Further Notes:
- Whist was a migrant from Norway who became the main tobacco industry lobbyist -- first for Philip Morris Australia -- then working for PM International out of New York on a global scale. He later returned to Australia to work briefly for Telstra to help them privatising the T3 tranche, after the Howard government had promised it would remain in majority public hands.
- 'Bill' Webb was from Victoria and had a Batchelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne. He had just been elevated from the position of CEO of Philip Morris Ltd. (Aust), to Executive Vice President, Philip Morris International (responsible for Australia and Asia). Later he became: Chief Operating Officer of Philip Morris Incorporated.
- Sir David Nicholson (knighted by PM Thatcher) was the chief tobacco strategist in the UK who held executive positions at Rothmans. He was Whist's British counterpart at this time in running global operations. They jointly controlled the AECA, but it was probably funded by a number of industries with Philip Morris certainly taking the lead on the American end and Rothmans in the UK.
- R.W. Murray ('Bill' Murray) was the Australian deputy to the then CEO/Chairman of Philip Morris Companies in New York, Hamish Maxwell. Murray went on to become CEO/Chairman himself, and then mentored Geoff Bible in as his replacement when he retired only 18 months later.
Brussels probably refers here only to the European Parliament. However it was also the office of INFOTAB (Information on Tobacco) which was the global lobby set up by Whist's immediate superior Bill Murray. It was run originally (then known as ICOSI) by ex-Victorian Liberal MP Julian Doyle, and later by Bryan Simpson, the ex-advertising executive and marketing manager of Melbourne's Herald & Weekly Times.
Simpson had been President of the New Zealand Amateur Swimming Association, then manager of their Olympic Swimming Team at the Tokyo Games. He later ran for Rupert Murdoch the Media Accreditation Authority and the Media Council of Australia trying to retain advertising of tobacco products in newspapers ... then briefly, the Tobacco Institute of Australia (TIA) for the cigarette companies, before being transferred to Europe.
See Wayne Reid and Rupert Murdoch also in attendance at the infamous Boca Raton strategy conference for Philip Morris run by the later Australian CEO of the global Philip Morris Companies, Geoff Bible. https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/lzxn0108
There is many more documents in the tobacco archives on the creation and use of the Confederation of Australian Sport and on the activities of Andrew Whist and Wayne Reid. See this longer document:
EXPLANATIONS
This an overview document dated February 1978 created by the Australian Philip Morris's Corporate Affairs department (run by Andrew Whist) for the New York company headquarters.
This was the period of the Fraser Liberal Government in Canberra after The Dismissal of Whitlam and the scandals of WA Inc. However Liberal Health Minister Ralph Hunt was anti-smoking, and the Ministerial Council on Drug Control (MCDS) was dominated by Labor states, generally with active anti-smoking ministers. Neville Wran (NSW), John Cain (Vic), Carmen Lawrence (WA) and John Bannon (SA) were all in favour of advertising and sponsorship bans.
Amazingly, right through the period of the Brian Burke Labor's WA Inc corruption, the state remained the leading anti-smoking force in Australia, while Australia itself was recognised globally as the leading anti-smoking nation in the developed world.
The main opposition to this came from the media proprietors, with Rupert Murdoch very obviously in the lead. He later joined the Philip Morris board, and it is likely that News Corp. was rescued in 1990 (his annus horribilis) by his friends holding the three top positions at Philip Morris: they also controlled the subsidiary Philip Morris Credit Corporation.
The leader of the PM triptch, Hamish Maxwell, gained a board position with News Corporation, and the two Australians next in line in the PM conglomerate, Bill Murray and Geoff Bible, receive positions on News Corporation boards which had generous stipends. Murdoch ran the Remuneration Committee at PM ... It was all very cosy.
Source https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/ykbh0111
In addition to the Whist/Reid nation-wide Confederation of Australian Sports, another organisations known as COMPASS (Confederation of Major Participant and Spectator Sports) ran its own separate campaign against sports-sponsorship bans in Western Australia. It took out full-page ads in the newspapers with the slogan: "THINK. Is it best for the West?". It was clearly also funded mainly by Philip Morris, but it carried the credit of John Dollisson of the Tobacco Institute of Australia.
They trotted out sporting heroes like Australian Test wicket keeper, Rod Marsh.
The West Australian government hit back with a matching newspaper ad campaign with the theme "Give Kids a Chance" and "Quit for Life". The government won.
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/gkmh0143
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