Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I absolutely agree with you; it should do that. Climate change is the threat multiplier. It puts pressure on every single system and sector of society. It's not just about heatwaves; it's not just about heat stress. There's so much more going on when it comes to climate change. It will certainly dovetail and support the work that our government has done in creating a national health and climate strategy. It will be complementary to that.

I want to issue a note of caution here, though. During the pandemic I became an activist. I was a science based activist. I spoke up for the health and welfare of healthcare workers, because we were not being looked after during that pandemic. It was really difficult. It was existential for us. It was existential for patients and people in the community, but it was absolutely existential for the front line.

I came away from that with learnings that I think the CDC needs to take into account. Firstly, we need to protect the workforce. The healthcare workforce is mission critical to the functioning of this nation. Protect the workforce; ring fence the workforce. It is the asset. It's not the experts, necessarily; it's the workforce. The workforce is everything. Protect the asset.

We should not be in a situation where PPE is being rationed in hospitals, aged-care facilities or clinics. We should not be in a situation where surgeons are jury-rigging their masks and literally sticking micropore tape on the edges of their mask because they have not been given the right PPE. We should not be in a situation where paramedics are having their masks and goggles fog up while they are resuscitating patients during a pandemic. That is exactly what happened. We should not be in a situation where healthcare workers are purchasing their own PPE, at considerable cost, because it's simply not provided by their place of work. We should not be in a situation where any healthcare worker is gaslit or censured in a system that privileges optics over work health and safety. Healthcare workers don't ask for much, but they want to be kept safe at work, especially when they are faced with a life-threatening, infectious disease.

I would say to an incoming CDC leadership: actually take some time to think about enacting the precautionary principle. If you're not sure, go to the highest level and then work backwards as the science evolves. Failure to do so puts lives at risk. If you are going to put frontline healthcare workers' lives at risk, what you are wishing for is collapse of the health system, burnout amongst staff and departures of staff from the health system, which just puts additional stress on other staff. You end up enacting a downward spiral, which is exactly what we saw and which was a mess that we cleaned up when we came to government.

Secondly, we need to ensure that we have a diversity of voices around the table, such as the voices of disability. We should make sure we have adequate representation around that advisory committee. We must have voices from the front line—from the nurses, the doctors, the paramedics and the allied health professionals. We must ensure that these voices are heard. If not, we end up with groupthink. We end up with leaders who are making decisions on behalf of people who are actually in the hot zone, and they may not always get it right. So listen to that wisdom from the edge. It is really, really important. It is a protective factor against making bad decisions.

Thirdly, we need to be open facing. A future CDC needs to be open facing to the public and listen to the workforce and to the science. It's important that a CDC responds to evolving science. In particular, I cite clean air. We spent far too long, right round this country, wiping down surfaces, which would have been fine if we had had a pandemic of gastro, but we didn't. We had a pandemic of a respiratory virus that was travelling through the air, and it was too late before that was adequately (1) recognised and (2) addressed.