Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025, Australian Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls) (16:24): I'm in continuation. As I was saying earlier in the day, the coalition is not necessarily opposed to a centre for disease control, but the implementation of such a body is a fundamental change to the operations of the department of health and the Chief Medical Officer. The responsibilities have changed.

We think such a big change requires a lot more scrutiny than it has been given so far. There are changes to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and the Biosecurity Act 2015—changes to people's responsibility. We think that there needs to be much more oversight about how that legislation is developed.

As I was saying, the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill and the Australian Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill raise some concerns about privacy and data sharing. In clause 67, the director-general can issue a data-sharing declaration. This overrides normal privacy protections.

Now, that may be necessary in a public health emergency, but what are the safeguards against government overreach? What are the limits on which agencies can retrieve people's data? The privacy of people's data is always important, but, I would argue, in the context of centre for diseases control it is even more important than in a number of other areas where privacy is very important.

I suppose what we're thinking about when we think about a centre for disease control—this should always be the question that any side of government or any member of parliament asks when a piece of legislation is presented—is: what is the problem we are trying to solve? And I would argue that Australia is already well served. We ranked second in the world for pandemic and epidemic preparedness in the 2021 Johns Hopkins Global Health Security Index.

Our pandemic response was described internationally as the gold standard. It was a very, very difficult time for a lot of Australians, but I think the then federal government handled things very well. I wouldn't say the same about the state governments.

As a Victorian, I endured some of the failures of the Victorian government. Enhancing our preparedness is a noble goal, but we already have what many would describe as a world-class framework. Now, I'm not saying that that framework can't be improved, but the development of the Centre for Disease Control is a large step, and it requires a lot of thought and a lot of oversight.

I don't think we're there yet, and the coalition doesn't think we're there yet. So the opposition wants to pursue answers to these issues through a Senate inquiry. We're interested in knowing how the CDC, the Centre for Disease Control, will operate.

How will it improve pandemic preparedness, and how will it integrate with existing public-health architecture, which I would say already services Australia quite well? It has been set up by governments of all persuasions over a number of years. I think a lot of Australians will share our concerns, but, despite the significance of this legislation and the scope of change—and there are secrecy and privacy concerns—the government has, in the Senate affairs legislation committee, refused to hold a single public hearing of inquiry into the bill.

This is a bill that will make changes in relation to freedom of information legislation and the Biosecurity Act, which are some very, very important pieces of legislation. If we're going to change those, we need some oversight of the parliament, whether it be here in the House of Representatives or in other place. Experts and the public have been denied any opportunity to be heard, and we believe this is unacceptable and another example of a disturbing trend from this government to hide from transparency and accountability.

That concern will be echoed in the coming sitting weeks of parliament, when new legislation around freedom of information gets introduced into this place. They have already been described as a government that is not performing well in the area of transparency, and now they seek to put legislation into this place to give them even more cover. We don't think that's a good thing for the Australian people.

We don't think that's a good thing for our democracy. The freedom-of-information legislation that's coming in is an example of that, and this Centre for Disease Control is an example of that. Debate interrupted.