Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In answer to the question to me from Senator Milne today, I want to add additional information which may assist Senator Milne. The Australian government has sufficient capacity—through bodies including the Australian Health Protection Committee, the Public Health Laboratory Network and the Communicable Diseases Network Australia—to work with states and territories to ensure early detection and appropriate management of communicable disease threats. It is acknowledged that the ANU program has made an important contribution to building capacity in epidemiology and public health. However, this is but one course among many now available in Australia. This government continues to support training of public health physicians as part of its specialist training program, which will increase by another 400, totalling 900 specialist training places by 2014. I think I indicated in the primary answer to Senator Milne that in fact we do have capacity elsewhere. I think it was helpful to lay out where that capacity is. In dealing with infectious disease outbreak management, in addition to routine surveillance there are a number of other systems which are implemented once a serious outbreak or pandemic is detected, such as the Department of Health and Ageing, which has a national response process which I will not go into now.