greens national health plan

The Greens' National Healthcare Plan,
based on early intervention and prevention strategies, has been launched today in Perth and includes:
* Denticare - a national dental care scheme to end the waiting list of 500,000 Australians
* Incentives for more rural dental workers (including HECSrebates)
* A Minister for Mental Health
* $350 million per year for mental health
* $58.5 million over 4 years for rural mental health
* Better hearing screening to prevent or limit hearing loss -including assistance for Indigenous communities
* A 1.5% levy on junk food and alcohol advertising
* An end to junk food ads in children's TV viewing hours, until 9:30pm
* Traffic light labelling so shoppers can select healthier foods
* A floor price plan for cigarettes
* A safe alcohol consumption public education program

Senator Rachel Siewert, Greens Health spokesperson said "The Greens want to convert Australia's health system to one based on wellness not sickness."

"We need to be keeping people well and out of hospital.

"The combined cost of poor health and the associated social impacts from tobacco and alcohol use, obesity, and poor dental, mental and hearing health is $138.75 billion per year.

"Keeping people well not only provides a far better quality of life but it is less expensive.

"Our range of policies are designed around preventive health which is a much more sensible approach to healthcare," said Senator Siewert.

Greens Leader Bob Brown, in Perth for the launch, and himself a former GP said, "The Greens are leading both older parties in improving health care as today's Medical Journal of Australia revealed a huge problem with obesity for the nation."

yarragon planting future seeds

Today I joined Richard Di Natale and other Greens candidates in Yarragon to talk about the value of preventative health programs.

Richard, the Greens lead Senate candidate for Victoria, has been touring regional Victoria to highlight the Greens Health Plan.

Both Andrew and Bryce, Grade Sixers at Yarragon Primary School are enjoying a chance to get out of the classroom and into the vegie patch. Here they are pictured with Greens candidates from left to right: Samantha Dunn – Eastern Victoria, Dr Richard Di Natale – Victoria and Dr Malcolm McKelvie – McMillan.

It was terrific to talk about an initiative of the Yarragon Primary School which sees Grade 5 and 6's work outside of the school on various garden projects.

The Community Garden Project, plays a central role in providing the vegie patch and the food for the school program and stems from an initiative by Dr Malcolm McKelvie, Green's Federal Candidate for McMillan.

The program aims to equip students with skills, not only in the garden, but in the kitchen too and matches community mentors with young people to help foster and build connections in the broader community.

Born out of the community and struggling to continue to run unfunded, it is a great example of the sort of preventative program the Greens support as part of a package of initiatives that address long term healthy living.

As part of the Greens Plan the primary care system would become needs-based, so that all Victorians could get better access to health care professionals like GPs, psychologists, even dieticians, before they're sent to hospital and junk food advertising aimed at kids would be banned, and foods would be better labelled to allow shoppers to make informed, health based decisions.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and that's what is happening on the ground in Yarragon.