I can remember in 1992 when the tobacco advertising legislation was before parliament the gay lobby, who were always at loggerheads with Fred Nile, put out a press release saying that Fred Nile’s bill was the only anti-fag legislation they would ever support. (Laughter)

Harley Stanton: That was actually in 1990, Simon, and it passed in 1991. There were 49 members in government, 48 in opposition, and Fred Nile and his wife.

Steve (Woodward) was in Kippax St doing the advocacy.[168] I went in one day and said, ‘What can I do to help you?’ He said go and get a letter from the bishops. In a week I got about 16 out of 20 bishops in NSW to support that. When it was faxed to Fred, he was shaking because of the support he had from the rest of the Ecumenical Council in NSW. That’s what changed Nick Greiner from being opposed to actually supporting it because he couldn’t handle the pincer movement that was put in place around that legislation.

Tom Roper: If I can say one thing about the parties. If you’re an outside group you need to talk to everybody because you never can tell when a surprise will occur.

Some years ago, at the election before the Liberal Government was elected in NSW, I happened to be out here doing some work on climate change. At that stage the states which were virtually all Labour had decided to appoint (Ross) Garnaut to review climate change policy.

I was going to Sydney and I wondered, has anyone bothered to talk to the NSW Liberal Party about their attitude? I rang up their spokesperson and I ran him through what the states might or might not do. After the election he contacted me and said, ‘You were the only person who contacted me’. If there had been a surprise he could have been the minister, and at least he would have been aware of the issues.

So it’s important to brief all sides. Sometimes it can be just hard work, but it never goes astray.

Terry Slevin: That seems to me to be a really important and powerful message that should come from this entire discussion to anyone who wants to learn lessons from tobacco control. Sometimes I worry that people pushing a social change agenda of whatever kind nail their colours to one mast and they really exclude themselves from making any sort of progress in the absence of their preferred party being in power.

Tobacco as a movement has always been very, very rigid to make sure that never occurs. As a result there’s been progress under all political colours.

Simon Chapman: An illustration of that is the principle of absolutism or incrementalism. We would all be able to name our preferred position on environmental tobacco smoke. But nowhere in the world has it ever been introduced in one fell swoop. So we’ve all been through that situation where we ‘got restaurants’, but we didn’t ‘get bars’. That sort of stuff.

The mature response has always been to welcome that and then have someone on the fringe say a little later but it’s not good enough, The Agenda’s still on the table for the other stuff.

David Hill: Another hazard is that if you don’t get everything you want, the first thing you or your sector does is criticise the lack of comprehensiveness of whatever it was that the government did. It’s really unrewarding for them.

Rohan Greenland: A good example of that was Michael Wooldridge who eventually got tobacco advertising stopped at the Grand Prix which was opposed by some very powerful players with strong connections to the Liberal Party. He achieved that (through the 1992 Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act, that is the TAP Act), but it had a six year lead time. We (the AMA) welcomed the initiative but others were critical of the delay and he was very cranky. He said, ‘why should I even bother if I get criticised for doing something that cost me quite a bit within the party.’

Paul Grogan: When the graphic warnings were introduced in 2006 and people were outraged that they weren’t best practice I made a phone call to Simon (Chapman) saying, ‘I’m no expert but these look pretty good.’ But some in the tobacco control sector were expressing shocking disappointment, rather than seeing it as an incremental improvement on where the warnings were previously.

David Hill: Following up on the Michael Wooldridge story and the Grand Prix. That’s the closing chapter of the TAP Act. I had a little to do with it, but others here were more involved in the prosecution of what ended up in federal legislation.

It seems to me that if you were looking at it from another country, you’d say that was a huge achievement. Here’s a country: they banned broadcast advertising, and then they went on and did everything else. It would be good to have some insights into how that was progressed in Australia.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine