Simon wrote most of the book, with Becky writing Chapter 3. So where the book uses the first person (‘I’) this refers to Simon. In 2013, we and Mike Daube were invited by the World Health Organization’s regional office for the Western Pacific to write a shortened version of a publication which shares some main goals of this book. Some sections of this book draw on early drafts of that publication, generally in expanded form.
We are grateful to Nicola Roxon, the Australian health minister from December 2007 till December 2011, and then attorney general until February 2013; her chief of staff Dr Angela Pratt; Professor Mike Daube who chaired the Tobacco Committee of the National Preventative Health Taskforce; and several closely involved informants who preferred to remain anonymous, for giving us their time for interviews and many follow-up queries. Michelle Scollo has our special thanks for her fastidious responses to many queries. Several long-time colleagues and friends, including some public servants, who were members of a government taskforce set up to advise on legal attacks on the plain packaging legislation were unable to speak with us about any matters germane to that role because of legally binding confidentiality agreements they had signed. There may one day be another book that will describe that chapter of the story of plain packaging in Australia.
Thanks to Sydney University Press, and especially our editor Agata Mrva-Montoya for her encouragement and enormous efficiency.
I would also like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation for giving me a full month’s residency in April 2014 at the Rockefeller’s Villa Serbelloni at Bellagio, Italy, to complete the book. For 29 glorious days I wrote for up to eight hours a day in a tranquil study overlooking the twin lakes of Lago di Lecco and Lago di Como. It was a writer’s paradise.