Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is with some reluctance that I bring on this matter of public importance—reluctance because I am someone who has worked almost their entire life in the public health and preventative health portfolios. It is probably one of the most important areas in health to try and prevent diseases, to work with public health organisations on what works in prevention and to try and manage those conditions. But never before have I seen a circumstance where almost every public health organisation in the country is coming to me to express its concern about the Assistant Minister for Health, who has responsibility in this government for prevention. Never before have I seen public health officers across the country from a breadth of organisations show this level of concern about a minister this early, for a start, and certainly about a minister who has responsibility for—

Mr Fletcher interjecting—

one of the most important areas for health.

We all know that the greatest challenges we are facing in health today are those conditions that are preventable. Clearly the member opposite does not understand this or care about preventive health or what his assistant minister has done. We all know that the greatest challenges are in the area of prevention. We know that some of the greatest gains that we can have in the health space are in prevention, particularly to reduce obesity, to reduce diabetes and to reduce risk factors of cardiovascular disease and stroke—a very important area.

Let us have a look at what has happened recently in this space. When we were in government, we engaged Neal Blewett to undertake a comprehensive look at food labelling and, in particular, at what you could do in the space of food labelling to look at health promotion and prevention. One of the recommendations that Neal Blewett came up with was that there should be a traffic-light labelling system on the front of all packaged foods.

In government, Labor did not agree with this. We took the decision that we would not accept that recommendation. But we did understand that there was a clear demand from the Australian public for better information about the foods that they consume, particularly as we were starting to see a substantial increase in processed foods and packaged foods in our supermarkets. We knew that consumers did not understand the daily intake guide, the thumbnail sketch that you currently see on the front of all of the packages. So we agreed that there was a need to establish an interpretive front-of-pack labelling system but that it would not be traffic-light labelling or the daily intake guide.

When the government proposed this, many public health groups were hardly willing to participate in the process. They were unhappy with our decision not to back traffic-light labelling. They did not want to sit down with the food industry at all, but we managed to get them to the table. They said at the time that there was no possibility of getting any agreement with industry and no possibility of developing an interpretive system that had not already been explored that would provide consumers with accurate, truthful and clear information.

Instead, we saw two years of cooperation, two years of detailed work led, quite deliberately, by the Secretary of the Department of Health, Jane Halton, to bring industry together and to bring public health officials together to come up with such an interpretive system. That interpretive system is the star-rating system, a very good system. I encourage people, if you can actually find out any information about it, to look at it—and I am happy to share it with you. This was a very important piece of work. The system continued to be developed, and it was agreed to by all states and territories in June last year. The substantive system was agreed to in June. The system continued to be finalised after June. Communications material was developed. The website was developed. A steering group continued that work to develop the website. It was not just Labor on a frolic; in fact, most of the state governments which endorsed the system—an important system—were not Labor governments.

Subsequently, there was a meeting in December of the food regulatory ministers. At that meeting there was no substantive decision required about the health star-rating system. There were some technical details. The calculator had to be agreed to. But what we know from that meeting's communique is that Senator Nash, the Assistant Minister for Health, attempted to get that food star-rating system stopped. We see from the communique that what she did was to instruct her department to develop a cost-benefit analysis—not something that had any bearing on the system's further development, because it was a system agreed to by all state and territory ministers.

What is the reason that Senator Nash has not supported this system? Why on earth would she instruct her chief of staff, someone who we now know—and we now know she was aware—was the owner of a company that lobbied for the junk food industry, to take down a website providing information about this voluntary, agreed system? Why would she do such a thing?

Information about this has only come into the public domain because it was first reported by Amy Corderoy, the Health Editor in TheSydney Morning Herald. We have seen reports today that at least one of the companies that would receive a less favourable rating under the new system than its competitor products is one of the very companies that Senator Nash's former chief of staff represented.

Senator Nash is the minister who is supposed to represent the preventative health sector. In the words of The Sydney Morning Herald political editor, Peter Hartcher, Senator Nash 'is the Assistant Minister for Health but behaved like the minister for big sugar and alcohol'. That is a damning, damning indictment of a minister and it is certainly a damning indictment of a minister responsible for health promotion and prevention.

The minister's big achievements in her portfolio to date have been to rip down a website promoting an agreed, voluntary food labelling system and to shut down the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council. ADCA had been providing advice to government since Menzies was Prime Minister. But the government did not agree with what they had to say, so what did they do? They got rid of them. Why did Senator Nash insist that the website be taken down? We have heard three excuses. The first was that it was a draft and it was not ready. I can tell you: that is absolutely and simply not true and it has not been repeated by the Department of Health. The only person who, unfortunately, has repeated that was the Prime Minister, yesterday, and he was incorrect. The second excuse was that the system was not in place, so it would be confusing. The reason the system was not in place was that the website was actually required to be placed up so that industry could have access to the technical material, so that they could start using the system and so that consumers could be provided with information about the system.

The third excuse for the website being removed was that there was, apparently, unanimous agreement at the December meeting to do a cost-benefit analysis. A simple look at the communique will tell you that that is wrong. We have now got the South Australian and the Tasmanian health ministers confirming that this is absolutely incorrect. Senator Nash's decision to instruct her department to undertake a cost-benefit analysis is a matter entirely for her. That information may help to inform evaluation of the system; it had absolutely no bearing on the establishment of the system—already agreed in June. The minister has continued to allow that statement to be on record in the Senate and she has continued to refuse to back down from that misleading statement.

The whole point of the website was to provide information to consumers and information to industry to develop the system. We know from further information that has continued to come out—it is well documented—that the minister's former chief of staff was a director of a company that lobbied for the junk food industry. Indeed, he appears to have retained his directorship in the company right up until his resignation a fortnight ago—a resignation which, he claimed, had been done with a clear conscience. Contrary to what the Prime Minister said, that he had done something wrong, the chief of staff resigned with a completely clear conscience. It says a lot about the minister's priorities when it comes to preventive health that she should employ a junk food lobbyist as her chief of staff in the first place, let alone that she should allow that chief of staff to influence a decision as important as the front-of-pack health star-rating system.

I finish where I started. This is the minister in the government who is responsible for health promotion and prevention. I have never seen a circumstance where public health organisations from across the country, en masse, are calling on the government to reinstate the health food star-rating system and have no confidence in this government's minister. (Time expired)

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