EDITORIALS

Welcome Kiwis We managed to add New Zealand to the Journal’s title just before we went to press in February. That issue had no space in which to celebrate this antipodean union, agreed upon by the two national public health associations. So welcome on board. It is unnecessary to carry on about hands across the Tasman, bringing each other closer together and so on. Such sentiments are favoured by Royal Colleges and other professional bodies in Australia with their ANZ or Australasian journals and a tradition not too far from noblesse oblige, in which the New Zealenders are outnum- bered in their own country (at ceremonies held in fancy dress) and the scientific meetings are brief and followed by leisurely tours through the beau- tiful land of The Long White Cloud. Excluded from this tradition is the young Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine which provides financial support for this Journal and, as far as is known, h,as no imperialistic tendencies. The intentions of the Public Health Association of Australia in changing the title of its journal are simply that New Zealand public health workers will have an enhanced opportunity to contribute to and read a publication with which they are now clearly identified.

New Zealand has a distinguished public health record and has been at the forefront in several areas, including maternal and child health and unravel- ling the health transition of translocated Pacific people. Many Australian workers are familiar with parts of the current active scene, some ofwhich have been recorlded in these pages. Focusing on similar problems in this country, we would like to learn more about initiatives that will inform and improve practice. Then there is the introduction of markets and other :structural changes in the New Zealand health service; critical analyses of these attempted reforms and what they have done to public health could be of considerable interest.

Having written all that, it has to be noted that this Journal has joined the ranks of those snowed under with submissions. A modestly enlarged fed- eral funding base for Australian public health research is behind this ever-increasing flow. Heaven knows what the recently elected conserva- tive government will do to this; the states, however, seem to have belatedly realised that population- based planning and evaluation are useful and so some momentum will stay in the system, even in Victoria, whose health services are driven in the style of Jonah Lomu*. The point is, that this Journal, like so many others, has had to adopt more ruthless criteria for selection. There simply is insufficient space to print all papers of quality that we receive. One thing that gives a submission some- thing of an advantage during the review process is

- *For those, like our Managing Editor, who are unfamiliar with Mr Lornu, he is an enormous, opposition-bulldozing and fre- quently unstoppable All Black Rugby player.

adherence to the directions for authors and partic- ularly to those about the proposed length of a paper. Perhaps, if the tradition of that superb short story writer, Katherine Mansfield, persists in their education system, New Zealand authors may have an edge in constructing a paper. Anyhow, we would like to hear from you.

Charles Kerr Editor; Australian and New Zealand Journal

of Public Health

New policies (and pollies) for public health? The recent change of Australian federal govern- ment marks the end of an era during which the for- tunes of public health have run high. This was especially so during the long ministry of Dr Neal Blewett, whose understanding of the politics of health and capacity for achieving political support for public health issues was exceptional. Medicare was enacted, reinstating the principles of universal access to necessary care which were embodied in the earlier Medibank, after a regressive sequence of declensions, ranging from Medimuddle to Medimangle, which once more created a group without any insurance cover in Australia, during the Fraser era. Under Blewett, HIV-AIDS and drugs policies were established and brought to action, teaching and research in public health were revi- talked, the Better Health Commission was estab lished, the Australian Institute of Health (as it then was) was set up at a time of appalling statistical chaos and ignorance about Australia’s health, the National Program for Better Health was initiated, and various community-based nongovernment agencies, includ- ing the Public Health Association, were brought onto stage and supported financially. The major structural issues relating to the health of Aboriginal People and Torres Strait Islanders began to be addressed somewhat later (although it was Blewett who set in train the development of the National Aboriginal Health Policy and also the National Women’s Health Policy) through land rights legisla- tion and the establishment of an AP and TSI division within the Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health.

During the shorter ministry of Brian Howe, Jenny Macklin and the National Health Strategy canvassed many issues of broader public intent at the unprece- dented intellectual level that they deserved, and health and welfare were brought into somewhat h a p pier conjunction.

Graham Richardson did much, with Brendan Nelson as his unlikely partner, during his brief min- istry, to politicise the health issues facing Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. Dr Carmen Lawrence, as recently as last September, put in place initiatives through the Department of Human Services and Health, with the support of Dr Stephen Duckett, Dr Tony Adams and several other senior

AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEAIAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 1996 VOL. 20 NO. 2 115