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

We might need a website! That is the answer! If you have a problem, let's create a website, after we have created a department and we have created a lot of subcommittees! How often have we seen this phenomenon? Not only do we have the magic pudding school of economics that the opposition go through before they get into parliament; we have the 'let's create a committee' school of thought.

I am quite sure that the state departments of health can get the message out. Not only do we have the six departments of health and the federal Department of Health; we have an army of general practitioners, specialists and dietitians. We have TV shows occupying the 'fat space' and trying to get people to lose weight and do more exercise. We have an explosion of cooking shows, even some with children in them learning how to use unprocessed food in a good fashion rather than highly processed, highly calorie-dense foods. So we have an explosion of information. Even the Sunday papers now have a lifestyle section with lots of healthy recipes and examples of what to do and what is bad.

We just need to stop and think. Do we relieve that inner bureaucratic urging that some governments have, or do we just stop the bus, get off and see where we can use our health dollar better? There are 23 outside agencies doing the functions that the Department of Health is charged with doing, and ANPHA are just one of the most recent. I know there are a lot of august experts who have been assembled by ANPHA, but I just went to their website, and there are not one, not two, not three, not four but five expert advisory committees to the agency. One is on research, one on alcohol, one on obesity and one on tobacco, and then we have the National Evaluation Advisory Committee, which has an unlisted number of members. On research, we have nine; on alcohol, we have seven; on obesity, we have eight; and on tobacco we have nine. All these committees report to the CEO, who then advises an advisory council. This is a merry-go-round of meetings and committees and advisory bodies. As I said, I have looked at the people on them. They are all experts in their fields, but, really, is this going to achieve what we want?

What we want is behaviour change, and that is so hard to achieve. You can have brochures. You can have TV programs. You can have TV advertising programs. But eventually it comes down to the individual to make wise choices and apply discipline. We can collect all the data that we want. We know an awful lot about the nutritional state of the country and that it has deteriorated despite a profusion, a wealth, of food being available, which was not so easily available to previous generations. But I think that everyone has got that take-home message, and it is up to individuals.

I looked at the achievements of ANPHA so far, and they are not that impressive when you compare them to the achievements of the coalition in its previous government. Between 1995 and 2007, the immunisation rate amongst children went from 52 per cent to 90 per cent. In smoking advertising, the graphic health warnings were introduced by our current Prime Minister when he was the Minister for Health and Ageing—30 per cent graphic health warnings on the front of a pack, and 90 per cent of the pack was covered as well. Smoking rates from 1998 to 2007 had the biggest drop on record, from almost 22 per cent to 16½ per cent. Six million doses of Gardasil, the human papillomavirus vaccine, were administered between 2006 and 2010. During the coalition's last term of government, eight new medical schools were introduced.

As opposed to this, the more notorious achievements of ANPHA included a 'fat tax' study that resulted in no change whatsoever—but they managed to spend $463,000 studying it. They created a virtual, or fake, Smokescreen Music Festival that annoyed most people that went to the website—and there were very few that did. The cost of that was $236,000. And we have had previous speakers mention the Summernats program to sponsor burnouts—$129,000.

The take-home message is that this is reducing red tape. There will be savings that can go into the increased spending we are putting into the state health budget—nine per cent every year for the next three years and then six per cent in the last of the four years. It will mean that there is efficient use of the taxpayers' dollars. All the functions that ANPHA was tasked with doing were duplications. There was confusion about responsibility and, as far as I can see, no net improvement, although there was a lot of bureaucratic activity. Individuals change their lifestyles; committees do not. We can have as many brochures as we like, but it is up to individual responsibility and individual choices to get healthy. I commend the action that this bill will lead to—using our health dollars more wisely.

Debate interrupted.

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