Thursday, 18 June 2026

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (14:47): The Victorian Labor government plans to abolish the state’s health promotion foundation, VicHealth. The Department of Health will ‘absorb it’ they say, like some giant amoeba. This will only save the state budget a few million at best – small change for the Treasurer – and over time it will cost us so much more. The new health minister offers bureaucratic justifications for the absorption, including that the health system has changed and we have the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 and local public health units.

Maybe I could accept this if the government were cracking down on alcohol advertising and rapid alcohol delivery services, if they were trying to cut our intake of ultra-processed food, if their police were raiding and closing the tobacconists selling illegal vapes and bootleg tobacco in plain sight, if they were encouraging more Victorians to leave the car at home and walk or pedal to work and if they were funding research into how to make health promotion more effective, but they are not. They are not doing any of this. On the list of Labor’s really dumb decisions, this might not be the biggest – certainly not in dollar terms – but it has to be one of the stupidest and most anti-science decisions that Labor can make. I can only hope that the next Parliament will rethink this decision and show some respect for some of the most important health workers: those involved in prevention.