David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak about the Australian Centre for Disease Control. This is an exciting development for Australia, and I really welcome the government's commitment to establishing the institution. ACDC will help us to better coordinate and respond to infectious disease outbreaks—that's a given—and it's the bread and butter of health protection. But what I find truly exciting about this new institution is the possibility of putting prevention back on the agenda and putting serious downward pressure on chronic disease, including mental illness.

A renewed focus on the prevention of poor health is sorely needed. Chronic disease is the biggest killer in Australia, making up 85 per cent of the total disease burden. Just a handful of chronic diseases contribute to nine in 10 deaths in Australia. And, yes, while we are living longer than ever, Australians are spending more of that precious time in ill health. This trend is unfortunately not slowing down. The data shows clearly that more and more Australians are cutting back on their lives due to pain, mobility issues, depression and anxiety.

For too long we've focused purely on life span and we haven't focused on health span. We've not made the hard decisions or the hard investments that prevent poor health before it begins. That's generally because investing in long-term health outcomes doesn't align with meeting short-term political goals. I have seen in this place that the decision-making time horizon doesn't seem to stretch beyond the next election. When we're talking about preventive health, that's critical because these are long-term projects here in Australia that are so critical to our future.

The result of this is that we are now spending an enormous amount of our money each year on treating potentially preventable diseases. The price tag is truly enormous: each year, $70 billion is spent directly on treating and managing chronic disease. That's more than the Commonwealth spends on schools and defence each year combined. Imagine freeing up some of that budget to spend on the diseases we can't prevent. While we are spending tens of billions on chronic disease each year, we are spending probably 1.6 per cent on preventive health. There's so much more that can and must be done.

'Preventive' is about far more than just TV campaigns; it's about improving active travel in our cities. It's about improving people's understanding of nutrition both in school and beyond. It's about funding mobility classes for seniors. And, as an aside, it's about having advice on how we structure our tax and regulatory settings to drive healthy habits and behaviours. What we need for that is an expert, independent body that is free to focus on prevention and free to provide advice that may be inconvenient to the government of the day.

As a national institution, I believe there's only one place for the new CDC. Canberra is the home of the federal Public Service, the parliament, the Prime Minister, the high commissions, the embassies, our national security agencies, the department of health, the Department of Home Affairs—all the coordinating infrastructure and the levers of power needed to respond to any national threat. Canberra is also home to the Australian National University, our national university, which has a proven track record on training new public health professionals. This is what Canberra was built for, and it would make sense for the CDC to be here in the nation's capital. A CDC in Canberra would also greatly help our local health system, which is struggling with a number of local doctors working part-time in both the Public Service and clinical practice—what is called a portfolio career. I know there is significant appetite to see the CDC here in the ACT and to build something that will change the future of this country.