2 months ago
22
One of Australia’s greatest scientists, global health advocate Sir Gustav Nossal, has delivered a blunt message to the Allan government about its plans to scrap VicHealth: “Just leave it alone.”
Nossal, a VicHealth patron who served as the organisation’s founding chairman when it was created four decades ago, said the government’s intention to abolish it as a standalone agency and fold it into the Department of Health was misguided.
Public health advocates have urged Treasurer Jaclyn Symes and Premier Jacinta Allan to keep VicHealth as a standalone organisation.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Speaking from his Kew home, where he is closely following the public debate about the future of the organisation he helped establish, the 94-year-old world-renowned immunologist said it would be “a great pity” for Victoria and Australia to lose the health promotion agency.
“It’s a misguided cost-saving measure,” the emeritus professor said.
Pre-eminent scientist Sir Gustav Nossal.Credit: John Woudstra
“I would much, much prefer to leave VicHealth as a standalone statutory body with tripartisan representation of all three political parties. It has been a very good agency for preventative medicine and public health.
“In the big hurly-burly of busy medical practice, it is very easy to lose sight of research, and it is very easy to fall into the routine way of doing things. With an entity like VicHealth, you can afford to step back just a little bit from the daily turmoil and make more strategic investments.”
Asked whether he had a message for the Victorian government, which revealed last week its plans to act on a recommendation by former top bureaucrat Helen Silver to dismantle VicHealth and shift its work into the department, Nossal said: “Be proud of VicHealth. Just leave it alone and support it as strongly as you possibly can.”
In response, the Victorian government sharpened its criticism of VicHealth, describing the agency as out of date and no longer fit for purpose.
“VicHealth’s objectives and governance arrangements are no longer contemporary or fit for purpose, having been designed nearly 40 years ago,” a government spokesman said.
“The health promotion landscape today – the challenges, the priorities and the technology – is unrecognisable from a couple of decades ago. We know we have to be innovative in our prevention and promotion activities.”
The intervention of Nossal, whose founding involvement with VicHealth in 1987 was considered instrumental in securing political and peer support for its establishment, adds to a growing chorus of public health advocates calling for the government to reconsider its plans.
Professor John Catford, a former chief health officer and chair of VicHealth, wrote to this masthead on Wednesday urging the government to retain VicHealth’s unique status as an independent health promotion agency with guaranteed government funding.
“It is not just a health promotion funding body but rather an innovator, thought leader and evidence creator in a highly challenged and constrained area of the health budget,” Catford said.
“It works beyond the traditional territory of the Health Department with community groups, sports and arts organisations, councils, commerce, industry and the media. It has authenticity, trust, skills, networks and a ‘can-do-now’ approach that is hard to find in government.
Sir Gustav Nossal had already been knighted for services to immunology when he agreed to serve as the founding chair of VicHealth.
“If, as the government says, investment in health promotion and disease prevention is not to be cut there will be pitiful savings to harvest. However, what will be cut are coalitions and support across diverse sectors and the community, challenging vested interests from whatever source, and championing new ways of promoting better health for all Victorians.”
In explaining the government’s decision, Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas told parliament this week that some of the health promotion work done by VicHealth was also being done by the government’s local public health units stood up at the peak of the COVID crisis.
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“It is important anywhere in health that we avoid waste and duplication, and that is the intention of the government,” she said.
VicHealth has an annual budget of $45 million.
Supporters of the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, which trades as VicHealth, have launched a “Save VicHealth” website and online petition which, by Wednesday evening, had attracted nearly 3000 signatures.
The campaign is being led by former federal health minister Nicola Roxon, whose five year term as VicHealth chair expired last month.
Roxon and fellow former chairs Mark Birrell, Fiona Cormack, Jane Fenton and Nick Green warned the decision would fail to deliver its hoped-for savings and “severely reduce the effectiveness of important and innovative public health work in this state”.
VicHealth is one of 29 public entities or government boards or committees that Premier Jacinta Allan and Treasurer Jaclyn Symes have vowed to scrap, merge or absorb into government departments following Silver’s independent review of the Victorian Public Service.
Changes to the Tobacco Act required to abolish VicHealth as a statutory authority are yet to be introduced into parliament.
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