David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (Abolition) Bill 2014. This will repeal the 2010 bill that created the agency. As a result of this bill, the Australian National Preventive Health Agency will be abolished. I wish to explain why. Essentially, we had a massive duplication of roles and responsibilities, a duplication of the bureaucracy, with the creation of ANPHA.

You must remember: we do have a Department of Health with its own section dealing with public health issues. We also have six state governments with their departments of health and, similarly, their sections for public health. We all know that prevention is better than cure. We all know and appreciate that fact, but we also know that duplicating bureaucracies just increases costs, confusion and duplication and produces less outcome. It will not—I beg to differ—increase health outcomes. I think it will inadvertently just lead to a waste of a lot of money.

I see this recurring pattern of behaviour with the previous Labor government. They identified an issue that was live in the community and they thought the answer was to create another bureaucracy. It was quite a regular phenomenon. Increasing bureaucratic activity does not necessarily lead to the outcome that will fix any problem.

The focus of the Department of Health on alcohol abuse, obesity and smoking will remain, but we will not have the duplication of office leases, an increased number of staff, increases in committees and the duplication of secretariats. ANPHA's existing commitments and the essential ongoing functions will be resumed by the existing Department of Health. This is not going to affect the state departments of health, because it is 100 per cent federally funded. It was created to help the departments of health in the states, but, as of the announcement of this bill, there have been no approaches whatsoever by the state departments of health. Not one thing had ever been referred to them.

We all know that too many Australians consume too much food, too many calories, and they do not get enough exercise. We know that too many of us consume too much alcohol and that we binge too often rather than drinking in moderation. Everyone in Australia, I am sure, knows that smoking is bad for your health. Unless you have been on a desert island for the last 40 or 50 years, everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health. So, without issuing motherhood statements—

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