Victoria's Supreme Court ruled Monday that Vegemite is part of Australian culture. Then it ruled that the state can keep it locked away from the people it has locked away, which is the most Australian sentence a judge has ever written.

I've watched governments ban a lot of things. This is the first time one built its case around the feelings of a dog.

Here's what's real, per AP, ABC News, The Guardian and news.com.au. Andre McKechnie, serving a life sentence for a 1994 murder and held at maximum-security Barwon Prison, sued Victoria's corrections department over its ban on the yeast spread. He argued the state's Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act protects his right to "enjoy his culture as an Australian." He represented himself, by video link.

Vegemite has been banned in Victorian prisons since about 2006. Corrections Victoria gave two reasons. Its yeast could help inmates brew alcohol. And its smell could throw off drug-sniffing dogs. A Corrections Victoria manager testified that "any odour, such as Vegemite, which is pungent would distract a canine" from the drugs it was trained to find.

So a trained narcotics dog, a professional, a dog with a badge, can be defeated by toast.

Justice Claire Harris agreed Vegemite "may be regarded as part of an Australian culture." She agreed the ban limited his cultural rights. Then she upheld it anyway in a judgment that ran nearly 50 pages, finding his cultural rights "are limited primarily by the fact that he has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment." She also noted inmates can still enjoy Australian culture through local music, books and food that isn't prohibited.

Nearly fifty pages. To conclude that prison is the restrictive part of prison.

Here's the part nobody in Melbourne can explain. The ban isn't national. Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania ban it too. But in New South Wales, the hearing heard, some prisoners can buy it. So the same jar is contraband on one side of the Murray River and a commissary item on the other. Somewhere a sniffer dog in Sydney is working just fine.

Vegemite has been made since 1923, and AP reports more than 80% of Australian households keep a jar. By the state's own logic, four out of five Australian homes are running a brewery and a dog-confusion lab out of the pantry. Nobody has called the kitchen police.

On the sewer scale, I give Corrections Victoria three rats out of five. One rat for the ban, one for the dog testimony, and one for needing a Supreme Court judge to read nearly 50 pages to tell a man in maximum security that the problem is the maximum security.

The human rights charter is the real star here. Victoria wrote a law so generous that a convicted murderer could make a corrections manager testify under oath about a condiment's smell. That isn't justice. That's a breakfast with a legal team.

The state won. The dogs keep their focus. The jar stays outside. Victoria has officially decided its culture is too strong for its own prisons.

And here's your bill: Victoria spends A$599.27 a day per prisoner, per Productivity Commission figures cited by the Institute of Public Affairs. For that money, the toast comes plain.

This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.

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