The Sunday Age ran with a front page story this week outlining that participation in University sport had dropped sharply since the introduction of the VSU legislation. The story was based on a report recently released by Australian University Sport.

The legislation was passed by the Howard government when Brendan Nelson was Education Minister. It has made Australia the only country in the Western world to outlaw universities levying students for facilities and services, including for sporting facilities and clubs. At a time when 47% of Australians are so inactive that they are at excessive risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, radical legislation that has directly led to a substantial drop in physical activity should be seen as a disaster.

Brendan Nelson on drafting the legislation chose an example on The 7.30 Report to argue in its favour of “why should a nursing student at university be forced to pay money towards sporting clubs she doesn’t use?” It depends on whether doctors, like Nelson, and nurses should see their role as simply tending for the sick or promoting health. Doctors, like politicians, tend to under-prescribe preventive measures like promoting exercise.

The ALP voted against the VSU legislation in parliament in 2005 (as did Barnaby Joyce) partly based on fears for the negative impact on sports participation that the legislation would have. Now that these fears have been realised, it would seem to be a no-brainer that, at the very least, the legislation should be re-written to allow universities to levy fees for “essential” university services, including sports facilities.

Unfortunately the ALP, now in government, does not seem to be in a hurry to fix up the under-funding of university sport that its predecessors created. One can cynically draw the conclusion that party research has shown the ALP that the VSU legislation was not a vote loser for the Howard government (those students who opposed it were not going vote Liberal anyway). If there are no votes to be gained by substantially reversing the VSU legislation, then why bother doing it? Or even more cynically – why would they want to criticise anything Brendan Nelson did in government and risk that the opposition might remove their lame duck leader?

While in opposition (in December 2006) the ALP also announced that they were forming a Shadow Minister for Health Promotion, appropriately linked to the sports ministry. This idea has also been recommended previously in a Medical Journal of Australia opinion piece. The press release made claims that:

Labor recognises that prevention plays a vital role in reducing the economic and social burden of preventable disease and improving the general health and wellbeing of all Australians … In contrast (to the Howard government), a future Labor Government views sport and recreational activities which get people physically active as an essential part of achieving our goals for healthy kids and our strategies to improve the wellbeing of adults in Australia.

When the Rudd government won the election, the Health Promotion ministry mysteriously disappeared, as it appears did exercise promotion policies like reversing the VSU ban on university sports funding.

The big worry for preventive health is that Rudd is “talking the talk” (e.g. 2020 Summit) but won’t “walk the walk” because the political payoff doesn’t occur within the timeframe of an electoral cycle. Those students no longer exercising now will be someone else’s heart attack to worry about twenty years down the track.

There is plenty of scope for governments to develop policy to increase the percentage of the population who exercise. With roughly 50% of the population inactive, the status quo looks terrible from a health promotion perspective. But with a 50% lead in the polls as preferred Prime Minister, to Kevin Rudd the status quo (with no Health Promotion ministry to ask for funds in this year’s budget) looks fairly good.