News

April 30, 2025

Message from the TIS National Coordinator, Prof Tom Calma AO 

Today I’ll be part of the Public Health Association of Australia’s Preventive Health Conference in Canberra on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. The conference theme is ‘Prevention is political’ and the session I’m involved in is titled ‘Indigenous Health is Political: Challenging Systems, Building Solutions’. It’s a big conference and it should be a good event and my presentation is titled “Navigating government systems to drive meaningful health outcomes beyond equity”. I’ll be providing a bit of the history of the Close the Gap Campaign, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and how politically divided the process has been. When I first put out my Social Justice Report in 2006, the Coalition wanted nothing to do with it. After the Labor Party was elected in November 2007, Labor and reluctantly the Coalition both signed the Statement of Intent in 2008. In an effort to more effectively address the healthcare divide, I brought together mainstream health and Indigenous health service providers, peak bodies and human rights groups to speak together and work on creating change. The reality is that the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people use mainstream health services and it’s where all the money is; even people who use ACCHOs will still be serviced by a mainstream hospital. During the Preventive Health Conference session I’ll be arguing that if governments just focus on community controlled health organisations, we’re missing out on the big money of mainstream health and we are letting them off the hook. I’ll also bring the Tackling Indigenous Smoking program into the conversation regarding how good practice works and the fundamentals around TIS being a program that empowers the community to come up with the messaging, drive the program’s delivery, run educational activities and give their communities the information – including details of the referral process – to make an informed decision to give up or not take up smoking or vaping. More Indigenous affairs projects need to adopt this approach, since the statistics show TIS is the most successful health intervention program in the nation in terms of the lives we’ve saved through our program.

I wasn’t able to make it to the graduation ceremony this year due to interstate commitments, but the 2025 recipient of the University of Canberra’s Tom Calma Medal was recently announced. It’s named in my honour and given to a graduating Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander student who has combined high academic results with making a valuable contribution to their community. This year’s awardee Rachelle Kelly-Church has a law degree and has already set up a foundation to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, Sisters in Spirit. She completed her degree while dealing with breast cancer and also raising a big family, so it’s a big achievement. Seeing an Aboriginal woman make headway in the law and justice sector is very important, since Indigenous women are overly represented in incarceration in proportion to the rest of the Australian population. Congratulations, Rachelle! You can read more about the ceremony here.

You might have seen some recent media regarding our TIS colleague, Associate Professor Michelle Kennedy, and her University of Newcastle team being awarded funding to promote their Which Way? Quit pack project nationally. I’d like to congratulate Michelle and her team on receiving the $4.7 million grant from the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) to expand on their great work to date. TIS has been able to support Michelle with funding through the National Reach and Priority Projects (NRPP). As you are aware, as a population health program, TIS funding cannot be used to pay for or deliver NRTs. To align with this approach, the NRPP-funded Which Way? packs were adjusted to instead include NRT information and details of available support rather than NRTs themselves. Michelle has completed a lot of work with pregnant mothers, one of the Tackling Indigenous Smoking program’s priority areas, so it’s great to have this Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-based program hitting focus populations. You can read more about Which Way?’s MRFF upscaling here.

Talk about Which Way?’s NRPP funding leads nicely into mention of the second NRPP tender that’s currently open. We’ve already seen a lot of good interest in the latest NRPP opportunity, so we’re looking forward to providing more funding support to innovative community projects. We will keep people well informed about successful tenders so they can link up with the TIS teams in their areas. While successful NRPP tenders can’t replicate any work currently being done by TIS teams, it’s important to understand these NRPP projects act as another referral pathway for communities in tackling smoking and vaping. It’s all about teamwork, ensuring the NRPP’s successful tenderers work with our TIS teams. There are only a few days before this funding round closes on Friday 2 May, but you can read more on the NRPP website.

This month marked the introduction of a ban on menthol cigarette sales in Australia. We know that people are attracted to menthol cigarettes because they think they’re safer than ordinary tobacco, but they’re not – they’re still dangerous and filled with all the carcinogens. Menthol is just another gimmick product targeting vulnerable people who smoke. Recently we’ve seen other articles trying to suggest the government’s losing all their tobacco excise revenue because less people are smoking legally sold cigarettes and instead smoking illicit cigarettes. Ironically, the whole objective of the tobacco excise has been to reduce the levels of smoking, so logically a reduction in smoking reduces the amount of excise the government receives and this has always been the intent.

Suggesting there is concern regarding a loss in excise money is really just a distraction from the main aim, which is reducing smoking rates in the general population from 10% down to 5% by 2030 and getting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rates down to 27%. From July 1 the TIS program will be completely funded by tobacco excise money. This makes us the only major program to be funded out of excise, but I’ll also note that the new National Lung Cancer Screening program, which also commences is July, is also funded by the excise. It’s good to see money raised through tobacco sales is going back into products and activities that are addressing smoking and the outcomes of smoking.

As we move into the last 10 days of the election campaign, I’d like to acknowledge there’s still a major concern about misinformation out there. I made a comment to The Guardian last week regarding some of the ill-informed statements being made. There are a lot of half-truths and disinformation around, so I’d encourage everybody to be a little discerning when they hear political information from social media or through other means to check if it’s factual or not. I want to draw TIS teams’ attention to the ANTAR paper recently released on how the main parties fare regarding key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTAR) is a non-government not-for-profit, non-Indigenous group that works with Indigenous people to raise awareness on native title and reconciliation issues. During elections they present an analysis of what each of the major parties are pledging in Indigenous affairs. It’s a very easy to read overview of Indigenous affairs topics including Closing the Gap; Justice & Over-Incarceration; Culture, Heritage & Country; and Voice, Treaty & Truth. It’s a quick, one-stop-shop to find out what the major parties are saying. We all have a role to play in elections and I’d really encourage everybody to be informed and make sure they get out and vote so that we can get the best outcomes for our people.

World No Tobacco Day is now a month away on Saturday May 31, so I’ve been asked by one of our TIS teams to provide a recorded video message in advance of the day. I’ll be participating in some other WNTD events, but exact details haven’t been confirmed just yet. While up in Weipa in Queensland for another project in early May I’ll also have the opportunity to visit Mapoon. As mentioned in the newsletter last month, late last year Mapoon’s kids created the fantastic Breathe In Breathe Out smoke-free and vape-free hip hop video, so I’m looking forward to meeting with the community with Josh, Apunipima’s Tackling Indigenous Smoking Coordinator and the TIS officer based at Napranum health clinic. It will be good to spend time with Josh and get Apunipima’s perspective on what’s happening in Cape York.

I hope you’re all getting ready for NBPU’s National TIS Workers Workshop in Darwin/Garramilla on Larrakia Country in June. This will be the most important TIS event of the year in terms of hearing updates on the TIS program and engaging with other teams from across the country. I’ll also be in Darwin the week before the workshop to present a keynote at the AIATSIS Summit. The Summit includes presentations by journalist and author Stan Grant, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss and my good friend Pat Anderson AO, so it should be a good event. Having some extra time in Darwin ahead of the National TIS Workers Workshop will also provide me an opportunity to catch up with some of the TIS teams in the Northern Territory and hear what I can do to help with connecting to local communities. I look forward to seeing you all at the Darwin Convention Centre on Wednesday June 11!

Prof Tom Calma AO 
FAA FASSA FAHAN
TIS National Coordinator