Washing away the cobwebs

Nothing blows away the cobwebs like a run on the motor-cycle. Yesterday, however, it was more like washing away the cobwebs.

I rolled out the motor-cycle and pointed it over the hills through Kulnura and later north along the old alignment of the Great North Road – you can still see the convict-built masonry walls and culverts along the way – before I pulled up in Wollombi.

Wollombi shops

It's a charming heritage township, and well worth a visit. As usual, my bike came to rest in front of the tavern best known for a fortified wine labelled Dr Jurd's Jungle Juice.

Me? I kept under the limit with two beers and a hamburger while I chatted with some of the other bikers along the veranda. Rode off at 1.45pm – just as the rain started. And it rained all the way home, through Cessnock and down the F3 freeway.

It wasn't heavy rain, but steady. Soon my wet-weather gear was sodden. – and I was experiencing dread as I mixed it with the freeway traffic.

That gives me a subject for this post. But after building up the revs. I'll then speed through a few other topics I'd been looking at.

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Hey guys, give me more room in the wet

We didn't have much rain, less than 6mm in the gauge back home. But that was more than had fallen in all of the month of August.

Steady light rain after a long dry spell means one thing to a biker –a treacherously slippery mix of dust, oil and water may be coating the tarmac. Often, you can feel it as you turn, accelerate or brake.

It's OK for you guys strapped in your metal boxes. If you slam into the car in front because you're travelling too fast or too close, and then someone slams into the rear of your car, you're still likely to walk away from the pile-up.

I know many of you dislike bikers for the way we zip past on sunny days, but surely not so much you'd not care if I slid under someone's tyres.

If I ride a prudent distance from the car in front, don't drop into it. I have to throttle back to restore the safe distance, and then the driver behind gets upset and tailgates me.

And please turn your lights on. I'm peering through a rain-spattered visor, using my mirrors to see what's coming up behind, and in the poor light and through the misty spray I can make out only the grey, blurry outlines of the semis and B-doubles about to pass me.

Let's be nice to one another in wet weather, and I'll promise to give you a cheery wave next time I zip past you on a sunny day.

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And another thing about anti-smoking campaigns

Tougher measures against smoking moved closer this week with the Federal Government likely to accept the recommendation of its Preventative Health Task Force to push the price of a packet of 30 cigarettes up from around $13.50 to $20 – or from 45c to 67c per cigarette.

Grumpy Old Journo still has reservations about this. As this blog pointed out on July 13 (“Clearing away the smoke” [1] ), it may cause many to quit, but there will be some families from lower socio-economic groups who will just buy less food for their children.

And in newspaper reports, I see no support for two measures I suggested in the July post. First, that the government try to push down the price of nicotine lozenges, patches and chewing gum – for many heavily addicted smokers, the most effective way to quit.

Second, that we encourage people to treat directors, executives and PR staff of tobacco companies as scum. After all, they promote an industry which, in the ordinary course of its business, kills many Australians. And as Australian parliaments make it harder for them here, they just turn to killing many of our Asian neighbours to keep the profits rolling in.

Another point has occurred to me. As I walk near the local high school before classes begin, I see students in school uniform in groups around nearby corners – and many of them are smoking.

Most anti-tobacco advertising is aimed at persuading smokers to quit. Surely we can commission the best minds in the advertising industry to produce convincing campaigns which persuade teenagers not to start.

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Appalling gun-lovers blackmail NSW

So it's happening, as forecast in mid-August (in “Appalling politicians”, posted on Aug 17 [2] ). The two members of the Shooters Party in the NSW State Legislative Council are refusing to vote for any government legislation unless the government agrees to let their gun-happy members hunt feral animals in the state's national parks [3] .

They hold the balance of power in the Upper House. Because of the preferential voting system by which members are elected, they got in with minuscule public support [4] .

It's a dreadful choice for the NSW Government – cave in to appalling people who kill animals for pleasure, or see vital legislation stalled.

And if it does cave in, what will these appalling people demand next? The Shooters Party policy includes a US-style right for all citizens to own and use firearms [5] .

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John Della Bosca? What's left to say?

My sympathy is with the former NSW Labor Health Minister, who resigned from his ministerial post after a tawdry tabloid, Rupert Murdoch's top-selling Sydney Daily Telegraph, broke the story of his sexual affair with a woman aged 26 – half his age.

But I'm not putting my hand up to say so. It could lead to speculation, unwarranted of course, about some of my past.

However, you might find two feature articles in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald both informative and enjoyable.

In the first, legal affairs commentator Richard Ackland gives some interesting information about the affair and the Murdoch press's actions. He says the Daily Telegraph has damaged the media's case against tighter privacy laws [6].

In the second, Professor Rodney Tiffen offers a seven-point guide to ministers on how to survive sex scandals [7] .

