Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When listening to the shadow minister in this debate on the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (Abolition) Bill 2014 you get this melodramatic set of assertions about the federal government's approach to preventative health. Of course, it is nonsense to say that this government is not committed to preventative health. Anybody who examines the health system and looks into modern health practices understands preventative health is a good way to go.

However, I think the shadow minister bells the cat in equating her approach to preventative health to health by stealth. This is really what is wrong with the modern Labor Party and the previous government's approach to preventative health, particularly that of the former member for Gellibrand and Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon. Their approach is always the nanny state first: more government equals better health. That is not a correlation which makes sense.

Health by stealth implies that individuals and their families cannot ever understand what is good for their own health and what they need to do to prevent bad health outcomes for themselves and that somehow we in Canberra and our national agencies know better than all of you out there what you should be eating, drinking and doing with your own life. We understand that is the Labor Party's approach to health: 'We know better than you and we will have a government funded agency to tell you what is best for you.' The best way that we as a society can make an impact on health and the health of individuals is to tackle individuals. We as a government recognise that individuals need to take responsibility for their lifestyle actions that affect their health. This is the cheapest and most cost-effective way that we can improve health outcomes. More government spending is simply not the answer.

But of course if the Labor Party see two agencies, that is great, but they never look for efficiencies within agencies. We have a Department of Health and we have thousands of health bureaucrats here in Canberra already focused on preventative health and policies in relation to the health scheme, including chronic illness. The creation of this second agency made no sense at the time and continues to make no sense, especially in the light of some of the expenditure that this agency has been responsible for.

It is also disturbing to note that, when the government came to office, it asked the question of federal bureaucracies: 'How many government agencies and departments do we actually have?' It is very unclear what the answer is. Nobody can put a figure on it. It is estimated to be over 900, but we do not have a certain figure on how many federal government agencies and departments we have. The Labor Party never says: 'What can we do better? What can we do more efficiently? How can we streamline these arrangements?' There is no doubt that this agency has been responsible for wasting some taxpayers' money and for operating inefficiently. While the shadow minister tried to mount this Alamo-style defence of some of the expenditure of this agency, it could certainly be spent better directly on preventative health measures and on things that would make a difference to people's health. What am I referring to? The shadow minister, the member for Ballarat, referred to the Summernats, 49,500, and the world's biggest burnout attempt at Summernats 2013. She glossed over the health impact of inhaling burning rubber, clouds of smoke of burning rubber, from burnouts. She did not really think about that, did she, Deputy Speaker. It was $129,500 on burning rubber over two years. On a serious side, she said it is okay to experiment. It is certainly okay to experiment when you are not paying the bill. When you are using tax dollars of hardworking small businesses, families, mums and dads all around the country you can really spend away. She did not really raise any more examples she was prepared to defend and I think the shadow minister is not prepared to defend other expenditure of this agency because it is indefensible. Let us continue.

The Australian National Preventive Health Agency wasted $463,000, almost half a million dollars, to fund a study into the fat tax on junk food. This is in spite of her own party in government ruling out a fat tax. It is in spite of the evidence, and the shadow minister refers to evidence: we should be evidence based in our policy. The evidence in The Economist here on 17 November 2012 said of the experience in Denmark that 'in practice the world's first fat tax proved to be a cumbersome chore with undesirable side effects and meant higher prices for lean sirloin steak as well as for fatty burgers.' Evidence: it says a fat tax does not work. It is a big government approach with only cost impact and little health benefit. That is half a million dollars of taxpayers' money.

