Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I visit a lot of beef farms as part of representing the electorate of Forrest. Frankly this chamber has the same sort of aroma in this debate—boy, oh boy, is there some revisionism going on. The member for Barton outlined that she was in her jimjams during the onset of the COVID pandemic in this country. My experience couldn't have been more different, because I was in a crisis management team for a large Western Australia corporate. I was running my own small business and, shortly thereafter, was just a short walk from here in the Senate chamber as part of the Morrison government and part of the response to a national crisis that I think that then deputy prime minister and member for Riverina very articulately described in this place just now.

This wasn't a sort of situation for our country where some cheap shots from the cheap seats from those opposite went unnoticed. In fact, if we step back through history, there's that little old thing called Hansard, which very accurately depicts what members of the Labor party were saying at the time—not what they're saying now. The reality is, first of all, that JobKeeper was a bad program. When it became clear it was a success and when then Treasurer Josh Frydenberg started to wind the program back in, displaying the fiscal prudence that I think we needed, Jim Chalmers, our Treasurer today, came out and said: 'No, no, no. We need to keep this program going.' The reality, of course, is that, as we wound that program back and employment in Australia reached record highs and unemployment dropped to record lows, somehow we still had it wrong. I think it's worth remembering these sorts of lessons as we consider the Labor government's proposal for the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025 and the Australian Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025 that are in front of this chamber today, because it's always good to look at what Labor do not what Labor say they do.

These bills, in conjunction, would establish a new national body as a statutory, non-corporate Commonwealth entity. Those of us on the side of the House actually believe that governments run the country. Ministers of the Crown, being part of an elected government, make decisions. They take advice, of course. The member for Riverina described in detail today what it is like to sit around that table at a time of national crisis and receive frank and fearless advice from a world-class public service and to take into account that advice and make the decisions that will ultimately set our country's trajectory. I think the thing that's missing in this debate is a little bit—the member for Barton touched on data. Let's look at the data, because, at the time of trying to institute a US-style CDC in Australia, I distantly remember looking at freezer trucks on the streets of Manhattan full of dead Americans. That was at a time when the virus was not circulating in the Australian community. So I think it's just absolutely mad, to be honest, to look at a country that, in the initial stages of the pandemic, feared so badly and then use that as a case study for what we might institute in this country.

This is to be led by a director-general, appointed and reporting directly to the Minister for Health, and apparently it will be accountable to the federal parliament. No-one is more accountable to the parliament than the Prime Minister and the cabinet of the elected government of the day. Why is it that we also need to start fiddling with the Freedom of Information Act and the Biosecurity Act and making significant transfers of powers and functions between the department of health, the Chief Medical Officer and this proposed new entity? While strengthening the Australian public's health preparedness is of course a priority for any government, the mechanisms proposed in this bill and the considerable powers that they transfer warrant far closer examination than what's being ponied up by this government.

Apparently, this is a government that's more transparent than any other we've had, yet we know that we are also about to start talking about the truth tax and the clamping down on freedom of information—the further restrictions we've seen. The same mob over there are the ones imposing nondisclosure agreements before they'll sit down and talk to any stakeholders about proposed legislation. It's just outrageous. I say to the chamber: look at what the Labor Party do in government, not what they say they do in government.

They might have promised a US-style CDC five years ago. Yet, after all that time and coming into their fourth year in government, the Albanese government has only now brought this legislation to parliament, barely three months before the proposed start date. The very real question for the House is: why is it unreasonable for that legislation to go to a Senate inquiry? In my many conversations with members of the former government after the COVID pandemic had subsided on what lessons had been learned, a common refrain around this building was, 'I had no idea just how powerful the Biosecurity Act made a single person in our country.' When that legislation was debated in this place, persons who expressed unease about it were told: 'Don't to worry. It'll never happen.' It did happen, and extraordinary powers were conferred on a single person.

That sort of conferral should be the subject of rigorous parliamentary scrutiny and debate and extensive consultation with the Australian community. Yet here we are. No doubt, a dirty deal has been done with the Greens in the Senate, and this will be crunched through like everything else. But the question stands. If you are part of the most transparent government ever, if you do believe in the conventions of this place, why won't you refer this legislation to a Senate inquiry—not a stunt one but a proper one that goes around the country and collects the lessons learned from the pandemic to understand what happens when so much power is conferred into the hands of so few?

The government and their Greens allies on the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee have refused to hold a single public hearing inquiry into this bill. Look at what they do, not what they say they do. With over 40 submissions to the committee, with many proposing substantive amendments, the committee has simply denied experts and Australians any opportunity to be heard in the context of an open parliamentary inquiry. It's unacceptable and another example of a disturbing trend from this government to hide from transparency and to shrink from accountability. This Prime Minister was the one who said: 'I'm going to show up. I'm going to be accountable.' Yet, at every opportunity, it's roadblocks and confidentiality agreements. It's soon to be a truth tax, a fee for a simple freedom of information request. It shows that this government is more interested in political box-ticking than engaging in genuine consultation. When it comes to matters as profound for this country as the sorts of powers being conferred to the proposed CDC as they are, I fear greatly for where we are headed.

So there have been five years to make the case for this policy, and I reckon that, if I walk down the main street of any of the towns in my electorate, literally no-one in a hundred would tell me that this was a priority. I think no-one would tell me that they were aware of this proposal. If I spent five minutes chatting with them about exactly what was proposed, I have no doubt in my mind that they would consider our request to have an open inquiry into this to be very reasonable, because, far from it being designed in secrecy, shielded from transparency, designated with very significant powers and recently with an unclear role in the existing ecosystem of our health infrastructure, it just seems bizarre that we are being criticised for asking for a little light, a little time and a little consultation on this bill.

I'm very proud to be part of a Liberal-National opposition that will not be supporting these bills in the House in light of these unresolved concerns and prior to a full Senate inquiry into the bill, which is, frankly, critical to understand how the proposed CDC will operate, how its very serious powers will operate and how it will be accountable to the Australian parliament and the Australian people in the future. The Australian people deserve confidence that their public health institutions are effective, transparent and accountable. So much of what the member for Barton was banging on about in terms of lockdowns and confusion came from state governments. We've got to remember the states made the Commonwealth. There wasn't a single power that was ceded by the Commonwealth to the states in imposing the draconian limitations on very basic freedoms that we experienced across the country, and yet here we are contemplating just ramming through something that will confer those sorts of powers on a new, unknown and untested institution. It just seems to me to be truly bizarre.

So we're calling on the government to hold the hearing and to provide some answers—pretty simple stuff, really. When we're downgrading the role of the Chief Medical Officer and transferring the functions, powers and duties of the Director of Human Biosecurity to the secretary of the department, who is, let's face it, a bureaucrat—they're not elected. They're not accountable to the Australian people in the way that a minister of the crown or a decision-maker in government normally is. This is despite the Director of Human Biosecurity being a role that requires the medical expertise that the CMO possesses. This shift risks eroding public confidence in key health decisions by placing them in the hands of bureaucrats without a clinical background and risks undermining Australia's trusted CMO and Deputy CMO roles, which I think all reasonable people would agree performed effectively during the COVID pandemic.

While we're on the performance of state governments, it's worth noting that this is in the context of a health crisis in my home state of WA. September saw a new record for ambulance ramping at WA hospitals, and yet state and federal Labor governments—this government—are bickering with each other over who is to blame. Their focus, rather than on fixing the crumbling health infrastructure in Western Australia, is on this unknown, untested and, frankly, unclear organisation. I've had a local grandmother contact my office to voice her concerns after calling an ambulance in my electorate. After being stuck in the back of that ambulance for hours on the ramp outside the hospital, unable to get in, they finally were admitted and then were shifted between rooms three times on the first night.

To pretend that the priorities for Australian health are invoking an American-style CDC when there are these sorts of real problems—and I could go on all day about this—further underscores that we have to look at what the Labor Party does, not what it says. Professor Michael Kidd, who served as the Deputy CMO during the pandemic and has been appointed to the role of CMO under this government, which is an appointment the coalition supports in recognition of his strong contribution to our pandemic response, is going to be undermined by this CDC. We go from someone who has a track record and a clinical background, who has served his country with distinction in providing frank and fearless advice to governments during a time of crisis, to a faceless bureaucrat. It just doesn't make sense. When we look at the lack of transparency around this bill, there are, as I've said, serious concerns. In October last year, the Minister for Health alleged that a lack of transparency had driven a decline in trust. Easy to say, Minister! Despite that recognition, the bill goes out of its way to prevent information from being made public, which, again, underscores that you should look at what they do, not what they say they're doing.

While the government claims that the CDC's advice will be published by default—that sounds great in a news grab—the fine print tells a different story. The director-general will have extraordinarily broad powers to withhold information, including any advice that they consider might cause 'unreasonable risk of harm' or affect 'the integrity of other government processes'. If that does not set the scene for some sort of political cover-up, I don't know what does. These are vague and subjective terms that could be used to withhold almost any piece of information a future government might find inconvenient to publicly release. There are no clear appeal rights, no external oversight and no guarantee that the public or even this parliament will see the advice underpinning critical health decisions. This is not transparency. It is not an improvement. And it is not the sort of step that we should take as a country without public scrutiny, public consultation and a clear-minded conviction from this parliament that it is the right thing to do.

Let's not forget: we rank second in the world for pandemic and epidemic preparedness in the Johns Hopkins Global Health Security Index. Our pandemic response was described internationally as gold standard. While we support efforts to enhance our preparedness, we must do so in the recognition that our existing framework was world leading.

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