Radio interview with Minister Butler and Matthew Pantelis, FIVEAA Mornings - 31 October 2024

HOST, MATTHEW PANTELIS: Federal Health Minister Mark Butler is on the line. Minister, good morning. Thanks for coming on.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Morning, Matthew.
 
PANTELIS: You've had a bit of time to digest the report. We didn't do it as well as we should have obviously?
 
BUTLER: It's important to say at the outset, I think we all understand, and certainly the report authors said that compared to pretty much every other nation in the world, we did relatively well. Some of the mortality death rates you saw in other countries, we usually compare ourselves to the UK, the US were way worse than us. That's not to minimise the level of grief and death and dislocation we had here in Australia, it was enormous. But we did do relatively well and in part that was down to our leaders working incredibly hard, our elected leaders, our officials, police commissioners, chief health officers. They work their guts out right through the thing and made some very courageous decisions. But also, the community adopted what the report called a ‘Team Australia’ approach and cooperated with those decisions very fully. And finally, but certainly not least, we are blessed with some of the best trained front-line workers in health and hospitals and aged care and so many other industries as well, who, particularly at the early parts of the pandemic, put their health on the line to serve us. I do want to point out that we had an extraordinary performance compared to many other countries but this report says we should have done better.
 
PANTELIS: Yeah.
 
BUTLER: And that there were a range of gaps. I think it's important that as painful as it is and as reluctant as we are to go back over a very painful period in our history, we've got a responsibility to learn the lessons and make sure that we're better prepared next time, because the preparations were pretty minimal.
 
PANTELIS: Now, the states strong arming, in particularly Victoria and WA. I mean, it shows at the end of the day we might be a federated country, but we're still a collection of colonies, for goodness sake, where states can rule roughshod over national cabinet, which started off as a united group, but I think certain premiers at least seeing the opportunity to present themselves in a light of looking tough and mind you, rewarded at subsequent elections. But didn't help the process and extended lockdowns in Victoria also didn't help people getting through with mental health and children suffering. That was highlighted by the report. Yet, better than other countries. But gosh, there's a lot we could do better?
 
BUTLER: Absolutely. The key takeaway is this Matthew, firstly, it says that we didn't have a pandemic plan in place. When the leaders went to the toolkit after COVID hit, it was pretty empty. We didn't have a pandemic plan. We didn't have a whole lot of things in place that they could just use to get up and going immediately. We've got to be better prepared. We've got to have comprehensive plans. They have to be regularly tested to make sure the system is fit for purpose, is match fit for when the next pandemic arrives because there will be a next pandemic.
 
The second thing it said is that in the early months, it was completely reasonable for governments to take a precautionary approach while we understood what we were facing - lock everything down and try to understand the scale of what we were facing. But the report says after that initial period governments should have moved to a more evidence-based approach in decision making. When they decided to do a B, C or D, they should have been very clear evidence for the benefits of whatever the decision might be, the risks of doing that and, considering non-COVID risks. You point to the school closure question because the report consistently says they should have been considering mental health impacts and other impacts of certain decisions, and that didn't happen in.
 
The last thing they say is that there was not enough transparency. People weren't given enough reasoning behind the decisions that were being taken by governments right across the country that had such a significant impact on their lives and their freedom. Transparency, evidence-based decision making are really what we want to be able to deliver through this Centre for Disease Control that we announced in the wake of the inquiry being released as well.
 
PANTELIS: It singled out Victoria, the report, haphazard without adequate consideration for mental health, especially that of children. The harsh lockdowns by the Andrews Government, driven by a lack of confidence in the health system. Do you agree with the criticism of Victoria? And given what you just said about mental health and kids, is Daniel Andrews the right person to lead advocacy for mental health in Victoria?
 
BUTLER: Look, some people wanted this inquiry to rake over every single one of the thousands and thousands of decisions that leaders took, not just in Victoria, but in other states and at a federal level. You're seeing that in the UK, which is why their inquiry is going to go on for a very long period of time. It makes for good media fodder because everyone's WhatsApp messages is being tended and so on and so forth. But we took the decision that there wasn't value in that sort of exercise and what we should do instead is examine the systems. This report doesn't pull its punches, I want to be clear. I was criticised when we set it up that it wasn’t going to inquire into school closures or border closures or restrictions on playgrounds and all the rest, it did. It made some pretty powerful recommendations and findings about that, particularly around the mental health impacts on kids. But I don't think it's valuable to sort of single out particular leaders at a federal level or at a state level. We've just got to learn the lessons and make sure we have a better playbook for the future. The shocking conclusions I think are from this report are firstly that the authors say, and I've got this advice from other sources as well, that if a pandemic hit tomorrow the population probably wouldn't cooperate in the same way in decisions like lockdowns and closures and such like that they did in 2020 and 2021, because there's been a substantial erosion of trust in public health authorities and information. That's a really startling conclusion. That's not just relevant to pandemics we're seeing that in childhood vaccination rates, for example, which have dropped really sharply in the last three years. We're now below herd immunity levels for measles and for whooping cough because of the reductions in our vaccination rates for under five-year-olds. That's really alarming and could lead to a measles breakout, which would be very, very serious for our young ones. It's not just about our pandemic preparedness, that loss of trust is bleeding into other aspects of our public health system.
 
