently made by the Governor, relating to obesity and climate change. Initially I thought the Governor was going to (attempt) to make a link between the two issue, i.e. fat people cause global warming, just as others have done (or at least tried to). Thankfully, de Kretser didn’t take it quite that far although he did link the two together in that they are the ‘big issues’ of the moment. Interestingly, in that particular speech, he spent only a few paragraphs talking about OMGtheFATZ and considerably more time on climate change. This gave rise to a glimmer of hope: perhaps he was just mentioning theFATZ because that is the trendy thing to do these days? No such luck.

I had a peek at the other speeches Professor de Kretser has made since taking on the role of Governor in Victoria. Of the 10 speeches (listed on the governor’s webpage) given this year alone, half of them featured obesity as a major theme. HALF. One would think there are no other problems in Australia, let alone the world, other than theFATZ! Sure the Professor mentioned other social issues but none get as many mentions as theFATZ. This made me wonder even more. I had already worked out that the Governor wasn’t himself a fatty - that seemed pretty obvious. But when I started reading about his career history, it all began to fall into place.

Professor David de Kretser is a medical researcher. He is a doctor, a scientist. Admittedly, his field of expertise is men’s sexual health but it is easy to see his vested interest in slamming theFATZ. He continues to be a member of the Executive of the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University, a member of the Faculty of Medicine Research Committee and is currently (and has been since prior to his appointment as Governor) the Executive Chair of the Monash Institutes of Health Steering Committee. He is also the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences (Biotechnology Department). Additionally, he has too many patents already granted or pending for me to mention but I will be at least one of them has something to do with theFATZ. Biased much? Nah…

Of course Professor de Kretser doesn’t stand to make any money out of his research activities does he? Or his patents? Yeah right… What it boils down to is a man in paid public office, using his position to draw attention to a social issue whose ‘defeat’ would bring him great personal profit. Tell me again he isn’t biased…