Socialist-led community fightback stops the cohealth closures

cohealth, an organisation that runs community health centres across Australia, announced in October last year that it would close three large service providers in Collingwood, Fitzroy and Kensington by the end of 2025.

The closures would have thrown roughly 12,500 of Melbourne’s most vulnerable people out of access to a doctor. Their only option would be to seek medical attention through paramedics, emergency departments, or not at all. If the move had gone ahead, healthcare in inner-city Melbourne would much more closely resemble that of the United States.

This attack on working people could not be tolerated. Fortunately, the targeted areas are notorious for their community organisation and militancy. And a socialist-led fightback campaign emerged that stopped the closures.

The campaign so far

Victorian Socialists helped to build for an initial mass meeting at the Fitzroy Town Hall called by the local council. Five hundred people attended this volatile gathering. Those stuck outside shut down the meeting until speakers were provided so they could take part. Around two hundred people attended a second meeting the next day in Kensington.

At these meetings, Victorian Socialists health workers announced a rally to pressure the government. Residents rallied in large numbers in torrential rain outside the office of a local Federal Labor MP. Patients, nurses, doctors and firefighters spoke about the looming catastrophe, and demanded the government intervene to save the clinics.

Victorian Socialists then launched a campaign of street stalls, meetings, speakouts, rallies and picket lines to put pressure on Federal and State Labor governments. Over a frenetic two month period, thousands of people got involved in the campaign.

This pressure forced the government to commission an independent review and announce six-months emergency funding in November last year. As the next round of closures loomed in July this year, Victorian Socialists again rallied the community to action. After a large rally outside the Collingwood cohealth, and just hours before the picket lines of Labor MPs offices were set to re-start, the government announced more emergency funding to keep the clinics open until at least 2027.

Scandalously, the independent review report was then kept hidden from the public. City of Yarra councillors unanimously supported a Victorian Socialists proposal to give the Labor government a deadline to release the findings or face the prospect of a renewed community campaign. This pressure forced the report’s release.

It confirmed what Victorian Socialists have been saying all along: both the cohealth board’s mismanagement, and Labor’s funding crisis in the healthcare system, are to blame for this mess.

The cohealth board members and executive management layer have begun to resign one by one. The possibility remains that the government may put the organisation into administration. But as of yet, there has been no concrete commitment by either the state or federal government to specific ongoing funding for the affected community health centres.

Dangerous Games

For almost a year now, the Federal Labor Government and the cohealth board have engaged in a dangerous game of chicken.

cohealth gambled that the government would not allow inner-city Melbourne’s healthcare system to collapse entirely, and would eventually step in to grant them emergency funds.

Labor is in power at both levels of government. Rather than act immediately, Labor described the cuts as “disappointing.” The government knew that other community health centres were watching closely, and didn’t want to seem vulnerable to further funding blackmail.

This stalemate caused chaos. As the closure date loomed, services like blood tests were suspended at the clinics. Residents rushed en masse to try to get on the books of neighbouring suburbs’ community health centres, only to find them closed to newcomers.

Both sides publicly blamed each other for the chaos. The reality is they are each to blame. The cohealth board is responsible for reckless financial governance. Labor is responsible for the underfunding crisis, and for building a health system where a private corporate board has the power to make life-or-death decisions on this scale.

Despite holding both elected state MP positions in the affected areas, the Greens’ role in this issue has been largely limited to symbolic gestures such as online petitions and non-binding motions in Parliament. Former party leader Richard di Natale worked for cohealth as an advisor. One of his chief advisors was the cohealth Executive Finance Lead when the closures were announced. Needless to say, this is not the kind of political leadership capable of stopping healthcare cuts and closures.

Healthcare means people before profit

The attempted closure of community health clinics is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of a system that allows profit and austerity to override need.

The now-departed chair of the cohealth board was a former Citigroup and Credit Suisse investment banker. Labor has overseen the incentivisation of shorter GP consultations and the growing entry of private equity firms into Australian healthcare provision.

But people in Richmond district have a strong memory of what community-controlled healthcare once meant. North Yarra Community Health, one of the precursors to cohealth, was run by a community-elected board. Bi-monthly community meetings were attended by hundreds and interpreted into ten languages. Annual general meetings were held in tents, not boardrooms.

When North Yarra merged with Western Region Health and Doutta Galla to become cohealth, that democratic model was dismantled. The board became incorporated, community membership was abolished, and decision-making drifted away from residents.

The current crisis is a direct outcome of that shift. Today, unelected board members can decide to close clinics, terminate staff, and sell off community assets without answering to the people affected.

The successful cohealth campaign proves that it is healthcare workers and the community - not bankers and their representatives in parliament - who should be in charge of decision-making at cohealth.

A ward to win

This fight is about more than one organisation. The public health system is at breaking point. The cohealth campaign is a giant test within this wider context. Private medical companies are exploring how far they can use threats to secure extra funding. Governments are observing what deterioration to living standards the community will tolerate. And working people are testing their collective strength to hold back these attacks from above.

We have to build the campaign to not only defend and expand the services offered by the cohealth centres, but also to fight for guaranteed access to healthcare for all, fully funded preventative and community health services across the state, and returned control of those services to the people they serve.

Join the Victorian Socialists campaign to save cohealth