Thank you Anne Marie and Stephen for your thought provoking comments. In local government community-based planning is becoming the norm and councillors and the administration understand well the importance of working with communities to determine priorities for spending. We do not have the strength of leadership at the Federal level for this to occur.

Another issue to ponder is that when we talk about ways to improve the health of populations and PREVENT physical and mental illhealth we need to be looking outside the health sector - to the social and economic determinants of health.

We know that factors such as poverty, education, employment, transport, isolation, child care, housing directly affect our health and that all levels of government must be willing to address these issues as well as reorientating health services to provide access to good community-based health promoting programs.

What we need is a Minister for Health Promotion - Canada has done why can't Australia?