Mike Daube: I agree. You’ve got to praise the people who did so much work.

I’d like to get back to what was happening in the ‘90s too. There was an atmosphere that things were happening and there was support there, in the airlines for instance. In 1973 or ’74 we’d done the first survey of international airlines and had replies from some airlines that it would be technically impossible to introduce non-smoking sections into aircraft.

I do remember a call in the early 1990s from Ron Edwards,[171] who was a local member of (Federal) Parliament. He’d raised the issue of smoking in airlines in the Federal party room and it just went through. He phoned me up and said, ‘Mate, we ambushed them’. I loved the ‘we’ because I didn’t know he was going to do it. I was happy to take credit, but it was Ron who did it. But it just went through pretty much on the nod. It was around the time of the TAP Act. Funnily enough now, we should be in a similar phase as those good years when things happened.

Rohan Greenland: We’ve just been through five remarkable years. It’s been a golden age.

Terry Slevin: But the issue now is the Regulatory Impact Statement infrastructure that’s in place and is depicted as the anti-red tape movement within government.[172] It results in the kind of things we’re talking about here being virtually impossible. And the process of having to put together Regulatory Impact Statements for anything of substance means there’s a substantial barrier and an opportunity for any industry to get in the way of change. It’s worth recognising what the barriers are to future progress in this and other social reform areas.

Rohan Greenland: We had to have one (a Regulatory Impact Statement) for the health star rating system (for foods), but we flew through that. We thought it (the Regulatory Impact Statement requirement) might have been devised to sink the star rating system (but this didn’t prove to be the case).

Kathy Barnsley: I wrote the first two Regulatory Impact Statements in Tasmania for the Public Health Act and the Food Act in the late 1990s. You had to consult with the industry and work out the impact on business. I’m not an economist and a huge amount of very careful work had to be done. That was the beginning of the constraints, as you’ve explained, on getting legislation through.

Rohan Greenland: The anti-regulation push is enormous. The job description of the (Federal) Health Minister, Peter Dutton, of what he was formally responsible for included cutting red tape and small government, not protecting health.

Kathy Barnsley: I’d like to mention a good thing that happened in 1997, which was getting the internet and emails. It meant that little states like Tasmania and countries like Cambodia, where people didn’t necessarily have a computer, had access to a sudden flood of information and the sudden ability to be able to talk to people in other states who could be helpful. As a result, the leapfrogging effect increased dramatically in the late 1990s.

Mike Daube: Also, Michelle, talking of positive things, what was the first year of Tobacco Facts and Issues?

Michelle Scollo: That’s another place where we need to acknowledge Steve Woodward’s contribution because in 1986 he and Margie Winstanley brought out the first edition. Then Quit Victoria funded the second edition with help from Noni Walker.

Mike Daube: Over the years Facts and Issues has given us access to something that we can click on if we need information.

Michelle Scollo: This is the perfect chance for me to introduce Beth (Greenhalgh) who’s taken over as project manager for Facts and Issues.

Harley Stanton: On the AFCO versus TIA case, a memorable moment was when Steve (Woodward) came out of the Federal Court case in Sydney and said, ‘This is the greatest day for the hearts and lungs of Australians’ which became the quote of the week in the Australian newspaper.

Maree Davidson: Kathy’s words remind me that a lot of what we’ve been talking about gives quite an introspective view, but there was a lot of social and political change occurring in the world, even in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Much of what happened in tobacco control may not have happened in a different era. But it was possible at that time to harness the shared purpose of activists and to take advantage of the external environment and use it to align ends because of this shared purpose. Maybe some other health and social issues haven’t been able to do it in quite the same way.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine