In Australia we struggle to remember the bad old days when people smoked indoors anywhere. Even smokers in their own homes will usually go outside if they have guests. I think I saw someone smoking in a car sometime last week.

There have been amusing repercussions to smoking bans. A Chinese trade delegation in Canberra commented on the prevalence of prostitutes hanging around the entrances to office buildings!

There was one hiccup (or cough) at the National Folk Festival in Canberra in the first year of the ban, when the session bar was closed because some people were refusing to comply with the then new law. But I think you would struggle to find anyone wanting to turn the clock back. "Blind Freddy' as we say over here, could see that it is a vast general improvement, like ceasing to spit in the street.

There are no boarded up pubs I have seen, and it is a great boon for singers, as well as for all the rest of us who breathe regularly.

Chris