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John St Vincent Welch was head of the Tobacco Institute of Australia for 15 months from 1991 to 1992. Kerry O’Brien interviews him about the common practice of document retention which in fact was the practice of destroying any documents that came into the hands of the tobacco companies that linked smoking to health risks.
Curator’s notes
This is an extraordinary interview because it exposes big business practice around the world. John St Vincent Welch sets out, in a matter-of-fact way, the policy of routinely destroying anything that might hurt the tobacco companies in any future court case. He’s at pains to say they were advised that it was illegal to destroy any documents connected to a current or pending case, so they did not do that. However they were also advised to practise 'document retention’ which is actually the routine practice to destroy any sensitive research findings that might link smoking to lung cancer, passive smoking or addiction in any future litigation.
There’s no need for cutaways of diseased lungs or tobacco litigants in their final days, when an interview alone can tell such a searing story. It’s enough to hear this businessman talk about the realities of his job. Welch coolly insists that what is done has nothing to do with morality but with the reality of how business is practised and the sequence is all the more powerful and chilling for that.
The 7.30 Report comes out of a long tradition of daily current affairs television that began on the ABC with This Day Tonight (1967-1978) the very first of its genre in Australia. Apart from the short-lived The National (1985), in which news and current affairs were folded into the hour-long program beginning at 6pm on the ABC, there has always been a daily current affairs program following the National News at 7pm.
