Many of you know this story. From 1971 to 1976, I worked in the Microbiology Department at the University of WA on an Australian Tobacco Research Foundation grant, which was funding that came through from the tobacco industry here in Australia.

We were looking for a safer cigarette. So it was around that time of low tar/ high tar comparisons.

That was my introduction. Looking back on it now, it was a clear attempt to obfuscate and buy off a few people and be able to publish research that might actually challenge other research published at the time.

It was a very strong force because that money was available in a national scheme that people could apply to. It did allow the tobacco industry to continue and run the debate that the evidence was mixed and that low tar cigarettes were probably better for you than high tar cigarettes.

David Hill: That’s a great example of that strategy that the tobacco and other industries are using, the merchants of doubt strategy.[79] As long as people are investigating it, there must be doubt.

Terry Slevin:[80] I’d like to pick up on the start of those campaigns in the late 1970s and the early 1980s with different campaigns and how organically they unfolded, that is with the 'Healthy Lifestyle' program starting in the late 1970s in NSW and the campaigns in WA and Victoria in the early 1980s.

It actually doesn’t unfold organically. It unfolds as a result of some very deliberate networking and the use of structures to allow that to happen.

So under the banner of the Australian Cancer Society,[81] led very much by the sorts of things David (Hill) was doing, behavioural research centres were established and a hub of people was created who would get together and share those experiences.

This morning, Garry and I were reflecting that in those early days we didn’t really know much about what we were doing. We were making it up as we went along. But when we all got together behind closed doors in a safe environment we were all in a position to confess that we are all making it up as we went along and learning from each other. And creating the opportunity to do that was really vital.

The other point I want to make is about the doubters among some of the leaders in the medical profession. I was running the campaign starting in ’84 in Newcastle and Andy Zdenkowski was on the first Advisory Committee that ran our campaign which was actually put together by a chap called Ralph Hodge. And he (Andy or Ralph?) came up with the ‘kiss a non-smoker and taste the difference’ campaign which went off as one of those very early free slogans that really took off as a car bumper sticker in Newcastle.

Then Elwin Currow,[82] who was CEO of Royal Newcastle Hospital, and Steve Leeder[83] were very much at the forefront in playing that game.

The other observation I wanted to make was that there were quite different characteristics of different states about the extent to which those public health communities worked together. In some places they were more competitive and there was far more aggressive internal competition for minimal resources which often resulted in less progress being made. And some of those places that had a more cohesive public health community that could capture and focus effort on the ‘next best thing’ that was coming along, often achieved more. Those networks allowed those ideas to be shared freely and effectively.

And what we saw then were very small tobacco control communities with people like Simon still throwing rocks from the academic world having moved out of the health department, and having people like Maurice (Swanson) who were still in health departments. We were bringing together those groups who were able to share their experiences and take risks together, and even identify those who were more prepared to go out in front and take a risk and the strategy that was going to be prepared to support them from behind the closed doors of government structures.

And we started to understand the relationship between the NGO sector, government sector and the academic sector and the roles that could be played.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine