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“VicHealth was established almost 40 years ago, and significant changes have occurred in the public health landscape since that time,” the spokesman said. “The Allan Labor government will continue to invest in preventative health, and consult widely with key stakeholders in relation to the new model that will be established within the department.”
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson said the government must guarantee the decision would not lead to fewer preventative health initiatives.
The Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, an independent entity which trades as VicHealth, was heralded as a world-leading reform when it was established in 1987 with a legislated budget to help rid sport of tobacco advertising. More recently, its work has focused on public health campaigns to prevent chronic disease caused by poor diet, inactivity and obesity.
Nicola Roxon, a former chair of VicHealth, says the decision to fold it into the Department of Health is misguided.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Among its former chairs, Roxon served as a health minister in a Labor federal government; Birrell, a former Liberal state MP, played a pivotal role in securing bipartisan support for the creation of VicHealth when he was shadow minister for health.
The current board of VicHealth includes three MPs from across the political divide. Greens board member Dr Tim Read said it was essential for the agency to retain its guaranteed budget and political independence.
“Powerful corporations promote processed food, home-delivered alcohol, smoking and vaping while governments are too timid to stand in the way, which is why VicHealth’s independent voice and small amount of guaranteed funding is so important to protect,” Read said.
“We spend more on health than on anything else by a large margin and only a pittance on prevention of chronic disease. If we’re worried about the budget, it’s time to think about prevention.”
The Silver Review, in its 162-page final report tabled in parliament last Thursday, dedicated one paragraph to explaining its recommendation to abolish VicHealth.
“VicHealth was established to promote health and prevent chronic disease in Victoria through research, policy development, and community-based health initiatives – including Cancer Council Victoria programs and the QUIT helpline. This is important work but does not need to be conducted independently of a department; it can be absorbed into DH work without compromising service quality,” the report noted.
Establishing VicHealth was one of the celebrated reforms of John Cain’s state government. Credit: Bruce Postle
VicHealth has an annual budget of $45 million, which represents 0.13 per cent of the $33.6 billion the state government is forecast to spend on health this financial year. It is one of 29 public entities or government boards or committees which the government intends to either abolish, merge or shift into government departments to deliver an estimated budget saving of $27 million.
The government claims all the measures it has accepted from the Silver Review, combined with reducing its use of consultants and office space freed up by public servants working from home, will save the budget more than $4 billion over the next four years.
Two sources within VicHealth told this masthead the Silver Review team had not consulted with the organisation.
On November 29, one week before the Silver report was tabled, VicHealth announced Ian Hamm as its new chair. He replaced Roxon, whose five-year-term expired in November, and he will have no ongoing role if VicHealth is dissolved as a standalone entity.
The treasurer said last week the Department of Health was “well placed” to deliver preventative health programs. “This isn’t about relaxing our efforts on health prevention, it’s about actually being more effective, more targeted, and bringing those functions into the department,” she said.
Symes said the health minister had been consulted about the recommendation before it was accepted by the government.
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John Mendoza, a former chair of the National Advisory Council on Mental Health, described the proposed change as “up there with the most ‘bone-headed’ decisions by any government in Australia in the past 40 years”.
The principal concern of public and preventative health experts is that once VicHealth is stripped of its independent governance and budget, its funding will be diverted and programs diminished to prioritise more acute and larger health demands such as hospital budgets, ambulance waiting times and elective surgery lists.
“If this organisation is absorbed into the Department of Health, there is no guarantee what it does will continue,” Australian Health Promotion Association president Glen Ramos said. “Its importance will no longer be privileged and what it does will simply disappear.”
Public Health Association of Australia chief executive Terry Slevin said the public health capacity of the Department of Health had already been “gutted”.
“If the next step is to wrap VicHealth into the department, very few people have any faith that the funds that are currently committed to VicHealth will be retained in that area,” he said. “I have enormous fears about how this will play out.”
Minister for Finance Danny Pearson last week introduced omnibus legislation to either abolish or consolidate the public entities identified by Silver. Bringing VicHealth into the Health Department will require changes to the state’s Tobacco Act.
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