Tobacco smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease in Australia. It causes one in nine new cancers (10,000 cases every year) and one in five cancer deaths (more than 7500 cancer deaths every year). Smoking is also responsible for many cases of heart disease, stroke, chest and lung illnesses and stomach ulcers.

Tobacco smoke contains more than 4000 chemicals, over 60 of which are known to cause cancer. When you inhale cigarette smoke these chemicals enter your lungs and spread through your body via blood and lymph systems.

Chemicals in tobacco will also affect people who are exposed to your cigarette smoke. Second-hand or passive smoking poses health risks to adults and more so to children that are similar to active smoking, and has also been associated with sudden infant death syndrome and asthma in children.

Therefore, you would think that all smokers would refrain from smoking. But that has not yet happened. Instead, there are still smokers among us, and smoking without a care about how they affect others around them, including children.

A number of local governments across Australia have adopted outdoor smoking bans to make it even harder for the ill effects of passive smoking to occur. In Parramatta, this has also now occurred.

With the unanimous support of all Councillors, I successfully proposed a new Smoke-Free Outdoor Areas policy relating to a ban of smoking in and around Council's children's playgrounds and within 10 metres of sporting venues and its benefits.

However, this is only our first step. Calls by anti-smoking lobbying groups have sought outdoor smoking bans in alfresco dining areas too. And while the new proposed policy is silent on this issue, I intend to tackle this other outdoor smoking ban area in a very different way which hopefully will be a template for the rest of Australia to emulate.