The shadow minister did not refer to the Australian National Preventive Health Agency spending $236,000 on a fake music festival—not a real music festival but a fake one. That is experimental. As the shadow minister said, 'We are experimenting.' When you do not have to earn the money and you do not have to pay the money back, you can experiment with other people's money all you like. That is just a lazy $263,000 of taxpayers' money to put up a fake music festival on a Facebook page. The Facebook page received a grand total of 244 likes around the country. There were at least 244 people that found this fake music festival a great idea. I am not sure who they were. That is about $1,000 per like that the Australian National Preventive Health Agency felt was an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars to prevent chronic serious disease and its other mission. I think the responses from visitors to the site, the target audience, showed that you do not really need a preventive health agency to tell you that this was a stupid idea. You do not really need to be an expert in marketing or social media to realise that this is not going to go very well. The comments posted on this Facebook site include things like: 'You played the people for idiots. That's never going to be a good marketing campaign.' Another quote: 'This is the lamest thing I have ever seen. What an absolute fail.' A further quote: 'Wow, you Mushroom guys pocketed some serious funding for this cheap, ineffective stunt.' And of course common sense from another ordinary punter: 'What the hell is this? I know, a complete waste of money.' Amen to that—a complete waste of taxpayers' money. This is what we employ a national preventive health agency to be doing: a thousand dollars a like on Facebook? Is this really what we use taxpayers' money for? It is the crisis of the Labor Party keeps pointing to on which we have to do something for people from a socially disadvantaged background? How is any of this expenditure helping people with their health? Of course it is not, it is not helping them at all, and it is a serious issue.

The shadow minister more seriously made some points about state funding but I do not think she read the second reading speech of the minister and I do not think she understands that since the inception of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency there has been no direct funding to the agency provided by any jurisdiction. You would have got the impression from the shadow minister for health that with the abolition of this ineffective agency, this duplication of the Department of Health's functions, somehow a whole range of cuts to state programs would ensue. It would be impossible for that to occur because since its inception—I want to repeat this so that members opposite understand this—no jurisdiction has provided direct funding to the agency for its work on prevention. That means that, even though it was established with the capacity to be directed by state, territory and local governments to provide preventive health advice, no preventive health advice was provided to the states because no state felt it was worth while enough in the entire existence of this agency to send any money to it to get any advice. So what is the shadow minister referring to? The states are not going to be unhappy because they never bothered to send any money to this agency. They did not want any advice from the National Preventive Health Agency. The poor suckers who had to pay the bill for this agency were the Commonwealth; it was run up on the Commonwealth credit card.

When you look into this agency the claims of the shadow minister clearly do not stack up. It does reveal the agenda of the Labor Party of health by stealth, the we know better than you program of the Labor Party: 'We know better in Canberra than what you might do out in your community and you can never know what is better for your health and your family's health, we will just make your food healthier without telling you and that is our approach to health.' That is what the shadow minister said: health by stealth, we know better than you. There is no clearer communication of that concept that Nicola Roxon made so profound in the last administration of the nanny state.

Clearly we do not need two agencies in Canberra to do the functions of one. We have a good Department of Health, we have plenty of people here working on preventive health in a serious fashion treating chronic illness with the seriousness it deserves, tackling those issues that arise from a national health level through the Department of Health. And we have clearly put in this bill transitional arrangements which will enable the smooth, transparent and appropriate wind-down of the National Preventive Health Agency in any functions that it does fulfil, certainly not the Summernats funding but those functions which it does fulfil will be integrated back into the Department of Health in an appropriate time frame. We certainly will not be continuing sponsorship of Summernats for the rubber burning contest, which was probably harming people's health. We certainly will not be sponsoring a half a million dollar study into a fat tax which has already been ruled out by all major political parties in this country. We certainly will not be continuing the social media campaign which received 244 likes at a cost of $1,000 a like of taxpayers' money by this agency.

Clearly the Labor Party has a lot to learn about government and the administration of government. We can do things more efficiently, we can do more with less, we can ensure that the Department of Health is primarily focused on preventive health and those things it should be concentrating on and on that we do not have so many federal government agencies that nobody can tell this government how many government agencies we have exactly. There is no exact figure and that is because we have allowed government to get out of hand in this country. So it is a great privilege to rise to support this bill and ensure that we do streamline these functions, that these important functions are maintained and that this agency is abolished.

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