Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank members for their contributions to the debate on the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (Abolition) Bill 2014. As has been acknowledged during the debate, it is essential that our health system supports the health needs and outcomes of all Australians. In this context there is a role for the Australian government to play in supporting effective preventative health efforts. Part of this role is providing leadership to streamline and better coordinate public health efforts that are currently spread across agencies and to ensure there is no unnecessary duplication or waste of taxpayer funds. This is particularly the case when such inefficiencies are not enhancing health policy or the health system.

Repealing the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Act 2010 and thereby abolishing the Australian National Preventive Health Agency—otherwise known as ANPHA—will reduce unnecessary duplication, red tape and regulation and enable the Australian government's focus on preventative health to be more cohesive, holistic and efficient. For Labor, this agency was always about symbolism over substance. The current arrangements create inefficiency, duplication and confusion. They add another layer of red tape and regulation which are not needed to support preventative health policies and improved health outcomes for Australians.

Abolishing ANPHA through this bill demonstrates our commitment to getting money away from bureaucratic structures and back to frontline services, including in the area of preventative health. A separately established Commonwealth funded agency is not needed for a focus to be given to this area within the health portfolio. The necessary work in this area will be continued under more efficient arrangements in the Department of Health. This bill will enable efficiency and effectiveness in terms of the delivery of functions, the most efficient use of government funding and an ongoing national focus on preventative health priorities.

It is understandable that this issue is contentious, but it goes to the heart of the choice about how we govern. On one side of the debate we have those who favour symbolism and bureaucracy over clinical outcomes and patient improvement. ANPHA has spent its time and, more importantly, taxpayers' money examining fat taxes, sponsoring burnouts at Summernats and on fake music festivals. It has been supported by those who mistake programs for outcomes. On this side of the House we believe a good government is judged by what it achieves, not by what it spends. We believe that health outcomes are best delivered through frontline services, through doctors and nurses who care for patients, through the vaccines that prevent disease and through medical research.

We recognise that people need to take responsibility for the choices they make that impact on their health, and this includes supporting their efforts to address alcohol, tobacco and obesity by ensuring that information is available for the public to inform these choices. The Commonwealth's work with stakeholders, seeking expert advice or forming productive working relationships with other bodies, will continue—just without the significant overhead costs of another agency.

I am pleased to have introduced the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (Abolition) Bill 2014 as one of many steps required to achieve much needed efficiencies, given the waste of the last six years, within the Commonwealth health portfolio. It will in turn benefit the public health sector and the Australian population more broadly. I want to thank all of those who have supported the bill and recognise the immediate and longer term benefits that it will produce.

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