Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025 and the Australia Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025. These bills together establish a new national body, the Australian Centre for Disease Control, as a statutory, non-corporate Commonwealth entity. On its face, this appears to be a straightforward measure on Australian public health preparedness. However, when you look more closely, serious concerns emerge.

The opposition will be moving a number of critical amendments to attempt to resolve these fundamental concerns. We do so not because we oppose strengthening our public health response capability or the idea of improving Australia's pandemic preparedness. On the contrary, the coalition has always supported measures that protect the health and safety of Australians. But we cannot in good conscience support this legislation without resolving the serious issues related to transparency and data privacy in this bill. Transparency is not a burden; it is a duty. Yet this government, which promised greater transparency and integrity, is one of the most secretive governments in our history, and they are proving that once again with the provisions that they've contained in this bill.

Let us remember: Labor first promised to establish a US-style CDC centre almost five years ago, yet, after all that time and more than three years in government, the Albanese government has only now brought this legislation to parliament, with barely three months to go before the promised start date. They still have not outlined to the Australian people how the CDC will avoid some of the major issues we saw during the pandemic, specifically unilateral actions taken by state and territory governments that were often made on the basis of minimal or no health advice at all. Just recently, the former chief health officer in Victoria, Brett Sutton, openly admitted that several state pandemic directives were probably never necessary. These are not trivial issues. They go to the heart of how Australia would respond to the next pandemic.

Provisions contained in this bill also create significant concerns around transparency and freedom of information. In October last year, the Minister for Health, the Hon. Mark Butler, alleged a lack of transparency had driven a decline in trust. Despite this clear recognition from the minister, this bill goes out of its way to prevent information from being made public. While the government claims the CDC's advice will be published by default, the fine print tells a very different story. The director-general will have extraordinarily broad powers to withhold information, including any advice they consider might affect the integrity of other government processes. These are vague and subjective terms that could be used to withhold almost any piece of information the government finds inconvenient to publicly release. There are no clear appeal rights, no external oversight and no guarantee that the public or the parliament will ever see the advice underpinning critical health decisions.

This is another example of the disturbing trend of this government hiding from transparency and accountability. These concerns have been raised by experts and the government's own Information Commissioner. In the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' submission to the inquiry, it said that these provisions:

… may erode the transparency needed to inform authorities based on balancing infection control with peri-operative continuity of care.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner also noted:

… the CDC's determinations of whether documents are exempt under the FOI Act, and therefore not required to be published, would not be subject to any overarching review or accountability mechanisms.

That is not transparency.

This is another concerning move from a government that has proposed a truth tax on FOI applications. That is why we will be moving an amendment to the bill to remove these proposed additional provisions which strengthen the government's already concerning level of secrecy. Even with the approval of these provisions, the CDC and director-general can still rely on existing provisions in the FOI Act that apply to other agencies, which are already quite broad.

The bill also raises concerns about privacy and data-sharing. Under clause 67, the director-general can issue a data-sharing declaration that overrides normal privacy protections. While this may be necessary in a true public health emergency, there are no clear safeguards, no independent oversight and no limits on which agencies can receive that data. Our amendment would put in place additional and independent oversight of the release of sensitive information to ensure it is reasonable and proportionate, which is imperative.

The bill also downgrades the role of the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer by transferring all functions, powers and duties of the Director of Human Biosecurity to the Secretary of the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, instead of the CMO. This is despite Director of Human Biosecurity being a role that requires medical expertise. This shift risks undermining public confidence by placing key health decisions in the hands of individuals without clinical background, and it risks undermining Australia's trust in the CMO and Deputy CMO roles, which performed effectively during the COVID pandemic. Indeed, Professor Michael Kidd, who served as the Deputy CMO during the pandemic has been appointed to the role of CMO under this government—an appointment the coalition supports in recognition of his strong contribution to our pandemic response.

The Director-General of the CDC will also chair the CDC's advisory council, effectively advising themselves. Multiple stakeholders have rightly pointed out that this structure contradicts best practice and invites conflicts of interest. That is why the coalition will move an amendment to put in place an additional requirement that all data-sharing declarations must be approved by the Office of the Information Commissioner prior to execution.

We should remember that Australia ranked second in the world for pandemic and epidemic preparedness in the 2021 John Hopkins Global Health Security Index. Our pandemic response was described internationally as the gold standard. So the question remains for the government to explain how this CDC will improve Australia's approach and add value to existing structures. Labor have had five years to make the case for this policy and they have still failed to do so. Now they are attempting to ram this policy through in five minutes. Until the critical issues that I have outlined in this contribution are resolved, the coalition cannot support the establishment of this CDC, designed in secrecy, designated significant powers and shielded from transparency. The Australian people deserve confidence that their public health institutions are robust, transparent and accountable. They do not need additional layers of bureaucracy and secrecy.

For these reasons, the opposition calls on the government to support our amendments to the bill, which are fundamental to the operation of transparency and good governance. The government must put their own rhetoric into action, improve transparency and restore public trust by supporting our amendments or we cannot support this bill.