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Clearing away the smoke

For most of the past week, newspapers have been running comment by experts praising a proposal that the Australian Government increase its tobacco excise to push the price of a packet of 30 cigarettes up to $20. I believe the current price is about $13.50.

With an excise increase from 25 cents to 43c, that would lift the price per single cigarette from about 45c to 67c. Here's how the Sydney Sun-Herald highlighted the news a week ago:



The government's Preventative Health Task Force claimed the price jump, along with other anti-smoking measures including generic packaging and gruesome warnings covering 95 per cent of the packet, would help one million more Australians kick the habit.

I'd love to see tobacco smoking disappear from the face of the earth. But we should be wary. Too often, when we nobly go forth to do good, we harm the people we try to help.

When activists boycott coffee or cocoa picked by child labour, they get a warm inner glow and some families in the third world slip from bare subsistence to slow starvation.

Many call it the Law of Unintended Consequences, although it's no more scientific than Murphy's Law (“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”). However, perverse results are always possible if we don't think things through.

Let's face it. Heavy smoking today is largely an addiction of the poor and the badly educated – the underclass of our society. If we make cigarettes much more expensive, many will still need to feed their addiction. To pay the higher price, they will spend less on food, housing and clothing for themselves and their families.



This newspaper article, by two prominent anti-smoking campaigners, disagrees with my view, but I remain doubtful. The article begins:

Tobacco tax is suddenly big news, with speculation about the Government's response to a recommended increase in excise giving rise to several myths and misconceptions. So it is timely to look at how the myths stack up against the evidence.

First, there is the view that increased tobacco excise punishes those on low incomes. The reality is that tobacco tax increases are particularly effective in prompting people in lower socio-economic
groups to quit smoking.

This is very important, because disadvantaged groups bear a disproportionately heavy tobacco death and disease burden. And a modest tobacco tax increase would generate more than enough funding to provide tailored assistance programs for people on lower incomes struggling to quit.

The article – by Professor Ian Olver, chief executive of the Cancer Council of Australia, and Maurice Swanson, the National Heart Foundation's tobacco control spokesman – concedes that poor people suffer the most tobacco-related death and illness.

It also claims recent Quit Victoria research shows 60 per cent of smokers support a tobacco tax increase. To that, I can only say I'm a journalist and it's part of my trade to be sceptical. I'd like to see details of that research.

I'd also like to see the research supporting the claim in the article's second paragraph.

And I'm sceptical of the claim that higher excise would generate more than enough funding to provide tailored assistance for people on lower incomes struggling to quit. With the massive revenue already generated by tobacco excise, why don't we have effective “tailored assistance” today?

(That's not to say we should not be improving ways to provide help – obviously, we should keep seeking them with well-funded research at the highest level.)

But in the past week's debate, nobody seems to have touched on two important issues. The first is simple – couldn't the Australian Government make nicotine lozenges, chewing gum and patches less expensive?

For smokers heavily addicted to nicotine, they may be the only way to give up cigarettes and their cancer-causing chemicals. Making them cheaper must help more people quit.

Looking at the nicotine products in a local pharmacy, one has the impression of an oligopoly – a market supplied by only a few competitors, making price competition less likely.

Perhaps the government could ask the Productivity Commission to examine the production, marketing and pricing of nicotine replacement products. If the commission finds they could be cheaper – with generic products, perhaps – it could lean on the present makers to cut prices.

If it finds the prices are in line with production costs, the government itself could pay a subsidy to lower retail cost.

The second important argument needs careful phrasing (I am well aware of the defamation laws), but perhaps we could strive to change public attitudes so that it becomes socially unacceptable to be a director, executive, marketing or public relations worker in the tobacco industry.

Cigarette production and marketing may be legal, but surely tobacco executives know their commercial efforts result in the deaths of many of their fellow citizens.

It might be a bit extreme to spit on their BMWs as they drive past, but perhaps we could raise our concerns when we sit beside them at the yacht club or on the school council – just quietly letting them know we feel their moral position could stand re-examination.

Some of these issues came under the spotlight in 2003, when the University of Sydney's Senate refused to endorse the appointment of former New South Wales Premier Nick Greiner – then chairman of British American Tobacco (Australia) – to head the advisory council of the university's Graduate School of Government.

In a post on March 22 last year, this blog praised Greiner as a Liberal Party moderate, a good Premier and an astute businessman. But that post did go on to say of his being forced out of the premiership:

At that time one could feel sympathy, but with many of us it went up in smoke when he became chairman of a major Australian company which kills people as part of the ordinary course of its business – British American Tobacco.

This is not to reflect on Nick Greiner's position at the time. Indeed, the issues are not clear-cut, as shown in this analysis by St James Ethics Centre executive director Dr Simon Longstaff at the time of the Sydney University setback.

However, I do believe that over time it will become socially unacceptable to run a tobacco company. Let's make that time come sooner.