Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025 and the Australian Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025. Together, they would establish a new national body, the Australian Centre for Disease Control—or CDC, as it's often called—as a statutory non-corporate Commonwealth entity. I really want to emphasise that the coalition is not necessarily opposed to the concept of establishing a centre for disease control. When we think about centres for disease control—or when I do, anyway, and in my analysis of history going back—we look at the United States and the centre for disease control that they set up decades ago and the important role that the US CDC had in identifying what was then known as the AIDS epidemic and then HIV, working collaboratively and in a research oriented way to try and establish where this disease had come from and what was the best approach to dealing with it. That's just one example of where a CDC has operated. There have been other communicable diseases that have become established in various parts of the world that have found their way to the United States, and their CDC has dealt with those. The way the CDCs have operated in the United States in more recent times has perhaps been called into some question. There has been some debate over that. I understand that.

When we think about a CDC, we think about a non-corporate, statutory Commonwealth entity that would exist in Australia. The proposed CDC, as Labor's legislation puts it, would be led by a director-general appointed by and reporting directly to the Minister for Health and Ageing and accountable to the federal parliament. The bill amends a whole heap of existing legislation. When you look at this legislation, it doesn't just say, 'Let's set up a disease control centre and give it some money and a few powers.' It's more wide-ranging than that and, hence, our view that the establishment of this needs a lot more scrutiny than the government is prepared to give it. It amends legislation, including the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and the Biosecurity Act 2015, and it makes transitional provisions to transfer significant functions and powers between the Department of Health, the Chief Medical Officer and the new entity. I'll come back to that in a minute.

When you establish a new body without thinking it through and it interacts with the existing arrangements that we have, you have the potential for confusion and blurred lines of authority and scope. We can agree that strengthening Australia's public health preparedness is an absolute priority. The mechanisms proposed in this bill and the considerable powers that are being transferred warrant far more examination, and so we want a full inquiry into this legislation.

I do believe that this discussion about how we prepare for disease outbreaks in the future is a very important one to have. I think this is an interesting piece of legislation to discuss. But I don't think it's the sort of thing that you rush through in a hurry without using the parliament, both the House and the other place, and all of the things associated with the parliament—the committee inquiry process—to fully examine the best way of setting such a body up. So, if this is so important, why hasn't the government been making the case for it?

Public health is critical to the welfare and safety of all Australians. This is a big shift in management of disease control, and it shouldn't be rushed. It should be carefully considered. It should go out for consultation—much like the inquiries we're having at the moment. We need to get all sorts of experts to come in and talk to us about how this might operate in terms of crossover of various responsibilities and powers. So, until the critical questions are answered—again I emphasise that the coalition and I are not opposed to the concept of a centre for disease control. But the way that it's being rushed through the parliament when it expands such important and critical powers—it needs to be examined more, and we need more information before we can agree to passing it as a piece of legislation.

The Australian people deserve a lot of confidence in their public health institution. They need to know it's effective, transparent—a very important word of which this government does not excel, I might say—and accountable. And we don't need additional layers of secrecy or bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. An issue that needs to be addressed, firstly, is the chief medical officer's role. This bill appears to downgrade the role of the Commonwealth chief medical officer, and then the functions, powers and duties of the director of human biosecurity will rest with a bureaucrat—the secretary of the department. That's despite the fact that Director of Human Biosecurity is a role that requires medical expertise, and that's something that the chief medical officer possesses.

So the fact that you're moving such an area where critical technical understanding is needed from someone who needs to have medical expertise, which the chief medical officer does, to a bureaucrat in the department who does not need to have that technical expertise—we think that shift risks eroding public confidence in key health decisions. There's also an element of a lack of transparency and freedom of information. There are provisions contained in the bill that create concerns around transparency and freedom of information, as I said earlier. This legislation doesn't just create a new body; it makes amendments to those important pieces of legislation. The bill goes out of its way to prevent information being made to the public.

The director-general will have, potentially, extraordinarily broad powers to withhold information, including advice that they consider might cause unreasonable risk or harm or affect the integrity of other government processes. I get worried about those words. I'm not a conspiracy theorist—I think everyone's here to try and do their best—but governments tend to want to protect themselves and, if the director-general has the power to withhold information because there is a concern about 'integrity of other government processes', alarm bells are going off for me there. I think these are words that are being hid behind when refusing to access information. To make it worse, there are no clear appeal rights, external oversights or guarantees that the public or the parliament will ever see advice underpinning critical health conditions.

We've already got some legislation coming into this place which seeks to attack the legislation and principles of freedom of information on which our democracy relies so deeply—by a government that obviously is keen to do some things without public scrutiny. So I can guarantee many people on this side who preserve the principles of freedom of information will be speaking very strongly against that proposed legislation if it indeed does come into the House. And I think the freedom-of-information changes in the legislation of this bill will make an already opaque government even less transparent.

Also in relation to privacy and data sharing, the bill raises concerns about this. Under clause 67, the director-general can issue a data-sharing declaration, and we are very concerned that that would override normal privacy protections.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I advise members that the debate is interrupted now in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and I want to assure you that you will be granted leave to continue your speech to make additional remarks when the debate is resumed.