Police Minister Lisa Neville returns after months of sick leave

Following Lisa Neville’s return to work, she has revealed how she hid her health battle for decades and what policy area will be her big priorities.

Police Minister Lisa Neville has opened up about a three-decade-long battle with a chronic bowel disease.

Police Minister Lisa Neville has opened up about a three-decade-long battle with a chronic bowel disease, saying she kept three operations secret from colleagues and “lived on Gastro Stop” tablets.

The veteran Labor minister, who returned to her post this week after a six-month lay-off that included major surgery, declared she had recovered and could cope with the demands of the job.

Ms Neville said the morale of the police force and a new quarantine centre at Mickleham were among her priorities.

Ms Neville also said she took on too much last year, exacerbating her illness, and she kept her battle with Crohn’s disease from most of her colleagues because “people don’t like to talk about diarrhoea”.

Returning to work without the emergency services portfolio, Ms Neville said when she was admitted to hospital this year for major surgery she considered whether her career was finished. “When I was at my sickest there was a point I thought I’m not sure I’m going to get back,” she said.

Lisa Neville will return to Work after battling Crohns disease.

“I had been in ICU and had two surgeries … there was a point I thought ‘do I keep doing this? Is it going to shorten my life?’ ”

Ms Neville said she was realistic about the demands of her job, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The big thing with hotel quarantine is going to be, obviously we have got refugees coming back (from Afghanistan) at the moment, but also the new facility (in Mickleham) and having responsibility for that,” she said. “I’m confident a lot of work has gone into it, while I haven’t been there, they are in an OK place.

“They are stressful portfolios but I didn’t contemplate not doing those.”

Expressing frustration at the lockdown protesters on the weekend, Ms Neville said part of the job would be to “keep up the morale” for those in uniform who seem to “get written up as too soft or too tough constantly”.

“They, like me, went from bushfires straight into Covid and they’ve got hotel quarantine, so it’s a big toll on them,” she said.

Ms Neville kept her health battle a secret for 33 years.

Ms Neville said she was so unwell before surgery it took her longer to build back strength, but doctors agreed she could return to work with regular infusions of electrolytes and a more manageable workload.

“I have to get better at trying to manage the stress along the way. Instead of going to back-to-back meetings you have to make sure that at some stage of the day you have a 10-minute break here or there,” she said.

Ms Neville said she was seriously ill when pictures emerged of her while on sick leave in Port Douglas.

“It is an internal illness that you basically don’t see,” she said.

Now that she’s opened up about her battles with Crohn’s, Ms Neville said she felt able to discuss why keeping the emergency services portfolio was not possible.

Premier Daniel Andrews announced Lisa Neville’s return on Monday. Picture: Tim Carrafa

“It’s really unpredictable when an emergency is going to happen. Travelling by helicopter and long journeys in a car, being in remote areas. At the drop of a hat, dropping everything else, it doesn’t really fit very well with chronic diarrhoea,” she said.

“The amount of times I crammed in anti-diarrhoea drugs and those sort of things with fingers crossed that it would be OK – I just know that the surgery I have had has made that worse for me.”

Most colleagues were in the dark about the extent of her illness, she said, despite dealing with it for 33 years.

“I have had three of those surgeries and I probably didn’t tell people because they’re hard things to talk about,” she said.

“ I hope me talking about it helps other people with Crohn’s,” she said.