Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Around 6.4 million hospitalisations each year, 55 per cent of the total, are due to chronic diseases, costing around $82 billion a year. Fact: about half of these are preventable. Another fact: in 2024, over one third of the total disease burden in Australia could have been prevented by reducing exposure to modifiable risk factors. Every dollar invested in prevention yields around $14.30 in healthcare savings and broader economic benefits, yet Australia currently invests only two per cent of the health budget on prevention, significantly less than the UK at five to six per cent and Canada at seven to eight per cent. Fact: we need to do better. The 2023 Intergenerational report makes it clear that, to meet escalating health demands and costs, we need a sustainable healthcare system that invests effectively in preventive health.

The Productivity Commission's recent report Delivering quality care more efficiently recommends establishing a national prevention investment framework to support investment in prevention. The benefits of disease prevention for a population's health are manifold, including longer life expectancy, reduced incidence and severity of chronic diseases, improved mental health, better educational outcomes, improved employment prospects, and greater quality of life and sense of wellbeing. Failing to act comes at a cost in terms of both our health and our wealth. Here are some more numbers. In 2023, Australians lost 4.4 million years of healthy life due to chronic conditions. By 2030, lost labour force participation from chronic disease is projected to cost $68 billion.

Despite having strong national health strategies in the National Preventive Health Strategy and the National Obesity Strategy, the federal government has failed to fully fund and implement them. Currently, one quarter of Australian children are overweight or obese, placing them on a trajectory towards chronic disease. For adults, that figure rises to two thirds. Obesity already costs our health system around $12 billion annually. Without decisive action, this is projected to rise to $88 billion by 2032. The obesity epidemic, in turn, is causing rapid growth in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus, a leading cause of heart disease, stroke, amputation, kidney failure and blindness.

For the past three years, I've been calling for the government to implement two immediate policy mechanisms to help combat this crisis: the restriction of junk food advertising on TV, radio and social media; and the implementation of a reformulation levy on sugar sweetened beverages. Children aged five to eight are exposed to over 800 junk food ads on TV each year. Restricting junk food advertising during children's viewing hours is a commonsense, evidence based intervention that has been implemented in dozens of countries worldwide. Modelling suggests that banning these ads between 6 am and 9.30 pm would save $780 million in healthcare costs over the lifetime of the 2010 population.

The 2023 parliamentary health committee inquiry into diabetes mellitus in Australia recommended a graded levy on sugar sweetened beverages, including soft drinks, energy drinks and fruit drinks, something that would drive companies to reformulate them to contain less sugar. Health stakeholders including the AMA, the Public Health Association of Australia, the George institute, ACOSS and others support the reformulation levy, and AMA modelling suggests it could generate $4 billion in revenue over four years, which could be reinvested in health promotion and preventive health.

The National Preventive Health Strategy estimates that, by addressing the wider determinants of health, 170,000 Australians could enter the workforce, generating $8 billion in extra earnings and annual savings of $4 billion in welfare payments. So what are we waiting for? By increasing investment in preventive health to five per cent of total health spending and prioritising evidence based prevention measures, the Australian government could reduce long-term healthcare costs, boost productivity and improve community wellbeing. That's a fact.

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