Tuesday, 9 December 2025

 Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (17:15): (1485) My adjournment matter is for the Premier, and the action I seek is to reverse the public sector job cuts, stop the abolition of VicHealth and Sustainability Victoria and halt the damaging restructure underway at the State Library of Victoria. Victoria’s public institutions are being hollowed out at a scale we have never seen before. Across Victoria 1000 workers are being shown the door, 29 agencies are being dismantled or merged and librarian numbers at the State Library will be halved. And it is not to improve services but to create an illusion of budget discipline ahead of next year’s election. The Silver review has become a convenient shield for cuts that threaten the capability, the integrity and the independence of some of our most important public agencies.

This government wants to dissolve VicHealth into the Department of Health – VicHealth: admired globally, copied nationally and responsible for world-leading reforms in tobacco control, alcohol harm reduction, nutrition and physical activity and anti-racism initiatives. Public health experts, former chairs from across the political spectrum and unions have all condemned the move as boneheaded and misguided. Once VicHealth loses its independence and its legislated budget, prevention will inevitably give way to acute care pressures, chronic disease rates and future hospital costs will rise and all Victorians will pay the price. Sustainability Victoria too is slated for abolition. This agency has supported more than 1600 schools, run vital recycling and hazardous material disposal programs and driven innovation in the circular economy. Scrapping it weakens Victoria’s environmental capacity at the very moment we need it to accelerate, not abandon, our climate and waste solutions. And at the State Library management proposes eliminating dozens of librarians and halving research support. Writers, artists, historians, professors and researchers, including Helen Garner, Alexis Wright, Geraldine Brooks and JM Coetzee, have warned that this will fundamentally damage one of Victoria’s most treasured public institutions.

Premier, these are not abstract restructures; they are decisions that will have both immediate and long-term consequences for public health, environmental sustainability, cultural knowledge and the quality of life here in Victoria. I ask the Premier to reverse these cuts, protect the independence of VicHealth and Sustainability Victoria and ensure that the State Library remains a place of learning, of discovery and of public good and is not another casualty of short-term political accounting.