POPPINS CHARACTER IS BAD MEDICINE

She did say that a spoonful of sugar helped the medicine go down, but
Mary Poppins has previously had little to do with the war on drugs.

Until yesterday, when the Prime Minister's anti-drugs chief used the
story of the famous umbrella-wielding nanny to offer some advice to
parents.

Inspired by the classic musical, Australian National Council on Drugs
chairman Major Brian Watters said parents should try not to be like Mr
Bank, the father character in Mary Poppins.

"Here's a father who didn't know how to talk to his kids. He was very
good at banking and he was very good at his ambition in providing for
their material needs," Major Watters of the Salvation Army said.

"But when it came to understanding the things they enjoyed and
understanding the pressures they felt and how to relate to them, he
was a bit of a failure."

Major Watters said it was a "sad irony" that in an age of global
communication, Internet chat rooms and better communication
technologies, parents and children had "serious problems sitting down
and talking together in their own family".

He said he was taping the movie for his seven-year-old granddaughter
when it struck him that there were parallels between the problems
facing today's parents and Mr Bank.