The government will spend $251 million to fund Australia's Centers for Disease Control, with the new government agency coming online by early 2026.
The funding is being announced as the government releases the report of a major inquiry into Australia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Right now we are certainly in a worse position as a country to deal with the pandemic than we were at the beginning of 2020 for a number of reasons,” federal Health Minister Mark Butler said.
“First of all, because there have been really significant wounds to our health care systems and health workforce, a workforce that is exhausted by the demands of a once-in-a-century pandemic that has lasted for years. The APS has lost – the Australian Public Service – has lost key staff who learned a lot through that pandemic but often moved beyond their positions due to exhaustion. As I'm sure, the Treasurer will talk about how governments are in far more significant debt than they were before the pandemic.
Butler says confidence has declined following the pandemic as he responded to a COVID-19 investigation report.
He said the lack of trust is not only hampering the country's ability to respond when the next pandemic hits, but it is already hurting the performance of other vaccination programs.
“For example, since the onset of COVID in 2020, you have seen a seven or eight percentage point decline in participation in the pertussis vaccination program for under-fives and the measles vaccination program for under-fives, Which means we're now well below the herd immunity level for those two really important diseases,'' he said. “The erosion of trust has had a very, very significant impact on the community.”
The news conference continues.