Advancing citizens' health and welfare

Australia cannot call itself secure if its citizens are in strife. Our security as individuals is a necessary condition of our security as a nation. In that sense, the health and welfare of Australians are concerns of the highest order.

Fortunately, Australia has long enjoyed enviable levels of health and prosperity. We benefit from a world class public health system and high standards of living. Both are wellsprings of national resilience.

But our health and welfare cannot be taken for granted, particularly in light of COVID-19 and its associated economic crisis. Far from being black swans, such events are likely to more frequently punctuate the decades ahead.

All the while, we will increasingly have to grapple with slower, structural forces—like rising inequality, automation, and even antibiotic resistance. These challenges are compounding and corrosive, and threaten our health and welfare as a core basis of national resilience.

To head off these threats, Australia will:

Establish an Australian Centre for Disease Control. Australia is the only country in the OECD without a CDC. It is high time that we establish an expert, independent agency that can lead Australia's pandemic preparedness and responses.

Conduct a national review of Australia's Covid-19 performance. The independent, expert-led review would examine the full scope of Australia's pandemic response, including preparedness, decision-making, capacity, and performance at all levels of government. The ultimate aim of the review would be to identify lessons and deliver recommendations to improve our future pandemic responses.

Implement a schedule of national pandemic drills. To regularly test our capabilities and readiness, Australia will implement a four-yearly schedule of pandemic drills, which engage political leaders, government agencies, and health systems at both the federal and state level. The drills would simulate complex outbreak scenarios, and aim to reiterate the scale of Exercise Cumpston and Exercise Sustain.

Maintain a sovereign vaccine production capability. Australia benefitted greatly from being able to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine domestically. Overall, however, we relied precariously on internationally sourced MRNA vaccines. To reduce our future reliance on vulnerable global supply chains, we will therefore work towards a sovereign MRNA vaccine manufacturing capability. That would complement our existing viral-vector vaccine manufacturing capability, which we will also maintain beyond the Covid pandemic.

Strengthen filtration and ventilation standards. Improving air quality standards will help mitigate aerosol transmission of diseases in indoor settings. It will also improve our health security by reducing smoke inhalation in bushfire seasons. Australia will therefore look to upgrade ventilation and filtration in schools and other public buildings, as well as embed more rigorous standards in construction codes for new buildings.

Shore up the sustainability of our health system. Hospitals are under significant and sustained stress, with low pay and over-work leading to steady staffing attrition. Over the long-term, this will corrode health outcomes for citizens; but it will also, from a national security perspective, threaten our ability to mount effective responses to pandemics and mass casualty events. Fixing the issue is simple enough in theory: it requires sustained pay rises for healthcare workers, which would help both stem attrition and attract a new pipeline of students, trainees, and staff. In practice, however, that is complex: it demands significant state-federal coordination on separately held funding and spending levers. The Commonwealth will nevertheless explore ways it can stimulate pay rises for state healthcare workers through tied federal funding commitments (Specific Purpose Payments).

Overhaul the aged care system. Especially in light of population ageing, it is critical that Australia's aged care system delivers safe, dignified, and high-quality care at the scale required. Australia will therefore work to implement all recommendations of the Royal Commission, including the establishment of an Aged Care Act that transitions the system from a rationed to a rights-based care model.

Tackle the housing affordability crisis. The housing affordability crisis is one of the significant threats to Australians' economic security. It is increasing debt-burdens and financial precarity for many, and homelessness rates among our most vulnerable. To deal with the crisis, we must address it fundamentally as a supply-side issue: that means significantly increasing the construction of new public housing, and working with state and local governments to ease density limits in residential zoning. To complement these efforts, we will also remove tax breaks for property investments, such as negative gearing, and encourage the states to also scrap stamp duties.

Raise the jobseeker rate. Currently, the rate not only leaves recipients in precarity; it also, in doing so, acts as a counter-productive barrier to their pursuit of employment. Australia will therefore raise the jobseeker rate, ensuring it functions as a viable and dignified social safety net; as well as an effective of enabler of successful job-seeking.

Bolster the National Medical Stockpile. Australia will work to restock medical supplies consumed during the Covid-19 crisis. We will also use the review into Australia's pandemic performance to inform a longer term re-assessment of the Stockpile's inventory requirements, acquiring any further stock as needed. This will almost certainly involve a significant step up in the amounts and types of Personal Protective Equipment that we maintain in reserve, which proved woefully inadequate at the start of the pandemic.

Cover PTSD under Medicare. It is estimated that over 800,000 Australians experience PTSD. That number is only expected to rise in the context of climate-induced natural disasters, which are a proven and significant cause of trauma. Given the long-term individual harm of untreated PSTD—and indeed, the toll on national resilience if so large a portion of society has unaddressed trauma—it is critical that we remove cost-related barriers to treatment. We can do so by fully covering PTSD treatment under Medicare.

Regulate anti-biotics in agriculture. To help contain the threat of antibiotic-resistant zoonotic diseases, Australia will seek to implement stronger controls on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. We will also work closely with international bodies, such as the World Health Organisation and Food and Agriculture organisation, to push for similarly rigorous global standards.