A Melbourne city councillor wants to ban smoking in all outdoor areas.
Newly elected Richard Foster says lighting up outside should be prohibited or restricted to designated smoking areas.
This morning I went head-to-head with Foster on Monocle Radio. (No, I'd never heard of it either but it sounded rather good.)
Foster was quite different to the usual anti-smoking zealot. He sounded young, engaging, energetic, the sort of Aussie you'd be happy to have a drink with.
Oh, but the nonsense he came out with. Speaking of the dangers of passive smoking, for example, he referred to evidence provided by the World Health Organisation circa 1999.
When I challenged him to name a single study that demonstrated the ill effects of breathing other people's smoke in the open air he side-stepped the question and referred again to the WHO report which (correct me if I'm wrong) relates to smoking indoors.
This wasn't the moment to get involved in an argument about that (or the discredited WHO report) but I did suggest that if smoking outside is so troubling to people then bar owners, for example, should be allowed to provide well-ventilated smoking rooms so people can smoke inside.
He acknowledged I had a point about banning cars in cities (if you really want to improve air quality) but seemed to suggest that this is impractical. He's right but it's no more impractical or illiberal than banning smoking in all outdoor spaces!
Finally, in what was a very even-handed discussion, one of the two presenters suggested that if smoking outside presents even a "tiny, tiny risk" to other people then a ban should be supported.
To which I replied that life is full of risks and if we want to avoid every "tiny, tiny risk" there's only one solution - stay in bed.
PS. According to one report, Foster "says the message is you can smoke outside the city's boundaries and in private spaces as long as they are not dining areas".
Does that mean no more smoking around the barbie?!