A lot of people argue that the way to get change is to try to make it an election issue. Would you comment on that?

Figure 5

L-R: Dr Lyn Roberts and Dr David Hill, 29 May 2015. Image courtesy of Ann Westmore.

John Cain: It can become an election issue if it’s a big enough issue. For instance the east-west link in Victoria was a make or break election issue. It was a referendum essentially: the Prime Minister made it that. In the event the opposition was elected not to build the road. It was unambiguous. If a mandate means anything at all, it meant that.

But other issues are not of that profile. So getting perceived electoral support is not a significant factor.

Tom Roper: It’s also where you make the interventions. It might be through ministers, it might be through staff, or it might be through bureaucrats. Formerly in the Labor Party, one method into policy creation was through the state and federal policy committees.

So in terms of health, we had an extremely active (state) policy committee that was prepared to look at all types of health matters and then go forward publicly with those positions. It would be fair to say that at the national level, policy-making has never been as vigorous as that. By the time you get to the Labor Party’s national conference, you’ve just got mash.

If you’re looking at the various ways in, going through the party’s policy development process can be unsatisfactory. But it’s certainly a mechanism of going in.

Ron Borland: In that regard, how important is it to have a particular policy on the platform in influencing what happens in that first year of a term?

Tom Roper: It depends on the Premier at the time. We had a Premier who had people whose job it was to go through the election policies and tick them off or put a cross against them if we hadn’t done anything. That was one of the roles of the Premier’s Department.

So having them on a policy means that they are paid attention.

Even now, I’m very much involved in climate change and energy-type policy areas. We worked quite hard to get some things into the policy document released before the last election.

Andrew Herington: I think nowadays it’s absolutely critical that if you’re looking for money to be on the platform because so much of what a government agenda is set by what they take to an election. I worked on a campaign last year about asbestos in schools. It actually got up in the last week of the year. The difference between that being a big thing that’s being delivered by a whole squad of people in the education department or being overlooked is that it is an election policy. I think that’s very important. But you also have to take into account that minority government is the reality these days. It’s no longer the party that you invest in and that adopts it as policy gets elected.

A lot of these things you have to build a wider constituency. A lot of things that social groups are concerned about are more complicated. The equality in marriage issue at the moment is a classic example. It’s not enough to get one party on side is not enough. On lots of issues you have to reach the cross benches.

Paul Grogan: I agree. I think you need to be strategic on every issue. A judgement call has to be made on an issue-by-issue basis.

I’ve asked people not to include some things on a pre-election agenda. The last thing you want is for either side of politics to go on record and to rule something out. There are some common principles but you have to look at each issue on its merits and get some intel(ligence) within government and opposition.

Simon Chapman: I can’t remember any party trying to make tobacco control an election issue. So where it comes into play is what is said during an election where people come to understand that the values which are in tobacco control are more aligned with a particular party.

Paul Grogan: The best example of that is in tobacco excise and here I want to pay tribute to the research Michelle (Scollo) has done on the effectiveness of tax increases. It’s an attractive issue to government because it’s a good source of revenue. But you’re not seriously going to go to an election with a strong agenda of putting up a tax. In fact in 2013, what happened three days before the election campaign started was that the Rudd Government slipped in an excise increase to help pay for their promises.

Harley Stanton: I thought that some of the presentations on taxation that Cancer Council Australia and the National Heart Foundation made through the 1990s were very important. They were critical. They had broad support from a wide number of agencies.

A couple of other people who should be mentioned and who were also very important include Darcy Holman in WA in terms of attributable risk[165]; Collins and Lapsley in their work[166]; and Terry Allchin in NSW who was also very important at some stages, particularly in taxation policy[167].

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine