How can we support people’s experience of justice, good health and wellbeing?
The new federal government may bring different opportunities to work towards this objective, but our health justice priorities remain the same. Over a series of posts, our founding CEO Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine shares the work we have been doing with the new government so far and invites colleagues to connect with us in this advocacy and the important work ahead.
The Albanese ministry has brought a number of new appointments into key portfolios on the health justice landscape, particularly in relation to the priority to end violence against women and their children. We were one of a number of organisations centring the National Plan to end violence against women and children when newly appointed Minister for Social Services the Hon. Amanda Rishworth MP addressed ACOSS member CEOs in her first few weeks in the role. Through our engagement with the offices of Attorney-General the Hon. Mark Dreyfus MP and Minister Rishworth, we have continued to support cross-portfolio policy development and budgeting to ensure that approaches like health justice partnership can support the collaborative directions set by the National Plan. We have also linked the National Plan to the architecture for the Government’s wellbeing agenda, a key objective over which we can all collaborate.
We have also welcomed the recognition from both ministers about the priority concerns regarding the child care and protection system. ‘Safe and supported’, the new national framework for protecting Australia’s children, is another policy designed around improved collaboration. There is huge potential for health justice partnership to contribute to strategies to address the underlying health, legal and social need that often drive the identification of children at risk. We are building the evidence of this way of working and will continue to advocate strongly for this to ministers across Federal and state and territory governments.
