David Hill: Talking of lessons, the lesson I learned from that meeting in Melbourne was something that Nigel insisted on. He said, ‘If you want them to go home understanding (what we do) you’ve got to sit them down in a room and talk to them.’ We did that, it was a bit like a classroom. All these very senior people who’d been invited to Melbourne, yes we gave them a nice dinner as well, they sat there for a couple of hours.

It had untold benefits for us because off they went and when we contacted them for help they knew what we were doing or they put other people in touch with us. I’ve never forgotten that, and I’ve used the technique a few times. If it had been left to me I would have been far too retiring to think I could sit these people down in a room and expect to lecture at them.

Michelle Scollo: There was huge interest of course in the Victorian Tobacco Act and how that happened, what the details were and what we were doing with the money. And that went on for several years internationally after that conference. So at the subsequent two conferences and despite the lack of internet we were getting at least an inquiry every couple of days from some other country or state about how to do things.

Trish wasn’t only lent to South Australia, she went to Massachusetts as well. Probably about a third of my workload was disseminating this information internationally, talking about what we did and how we did it.

Trish Cotter: On the conference theme and the sharing internationally, the other conference that we did a significant sharing to the rest of the world was at the Beijing conference in 1997. For me, it was absolutely the most amazing conference I’ve ever been to. There was a huge amount of interest in the National Tobacco Campaign, which we were all involved in.

Melanie Wakefield: Didn’t you do that lunchtime workshop?

Trish Cotter: Yes, we did.

Melanie Wakefield: That was so over-subscribed. It was absolutely brilliant.

Trish Cotter: The other thing that happened at that conference which I think was amazing was (Richard) Peto’s release of all that research about (mortality among Chinese men).[199] That for me is one of the defining moments in tobacco control. Seeing that data for the first time and realising that all these people will die if we don’t help them quit. It’s more important to do that than to focus on preventing young people from starting to smoke. That really had a big influence on our strategy moving forward, I think. So again, the importance of good research and getting that research to the right place so that it can be used (is clear).

Ron Borland: It was at that meeting that Neil Colishaw and Ruth Roemer presented the Plenary announcing that we were going to have a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.[200] Nobody knew what it was and nobody believed it would ever happen. Most of us were wrong.

Simon Chapman: It was also at that meeting that Steve Woodward shirt-fronted Peter Lee.

Lyn Roberts: On the bus, wasn’t it?

Ron Borland: He verbally shirt-fronted him during a presentation he (Lee) gave.

David Hill: Just explain who Peter Lee is.

Simon Chapman: Peter Lee was, and still is, the industry’s main biostatistical hatchet-man.

Mike Daube: Just a bit more on Peter Lee, since this is historical. He was the British tobacco industry’s top statistician. For quite a while he was able to work with some of the really good tobacco scientists in the days before they realised you don’t work with people like that.

I first met him when he was a student at Oxford and he was the British chess champion. So he was quite bright. He used to beat me twice a year in games thumpingly; he was a prodigious player. I still remember that after he graduated he went to a job in the 1960s at Harrogate and everybody was very envious of him, because there were free cigarettes.

One other note about the Perth conference, at the end of the conference I thanked absolutely everybody I could think of, but the photographer was in tears because he’d been omitted.

Ann Westmore: Mike mentioned ratbag approaches earlier in this session and I believe Terry wants to say something more on that topic.

Terry Slevin: It comes out of something Mike said and it’s a theme beyond tobacco, that’s relevant to public health. We’re easily and frequently depicted as fun busters, but I think it’s important to capture some of those (funnier) stories that come along the way and are rarely captured.

And I suppose it (a story) began when I started working in tobacco control in my home town of Newcastle in 1984, fresh out of student politics. All the excitement of the early days of tobacco was ripe in the air. The sponge ad, along with the ad that John Bevins created that was more about social acceptability of quitting smoking, were running in Sydney, but not in my home town. So we formed a committee and made sure that they got to air. We set up a Quit line and all the rest of it. All very heady days. I started in April and the campaign started about July.

Then, come September, I got a call from the Chief Finance Officer of the Royal Newcastle Hospital, which was administering the funds I thought I had. He said, ‘Well young man before me I have a bill for $60,000 from the Newcastle television network and a bill for $15,000 from radio stations who’ve run your ad, and here’s a bill for another $5,000 from the Newcastle Herald. He said, ‘How are you going to pay for them because you have no budget.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m 22 years old and I’ve just finished paying off my motor cycle. That was about $2200. I’m not sure where I’m going to find the rest.’

It became clear that I’d rushed ahead without putting all the necessary things in place to ensure that all of this was looked after in some responsible financial manner.

Lyn Roberts: By somebody who wasn’t you.

Terry Slevin: By somebody who wasn’t me. As it turned out, they found the money within the Quit Campaign budget in Sydney and they pulled me out of the mire. It was one of those things where enthusiasm overtook process.

Lyn Roberts: Look at Michelle’s face! (Laughter) You thought they were just doing it for free.

David Hill: However, Terry, had you followed the right processes and the campaign hadn’t gone ahead, those ten people who quit as a result of the campaign wouldn’t have.

Terry Slevin: Ten, David?

David Hill: And as we know five of them would have died.

Ron Borland: Six and two thirds. It’s now 66 per cent.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine