Michelle Scollo: This discussion isn’t complete without recognising the role of bureaucrats, so patiently working away at documenting the rationale for these policies. There’s a huge amount of cooperation and good will at the state level between bureaucrats who are very happy to share information and help other states. And it’s much easier to argue for something when something’s been done in another state. That’s the biggest explanation for why things happen, why the leapfrogging effect happens quite quickly, because they can make use of all the rationale and then, increasingly, the evidence of effectiveness.

In fact the groundwork for the National Tobacco Campaign happened earlier, in the previous six years, when the state Quit Campaigns had developed excellent cooperative arrangements. Maree (Davidson) hasn’t said much yet, but she played an enormous role here in sharing resources and campaign ideas and program ideas between the early Quit Campaigns. That helped the smaller states get up to speed very quickly. We didn’t waste money reinventing the wheel too often. There was some of that, but it was pretty minimal overall. That was very important for laying the groundwork when the money came along with the National Tobacco Campaign to so quickly be able to get into gear and spend it effectively.

Kathy Barnsley: As a former bureaucrat, I recall that in 1996 a draft Public Health Act landed on my desk, and being told, ‘By the way there’s some tobacco stuff in there and here’s a piece of legislation the Government wants to put through right now which is to raise the smoking age and to restrict advertising at point of sale.’

So I went off to this meeting on the mainland. I knew nothing about tobacco and I met a chap named Maurice Swanson. And he, Anne Jones[159] and Kate Purcell[160] looked at this piece of legislation and they said, ‘You can’t do that. This is rubbish.’

Maurice said, ‘If you ban advertising at point of sale what’ll happen is you’ll get walls and displays of tobacco products that you’ll have to deal with as well.’

I went back to my Minister and said, ‘This piece of legislation is rubbish’. And he said, ‘Right, we’ll change it’ and we did 16 amendments and put it back in the Parliament, passed it, and began the process of reducing tobacco displays. And that all came about as a result of what was happening in Western Australia.

Then Simon Chapman rang me and said, ‘This is amazing. Write something for Tobacco Control on what you’re doing’.[161] Then Mel started writing material on tobacco displays and their effect. It all snowballed.

Then my minister, Peter McKay,[162] started talking to the tobacco industry and they drove him nuts. I can remember a meeting where he went absolutely ballistic, told them they’d been killing people for years and to get out of his office and he never wanted to see them again.

So it all started from a little piece of legislation. The leap-frogging effect is amazing, involving many states, including little old Tasmania.

Terry Slevin: One of the things that’s allowed that sort of thing to happen, but which I haven’t been a member of, and which has been a constant for decades, is the Tobacco Issues Committee for Cancer Council Australia. And it was called that when it was the Australian Cancer Society and it’s been rolling for a long, long time. Maurice Swanston has been on it for a long time, as a Heart Foundation representative.

Rohan Greenland: I was on it when I was at the AMA many years ago.

Terry Slevin: As a single place where those issues are regularly and constantly discussed, it’s been one of the real engine rooms of tobacco control in Australia. It’s always had its ups and downs and there have been knock-down, drag-out fights in there from time to time.

Ron Borland: It’s no longer the Cancer Council of Australia’s Tobacco Issues Committee because a couple of years ago there was an agreement. And it’s now a joint committee of the National Heart Foundation and the Cancer Council. So it’s got more National Heart Foundation representation and we’ve tried to have the AMA and others on it. But I agree, Terry, it’s played a very important role.

Paul Grogan: And more than half the people in this room have been on this committee, or chaired it.

My observation only comes from the past 12 or so years, but anything of any significance that has occurred in tobacco control at the Federal level has emanated from policy ideas that came through that committee process or was pushed along by strategic work done by it.

Another point, there’s usually a collective silence when governments talk about setting up a committee, but our (federal health department) committees actually do things. There are multiple examples of them doing good work.

And I want to say too that every one of those things - and there’s lots of good things going back to 1993 when the National Cancer Prevention Policy (group) put up an evidence-based policy for plain packaging after a long, long process of work - was only able to occur because of one or more really committed allies within government.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine