Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025. This bill establishes the long-promised Australian Centre for Disease Control, a national body to strengthen our ability to prepare for, prevent and respond to health threats. The new CDC will consolidate functions that are currently scattered across the Department of Health and various public health agencies. It will improve coordination between the Commonwealth, state and territories; strengthen surveillance systems; and provide clear, science based advice to governments and the community.

This is a reform that Australia has needed for some time. During COVID-19 we saw how fragmented the public health system was, with each state making decisions in isolation and the Commonwealth struggling to coordinate national responses. We also saw how valuable timely, trusted information could be in maintaining public confidence. A strong, independent CDC can help us do better next time.

But let's be clear. This reform is well overdue. We have been talking about the need for an Australian CDC to be established for almost 40 years. We are the only OECD country to not have a CDC or equivalent body. The government committed to establishing an Australian Centre for Disease Control before the 2022 election, yet we only saw an interim CDC within the department established in January 2024 and are now only just seeing legislation to bring an independent CDC formally into being.

Australians deserve a public health system that is proactive, not reactive. The truth is that prevention and preparedness have too often been the poor cousins of acute care. Australians spend less than two per cent of our total health funding on prevention, compared with more than five per cent in countries like Canada and New Zealand. This is a false economy and it is also wrong for the health of Australians around the country. Every dollar in prevention saves many more dollars in future health costs, and it saves lives.

We have an ageing population. We will have increasing pressures on our healthcare system. Investment in prevention, in living well for longer, is what will maintain the quality of life but also help us manage growing demands on our healthcare system. The Grattan Institute has made this point clearly in its research. The national CDC is an essential platform for shifting our health system towards prevention. It could lead to nationally coordinated efforts on chronic disease, obesity, smoking, alcohol, mental health and vaccination, areas where progress has stalled because responsibilities are split and leadership is lacking.

But this is where I would like to come to some of the challenges of where the government is at the moment, because chronic diseases are only going to be considered after an independent review in 2028. The prevention of chronic non-communicable diseases should be recognised as a core component of the CDC's scope from the initial development of the organisation. I think this is really important. Again, when you look at it from an economic point of view, where, increasingly, is the cost burden in terms of our healthcare system? It is in chronic diseases. That is why the CDC is an opportunity, and that is why putting off including chronic diseases until 2028 is a false economy by the government.

So, while I do support this bill, I want to emphasise that passing it is only the first step. What matters now is how quickly and effectively the CDC becomes operational. It must be genuinely independent, with the ability to provide frank advice to government and to the public, and it must have secure long-term funding. To be effective, it needs to attract and retain the best scientific and public health talent, including through partnerships with universities, state health agencies and international bodies, because we don't need another body that sits on the sidelines; we need a CDC that can drive a cultural shift, that focuses on prevention, that can improve data and transparency and that is going to help Australians live longer and healthier lives and also ensure that we can afford health care. After years of promises, the government must now move with urgency to make this happen. Every year of delay means more preventable disease, more pressure on hospitals and more cost to families and taxpayers alike. The COVID pandemic taught us that the cost of being unprepared is measured not only in dollars but in lives and in livelihoods. The Australian people deserve a system that learns these lessons. The Australian Centre for Disease Control can be that system, but only if it is empowered to act boldly and independently and only if the government matches words with actions, including in its remit.

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