A consumer opens a jar of Vegemite spread in an arranged photograph in Melbourne, Australia, on Thursday Jan. 19, 2017. Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg via Getty Images
MELBOURNE, Australia – A prisoner is challenging an Australian state’s ban on inmates eating Vegemite, claiming in a lawsuit that withholding the polarizing yeast-based spread breaches his human right to “enjoy his culture as an Australian.”
Dig deeper:
Andre McKechnie, 54, serving a life sentence for murder, took his battle for the salty, sticky, brown byproduct of brewing beer to the Supreme Court of Victoria, according to documents released to The Associated Press.
McKechnie is held at maximum-security Port Phillip Prison. He was 23 years old when he stabbed to death wealthy Gold Coast property developer Otto Kuhne in Queensland in 1994.
He was sentenced to life for murder and transferred a decade later from the Queensland to the Victorian prison system.
McKechnie is suing Victoria’s Department of Justice and Community Safety and the agency that manages the prisons, Corrections Victoria. The case is scheduled for trial next year.
McKechnie is seeking a court declaration that the defendants denied him his right under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act to “enjoy his culture as an Australian.”
The Act guarantees “All persons with a particular cultural, religious, racial or linguistic background” the right to “enjoy their culture, to declare and practice their religion and to use their language.”
He also wants a declaration that the defendants breached the Corrections Act by “failing to provide food adequate to maintain” McKechnie’s “well-being.”
The other side:
Victims of crime advocate and lawyer John Herron said it was a frivolous lawsuit that was offensive to victims’ families.
“As victims, we don’t have any rights. We have limited, if any, support. It’s always about the perpetrator, and this just reinforces that,” said Herron, whose daughter Courtney Herron was beaten to death in a Melbourne park in 2019. Her killer was found not guilty of murder by reason of mental impairment.
“It’s not a case of Vegemite or Nutella or whatever it may be. It’s an extra perk that is rubbing our faces in the tragedy that we’ve suffered,” Herron added.
McKechnie’s lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The backstory:
Manufactured in Australia since 1923 as an alternative to Britain’s Marmite, Vegemite was long marketed as a source of vitamin B for growing children.
Most Australians revere Vegemite as an unfairly maligned culinary icon, and more than 80% of Australian households are estimated to have a jar in their pantries. But inmates in all 12 prisons in Victoria are going without.
Vegemite has been banned from Victorian prisons since 2006, with Corrections Victoria saying it “interferes with narcotic detection dogs.”
Inmates used to smear packages of illicit drugs with Vegemite in the hope that the odor would distract the dogs from the contraband.
Vegemite also contains yeast, which is banned from Victorian prisons because of its “potential to be used in the production of alcohol,” the contraband list says.
The Source: The Associated Press contributed to this report. Information in this story comes from court documents released to The Associated Press detailing Andre McKechnie’s lawsuit against Victoria’s Department of Justice and Corrections Victoria. This story was reported from Los Angeles.
