Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow parliamentary secretary for his question and for his interest in preventative health. As I indicated in an earlier response, this government has taken an unprecedented interest and approach to preventative health, reflecting the fact that only some two per cent of the country's total health spending is made on prevention rather than treatment and cure. This is an area in which the country—the government but the health system broadly—simply must do better.

That is why as part of our analysis of the healthcare system, the foundation of our health reform process, we engaged the National Preventative Health Taskforce to look at ways in which we could significantly improve our approach to preventative health. As the shadow parliamentary secretary knows, that task force was asked particularly to focus on three areas of prevention identified by the government as particular areas of priority: smoking, alcohol and obesity or diet and physical activity. That task force delivered a very comprehensive report about ways in which we could deal with those three health priorities in particular and also a broader approach to prevention from a Commonwealth government point of view.

At the same time, as the shadow parliamentary secretary has outlined, the government engaged the states and territories very early after its election in an agreement to ramp up our approach in preventative health, leading to the largest ever preventative health agreement with the states and territories, concluded in 2008—I think it is a five-year agreement, but I am happy to take that on notice—and comprising some $872 million in investment from the Commonwealth.

I add that the government has been committed for some time, in keeping with the recommendations of the Preventative Health Taskforce, to establishing an agency which will have cross-portfolio responsibility for prevention. As the shadow parliamentary secretary, as a medical practitioner, knows, good prevention cannot rely simply on the health portfolio and the Department of Health and Ageing. Good prevention requires a capacity to get into schools through the education portfolio and deal with children at a young age to teach them about good healthy habits. A good example of that has been the Gillard government's Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program, which many members in this place have in their own electorates and will have visited. I have one in the electorate of Port Adelaide, which I have the honour of representing. It has been there for some time. It is delivering wonderful advances not only to the understanding of the children who use that program but, through them, to the understanding of their broader families. I was there in only the last couple of weeks, and members of the school council were telling me that parents were reporting to them that their children were giving them lectures about the healthy or unhealthy nature of the meals that they were consuming at night. So this reflects a broad approach.

The Preventive Health Agency is something I will talk about later.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Proceed ings suspended from 10:47 to 10 : 59

I think I remember the substance of the question. It was particularly about the interaction of the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health, which COAG agreed, with the work of the Preventive Health Agency. In particular—although I do not remember the specifics—the shadow parliamentary secretary was asking whether any of the Commonwealth programs under the NPA would be affected or terminated by the work of the PHA.

The Preventive Health Agency's work, as I indicated before we were interrupted, is to coordinate the Commonwealth's work in the preventative health sphere. One of those jobs obviously will be taking control or oversight of the Commonwealth programs that we have committed to undertaking as part of the COAG National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health. I cannot remember all of the points that the shadow parliamentary secretary asked about, but I am happy to take those specific points on notice. Suffice it to say that all of the commitments we have undertaken as part of the NPA will be fully discharged by the Commonwealth and will become part of the Preventive Health Agency's work. It is not right that the Preventive Health Agency will only be dealing with obesity—I cannot remember whether that was part of the question. Its immediate remit will be the three areas identified by the Preventative Health Taskforce. I indicated that they are smoking, obesity—particularly childhood obesity—and alcohol abuse. But in due course the Preventive Health Agency will take a broader view of preventative health work.

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