Suddenly we did something that the Health Department came up with in the public health space. It was on the front page. So we said, ‘What else have you got?’

We quickly realised that anything to do with public health and particularly tobacco control, you got good stories as opposed to those bad stories coming out of hospitals.

So we said, ‘Bring them, and bring them fast.’ I, think most health ministers, learn that strategy very fast, especially when you’ve got a cheer squad out there, Cancer Councils and the AMA, loudly applauding everything you do.

Kathy Barnsley: There were big struggles in Tasmania getting legislation through the Parliament, for example, when the Labor government was headed by Jim Bacon,[117] a smoker, and with Paul Lennon[118] his deputy, a smoker. Lennon did a deal with the AHA[119] that there be no legislation on banning smoking in pubs.

And behind that there were health organisations and the (Tasmanian Health) Department trying to get legislation into the Parliament. It was the Legislative Council that ultimately amended the weak legislation put forward by the Labor government as it came through the Parliament. So it was the Legislative Council that actually achieved a ban on smoking in pubs. It wasn’t the government that did it. So there were struggles within government.

And National Competition Policy, when that came in, in the 1990s, that was when we had to start consulting with the tobacco industry and telling them what we were doing. We had to prepare a discussion paper and work out what the impact was going to be on business. It was an absolute pain.

Andrew Herington: I think there’s a bit of an answer to Todd’s conundrum in the issue of timing, because when you think back, when community groups want things, they often wait two to three years for the idea to gain traction.

There’s a sort of political maturation process because, for example, on the Labor side you get people worried about their working class voter base, some of whom are smokers. So people have to get used to the idea and then warm to it.

Then you have to get to the point where it doesn’t just get decided by one vote. Legislation has to be hammered into shape and although it may not go as far as some people want to get, you get somewhere.

I think we’ve seen that process with abortion legislation in Victoria. Initially it looked impossible to achieve but, by the time it was hammered into shape through the legislative process, it actually passed with pretty broad support. The same may happen with gay marriage. It may well be that by the time people get used to the idea, it commands relatively wide l support.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine