Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We debate a lot of things in this place. We move new legislation that becomes law and we set up new institutions. Understandably, there is sometimes confusion or not necessarily an appreciation of the significance of the moment, but I think this bill represents an important long-term contribution to the better health of the nation. We have said, through the course of a once-in-a-generation pandemic, that we would learn a lot of lessons. Now it's time to back that up with hard evidence. I would submit to the House that this is one of those cases that demonstrates just that. We've moved beyond the talk, and we're setting in place something that has been called for for nearly 40 years. The reality is that many people recognised we needed such a centre to help us with moments in time where there were threats to public health at a large scale and that we needed a coordinating body that could best inform and draw together efforts to combat those moments in time where public health was under threat.

Clearly, having something like the Australian Centre for Disease Control is one of those investments in the long-term health of the nation. It will be an independent, non-corporate Commonwealth entity, with the bill establishing the roles, the powers, the functions and the duty of the agency and its director-general. It was a commitment made by former shadow health minister Chris Bowen that then continued to be championed by the now Minister for Health, Mark Butler. I think it's an important and enduring part of our long-term public health architecture. An interim CDC was established in January last year, and this bill will bring to life what's required, particularly in transferring public health responsibilities to the director-general of the CDC and for the Biosecurity Act, the National Health Security Act and the National Occupational Respiratory Disease Registry Act. It will have a number of other important functions to be embedded in this CDC.

The CDC idea was brought to the fore during this last pandemic, which we had to all endure. As indicated, we've had to go through these once-in-a-generation pandemics. Often, people would remind us of the experience of our forebears through Spanish influenza back in the last century and how devastating that was. We've had other major public health threats as well. Sometimes the distance between those events means that our collective memory fades. We don't necessarily put the same amount of investment in being able to protect and prevent the impact of some of these things on the broader public. Or there are, understandably, advances in care and containment that would not require of us the same level of approach as has previously been experienced.

However, I think there are some important things that do need to be reflected on. My contribution in this debate was brought on by listening to the former deputy prime minister and member for Riverina, who I've got a lot of regard for. Even though we have differences of opinion, I do respect his contribution to the debate and his contribution in the last government, particularly being part of a government responding to COVID. However, while I might have regard for him, we do have different opinions. We have different opinions on the way that the COVID pandemic was managed by the former government. I think it is important that some of those differences be put on the record.

The former deputy prime minister may be proud of Australia's response to COVID, and there were a lot of elements to be proud about relative to other nations. What we saw in terms of their responses and the impacts on their populations was pretty significant. But perspective also gives you a different vantage point from which to review past events, and the history, as it was experienced in our part of the world and in Western Sydney, was different. I also think it's important to recognise that the incoming coalition government of 2013 did make cuts to pandemic preparedness that had been worked on back in 2008 and 2009 by the government before them, because people recognised that you need to. Even though it might not affect you straight away or during your course of government, at some point it will, and it's important to replenish the institutions that manage it.

When we started to see evidence of COVID emerging in late 2019 and early 2020, the concern about what effect this would have started to mount. I found it a bit hard, as a member of this parliament, to see a government response to COVID relegated to a dixer—a three-minute response in question time—as opposed to taking the serious step of convening a ministerial statement that would walk through what the risks were and what things needed to be done to help prepare the nation. I was critical at the time, too, of the former health minister. I appreciate that he did undertake a number of things at that point in time, but the country should have been taken into the confidence of the government and walked through what was being done ahead of what we actually experienced.

We had leaders of this former government encourage attendance at mass events when scientists and medical practitioners were saying that that was the worst thing to do—to attend major sporting events and be part of a potential distribution of COVID. They then had to walk that back. We tried to get vaccines developed here. Unfortunately, it didn't work, but I commend the former government for encouraging that. But then, when it was clear other jurisdictions were developing the vaccine and we needed to order the vaccine in large numbers for the population, that didn't happen, and we were in the back of the queue in terms of vaccine purchase. I don't need to mention the COVIDSafe app in any great degree; that did not work out as a great contact-tracing platform. There was a $60 billion rounding error on JobKeeper, and not everyone got access to JobKeeper. I remember talking in the parliament about workers at places like dnata who were in the electorate I represent and who couldn't get JobKeeper and were laid off and couldn't maintain contact with their work. I want to thank the Transport Workers Union for maintaining the focus on that issue. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the former government would not amend its JobKeeper provisions to allow for people to be sustained in their employment.

I spoke in this place about the docking of the Ruby Princess. I have friends I went to school with whose parents were on the Ruby Princess and died as a result of getting COVID on there. There were a whole lot of questions about why it was allowed to be docked at that point and why those aboard were just released en masse—2,000 people—into the community when there was evidence that COVID was being experienced on that vessel.

The New South Wales government did a good job on a lot of things, but I had big differences with them about locking down Western Sydney and dividing the city in half, and it seemed to be accepted by the former federal government. There was a saying at the time, 'We're all in this together,' but the former federal government did undertake partisan attacks on state jurisdictions. I remember the Palaszczuk government in Queensland calling for support to set up quarantine facilities. They couldn't get anywhere. The Victorian government was continually chipped and criticised by senior representatives of the former Morrison government. The federal government joined with Clive Palmer to put pressure on the WA government to bring down its borders and stop the lockdown that protected that state. That happened at the time. It was astounding. No Western Australian forgot the fact that Scott Morrison and Christian Porter, the Attorney-General, sided with Clive Palmer to bring down that lockdown. That was staggering.

So it seemed to me we were all in it together as long as you voted for the coalition, and I don't think that's acceptable from a public health perspective. That is a significant and, I appreciate, offensive remark for members of the coalition. I get that. But that's how it was felt. When they locked down Western Sydney—and from my recollection no national or state leader visited when that lockdown occurred—people at the time felt like they had been discriminated against and racially profiled because of where they lived. That was absolutely a point that was raised in a report by the Australian Catholic University and the United Workers Union, who said that people from Western Sydney suburbs felt targeted and racially discriminated against compared to Sydney's affluent eastern suburbs residents, who were allowed greater freedoms in the lockdown. So we had that.

The other thing that got to me was that, at the point of lockdown, the supports that were necessary for the region going through the lockdown—a region that contained essential workers who sustained the city during COVID—were not provided. Here are some examples. In Mount Druitt, which I represent, we fought for ages to get a vaccination hub and were denied it. There was no support out of the federal government or the state government, the Berejiklian government, to get that vaccine hub. The Premier was questioned repeatedly about this, at a time when 3,000 people a week were getting infected. The hardest thing for me is hearing stories about kids orphaned because both their parents died as a result of COVID. That was too hard. That is still, for me, a scar in my mind for the people who I represent. They didn't get the support that they needed. Mental health support hubs were set up in Liberal electorates but not in the areas that were hardest hit. That is a fact you can go and see. In the electorate of Lindsay—the state electorate of Penrith—they got a mental health support hub. Why wasn't this done across Western Sydney? It shouldn't be that way.

Public health is too important to be politicised. The reason why we're proud of our public health system and our universal health care is that it reflects a value of this nation. Australia says that, regardless of your income or where you live, we should fight to make sure you get the health care that you need. I'm proud of the fact that our country values that and that it fights for it. To be frank—putting aside the politics—both sides of politics get the importance of Medicare and a universal healthcare system. We may have different levels of commitment to it, but I think we have now gone beyond thinking that Medicare will be dismantled. It's about the level of investment in it. But I did feel really strongly, and I still feel really strongly, about the fact that Western Sydney was treated differently. We didn't have national or state leaders in, and we didn't have the supports that were needed, and we didn't have the coordination required to help people in need. The other thing, to talk about salt in the wound, was that the areas that were hit hardest by COVID were also hit hardest by COVID related fines. In Mount Druitt, nearly $1.4 million in fines were handed out to people in the areas I represent, some of which are huge low-socioeconomic areas. So they were not given the support—the vax hubs and the mental health hubs—and they were locked down, treated differently and fined hard.

The reason I speak on this bill is that, if we've learnt anything out of that pandemic, it's the need to better coordinate, to not treat people in different regions differently and to be able to do what we can to coordinate a response—particularly standing up greater levels of support for vulnerable communities. In large part, the way to do that, I would argue to the House, is setting up something like a CDC that can do just that and work across jurisdictions. I hope, when we say we've learned the lessons of the pandemic, we genuinely mean it, and I'm proud of the fact that this CDC is evidence we may be doing something to do better.

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