: : In July 1997, Hungry Jack's are planning to open a franchise on the main campus of the University of Sydney. This corporation is a very thinly veiled imitation of the Golden Arches, selling the same crap greasy food and gelatinous non-dairy beverages, employing teenage casuals and promoting world-wide mediocrity and consumerism. If you have any dirt about Hungry Jack's, if you support this fledgling campaign to halt the march of American bad taste into Australia and the rest of the world, or if you can offer an opinion on this campaign, please submit a message.: Campaigns like this attempt to limit rights to freedom of choice. Even though their food is not healthy, the occasional meal there will not pose any important health problem. The majority of students I have spoken to (mainly engineers) showed overwhelming support for the idea of a Hungry Jack's franchise. I do not complain about your food preference (which from the above I expect to include dairy foods and possibly vegetarian) or oppose outlets catering to those tastes being opened on campus.
: Campaigns such as this do not consider those who may _benefit_ from the opening - the employees (who are generally satisfied with the wage, despite claims about exploitation) and those consumers, such as myself - who will eat that type of food in the same quantity whether or not the outlet opens.
This argument that a campaign against a burger chain opening at the new gym at a university is limiting freedom of choice is completely defunct. The only freedom of choice offered by Hungry Jacks is the choice of several very similar tasting high-cholestorol low-fibre hamburgers, served with the essential symbol of globalism, Coca-Cola. The problem is Western consumerism, and indeed over-consumption, (as typified in the hamburger chain) and the aim of our campaign is to educate people so that they will not want to participate in the mindless worship of big business. Anyone that eats at Hungry Jacks has no idea how much the workers are being paid to cook the food, no knowledge of what is in the food or where the ingredients originate, and certainly no knowledge of the bigger global picture such as the effect that the demand for hamburger beef has had on areas such as South America.
A University should not resemble a Westfield shopping-town, it should not be a place where teenagers are exploited to fry up our food. It should not be a place where large corporations can try to extract profits from, and it should in fact be a place where we can try to get a handle on why our global financial system is keeping the money and power in the hands of the rich, and yes, allowing them freedom of choice as ignorant hamburger consumers, while more and more people live in poverty every day.
