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

Senator ANANDA-RAJAH (Victoria) (13:17): I rise in support of the establishment of an Australian CDC. I've got to say, Senator Antic, it was pretty hard for me to listen to what you just said. That tirade was next level, particularly for someone who was on the front line during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I was a healthcare professional on that front line with my colleagues, wrapped in PPE. I put it to you that you get to stand here, and I get to stand here, thanks to the decisions that were made by healthcare professionals, public health specialists and government. And I also say to all those Victorians: yes, it was really hard; I completely agree it was hard.

But the decisions that were made by the then Victorian government meant that our hospitals in Victoria did not collapse. We remained functional and we were able to still see patients, some of whom died. The fact that next week I will be celebrating my father's 85th birthday means that we did something right as a country.

Yes, there were a lot of things that went wrong and that we want to learn from. And this is why we are, as a Labor government, fulfilling a promise that we took to two elections: to establish a national centre for disease control. We will now be aligned with other OECD countries in the world who actually have a centre like this so that we do not have to go through some of that confusing, contradictory advice that we had during the pandemic.

I won't stand here, as a Victorian, and watch people like Senator Antic—and others, no doubt, during the course of today—tear down the decisions that were made. It was tough; it was really tough. I saw enough people die on the front line, often people who did not get vaccinated.

They either ended up gasping for air—and we were unable to save them—or they ended up with chronic health conditions thereafter. So we are establishing this long-awaited CDC. It is a capability born in the aftermath of a one-in-100-years event, which was the COVID-19 pandemic.

It will stand as an enduring legacy of this Labor government, up there with Medicare, up there with the National Reconstruction Fund and up there with the National Anti-Corruption Commission. We're doing it because it was evident from those years that Australia was woefully underprepared for what came to our doorstep—woefully underprepared. Under the former government, there had not been a national pandemic drill for 12 years.

It's not as if there hadn't been pandemics. We have had pandemics. It started off with Spanish flu, and in this century we've had SARS-1; we've had swine flu; we've had MERS, Middle Eastern respiratory disease; and we've now, of course, had the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, for whatever reason, the previous government never decided we needed to have a pandemic drill. We had no playbook. I know for a fact that other countries, particularly those that were hit hard by the first wave of SARS, SARS-1, like Singapore, China and Hong Kong, did have playbooks.

It was literally a book on a shelf that they pulled off the shelf and opened to page 1. That's how they responded when they were hit with COVID-19. This is what our Commonwealth Centre for Disease Control will deliver for Australians—a playbook that we can literally take off the shelf and open to page 1 when we are hit, inevitably, with the next pandemic.

We also note that it was tough during that pandemic. I know this well, probably most acutely as a Victorian. We went through around six lockdowns, amounting to 260 days.

My children were stuck at home with school online for nearly two years, on and off. My daughter went through her VCE soon after. I wasn't in lockdown.

I went to work every day. I was wrapped in PPE with my co-workers on that front line, and it was really hard. We sweltered under that plastic to the point where one day I nearly had to catch my registrar.

That's what it was like. But I'm also aware that it was a real struggle for people in the community to go through that period. Confidence was shaken, no doubt.

Trust was eroded. Businesses struggled. This was no more evident than on the front line in aged care, when we actually had to send the Army in to rescue aged care, such was the state of the aged-care system.

It was utterly broken. So we do believe, given what we have gone through, that we need to establish an Australian centre for disease control. This CDC will have the capability to lead consistent advice, to be a source of authority and of ground truth, to be responsive and to ensure that we are prepared—that we have resilience back into our system.

It is essential that we do that. Its focus initially will be on communicable diseases, which are, of course, infectious diseases—my wheelhouse. And I can tell you all now: the bugs are smarter than us.

They always are. They will always be one step ahead of us because they mutate. They mutate fast.

Every single one of those pandemics that I listed emerged from the animal kingdom. So, when we talk about one health being enshrined in an Australian CDC, we're referring to the fact that most of these pandemics that have affected humans have emerged from animals, so there's no point corralling human health from animal health. The two are intertwined, and that is what this legislation recognises.

I do support us rolling this out in a staged fashion, initially addressing infectious diseases, because I think that, yes, while there is an intention to later on address chronic diseases—non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and obesity—we want to ensure that we set up this institution for success. Trying to do too much too soon will only overload the system and undermine its confidence to actually carry out this kind of work.

We want to set it up for success, and I think that a staged approach is important. I thank the Greens political party and the contributions from Senator Steele-John in recognising that we need to have a disability voice in the advisory committee. I think that is incredibly important, because the disability community were the hardest hit during the pandemic.

They are a highly vulnerable group of people, and they died or suffered the most acute effects of lockdown, being completely segregated from the wider community. In terms of recognising the need for the CDC to look at the impacts of climate change— An honourable senator interjecting— Senator ANANDA-RAJAH: 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.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Polley ): Thank you, Senator; you will be in continuation. It being 1.30, we will now move to two-minute statements.