Tackling Indigenous smoking: can the promise be kept? The
previous post highlights some of the challenges ahead for the
new Health Minister Tanya Plibersek. Reducing Indigenous smoking
rates is one of them, says Associate Professor David Thomas from
the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin and the Lowitja
Institute. Can Plibersek fulfil Roxon’s promises on cutting
Indigenous smoking rates? David Thomas writes: Reducing
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander smoking has been a central
element in the Government’s efforts to Close the Gap. What does
the new Health Minister Tanya Plibersek think of Nicola Roxon’s
promise to halve the prevalence of Indigenous smoking by 2018?
Unlike us, politicians do not have an annual cycle of New Year’s
resolutions that are quickly broken or forgotten by mid-January.
Politicians can make rash, seemingly bold, promises to fill a
sound bite on any day. These may be achievable or be proven to
be embarrassingly impossible. Everyone remembers Hawke’s promise
that no child will