A comment on my post about The Freedom Dinner video reads:
Congratulations Forest upon your recent campaign success!
I wish to God that we in Australia had an organisation even half as effective. Perhaps then outcomes for smokers here might not have been so dire. Our national complacency costs us dearly.
Kevin Rudd's recent leadership coup, coupled with Labour's poll improvements, could spell further grim news for Australian smokers.
Simon, feel free to emigrate to Australia anytime soon - we desperately need you here!
Funnily enough, I received an email from Australia in May last year. It read:
We are a group of concerned individuals working together to lobby the government concerning smokers’ rights – presently as an unregistered political party. However, we are keeping our options open with respect to the structure we use to move forward with our agenda.
Australia is one of the darkest markets in the world and, as you would know, has recently introduced plain packaging legislation. We feel it is time to significantly raise the stakes on smokers' rights, anti-nanny state sentiment, and erosion of individual rights and liberties.
They wanted to call their group Forest Asia South Pacific (there's a musical in there somewhere) and were seeking advice.
We exchanged emails and spoke on the phone. Half in jest, I selflessly volunteered to fly half way round the world to help promote their campaign!
After a while it all went quiet and I thought little more about it until, searching on Google for reports featuring the words 'forest' and 'plain packaging', I stumbled upon a website for ... Forest Asia Pacific.
To be honest, I'm hugely disappointed.
First and foremost the website breaks several golden rules. There is very little information (about anything), and nothing to indicate who is behind it.
Address? Media contact? Nothing.
A blog was added on March 20, 2013. It contains seven posts, the last on March 26. After that, zilch.
They have cut and pasted some copy from the Forest website (see Q&As, for example) but, overall, the site lacks passion, personality or purpose.
Australia is the world's number one nanny state. This is a gift made in heaven. Imagine the fun you could have challenging and teasing both the government and the likes of Simon Chapman!
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but this is a missed opportunity.
The people who contacted me last year sounded serious, professional. They had good political contacts, so they told me, having worked for the Rights Party of Australia.
They told me that small, often single issue, parties are a feature of Australian politics, especially at local level.
I advised against forming a political party but I was partly reassured that if they pressed ahead with a campaign group the Forest 'brand' would be in good hands. (That said, I also advised/requested them to use a different name because I didn't know enough about them.)
I have no idea whether the people I spoke to are still involved. According to the website, Forest Pacific Asia was founded in 2011, at least six months before they contacted me, so I don't even know if they are the founders.
What is remarkable, given events in Australia over the past 18 months, is that the group has remained completely invisible.
This is not the first time the Forest name has been adopted for use in Australia. According to this document:
Smokers' rights organisations set up in Australia include Forest ('Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco') and Fair Go. Forest was set up in Victoria in the mid 1980s, when passive smoking was starting to receive serious and sustained media and public attention.
Sadly, I fear this latest project will go the same way as the first. The concept is fine but the execution is very poor.
There is however a small ray of hope.
Forest Asia Pacific also has a Facebook page. Again, there is very little activity but at the time of writing it has 8,007 'Likes'. That's not bad.
My advice, for what it's worth, is this:
Close the website until you have redesigned and built something better and have the personnel to maintain it.
Build support via Facebook and Twitter.
Appoint a spokesman. Comment and engage with the media on smoking-related issues.
Generate and encourage discussion and debate online.
Submit articles to news blogs and popular websites and use the Internet to drive traffic to your Facebook page.
I could go on.
I'm not annoyed, just disappointed that the Forest name is associated with such a limp, half-baked effort.
Perhaps I will emigrate to Australia!