And the other shocking conclusion, if I can just say this, Matthew, is the authors find that, if anything, we’re probably in a worse position today to deal with a pandemic than we were at the beginning of 2020. We've actually gone backwards if a pandemic were to hit tomorrow, and God hope it doesn't, but if a pandemic were to hit tomorrow, we're actually in a worse position. Partly because of that erosion of trust that governments have a lot more debt, our economic room to move is limited, we've lost a lot of capability in public services, and we don't have that sort of evidence base system that I want to deliver to the country through the CDC, the Centre for Disease Control. We're currently the only developed country that doesn't have that sort of authoritative body and that's a gap we have to fill.
 
PANTELIS: You dodged my question on Daniel Andrews. Should he be in charge of advocating for mental health in Victoria?
 
BUTLER: I'm not in the business of telling independent organisations who they should appoint as chair that's a matter for them. I have the highest respect for the organisation you're talking about, Orygen and its leader, Pat McGorry, a former Australian of the Year. That is a decision that those independent organisations should make.
 
PANTELIS: Alright, comment here from somebody on the text line completely agree with this. It says, “not allowing loved ones to see dying relatives or standing on one side of a border or road to say hello is barbaric. Other countries were saying they'd never lock down their citizens like Australia.” We completely mucked that up, didn't we?
 
BUTLER: I wouldn't agree that other countries didn't lock down their citizens. There were huge lockdowns in Europe and UK.
 
PANTELIS: China.
 
BUTLER: Parts of the US, in China, which is not really a comparable system to ours. But I wouldn't agree that we didn't see those sorts of lockdowns in other parts of the world.
 
PANTELIS: The rest of it is absolutely right?
 
BUTLER: The report says exactly what your listener has. The impacts on humanity, on mental health, the number of people, including older people in aged care facilities who died alone, who died without their loved ones holding their hands in their last hours is heartbreaking, just utterly heartbreaking. Sometimes you have to put in place restrictions that will have those sorts of impacts. But the report makes the point, as I said earlier, you've got to balance things. You've got to not just consider the risks and the benefits from a virus or COVID perspective but think about those broader impacts. And that analysis might still mean you put in place restrictions. But there just wasn't that process undertaken so often. And if it was, no one was told about it, no one was told what that evidence was.
 
PANTELIS: I want to talk about a man called Jake Hall-Evans, who, as you would be aware, I'm sure as the local Member for Hindmarsh these days but taking in the Lefevre Peninsula. He has started a petition it has 3,000 signatures now, to stop the Lefevre Peninsula, the AUKUS site, Osborne, becoming a site for nuclear waste once the submarine project gets underway. Your thoughts on that?
 
BUTLER: I know Jake, he was the Liberal Party candidate against me at one of the previous elections. I can't remember which one exactly I think might have been 2019. I know Jake. There's a real risk of some quite irresponsible scaremongering here.

I want to step through this. We have significant amounts of nuclear waste in our country. And as the Health Minister, I'm probably ultimately more responsible for it than anyone else because overwhelmingly it is a result of nuclear medicine saving lives for patients with cancer, and to some degree also in research facilities. The relevant body, which has been in place for many years, that actually sits under my health portfolio, the Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency licences facilities including hospitals, and I imagine the Queen Elizabeth Hospital is one, to store that nuclear waste. It is low level nuclear waste. It is essentially gloves, masks and gowns and wipes that clinicians will use in nuclear medicine procedures. It is generally stored in drums at the hospital licenced by that agency and over time is stored at a facility at Lucas Heights in New South Wales, just out of Sydney. As your listeners would know, there's been a very, very long debate running for decades, going back to Howard and before about where there would be a permanent facility established for that low level waste. Your listeners might remember, Howard tried to put a facility in South Australia and Mike Rann took him to the High Court.
 
PANTELIS: Yes.
 
BUTLER: There'd been another process around Kimba. In the meantime, before we have that permanent facility, there is low level nuclear waste. These gowns and these masks, largely for cancer treatment spread right through the country, including at hospitals in Adelaide. That is what will happen in coming years at Osborne. The type of nuclear waste that is contemplated in Osborne and in Stirling over in Western Australia, where the nuclear propelled submarines will rotate through is the same as the low-level waste produced from nuclear medicine. It's the same as the waste you'd see up Port Road at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, or further up Port Road at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and suchlike. This idea that it's sort of nuclear waste dump, intermediate and high-level waste of the type you'd get from a nuclear power station, nuclear energy facility or the spent nuclear fuel from the submarine is not going to be at Osborne. It's not going to be at Stirling over in Perth. We're not going to be dealing with the possibility of spent nuclear fuel from these submarines until the 2050s. There's going to be a process at some stage about where that goes but it's not going to be at Osborne. The only thing at Osborne is going to be those gowns, those masks are of exactly the same type of nuclear waste or level of nuclear waste, you see, at facilities that are subject to exactly the same licencing arrangement at the QEH, at the Royal Adelaide, at so on and so forth. I think this is a pretty irresponsible scare campaign.
 
PANTELIS: Okay and there's well, I was going to say a million sites a lot anyway, not quite that many, but around any city where, you know, it includes exit signs and smoke alarms I understand?
 
BUTLER: Totally. I don't have the full range. I'm very focused on the medicine. Probably the largest generator of nuclear waste is our services that save the lives of cancer patients. It is true, we we've just never really nailed as a country what we do on a permanent basis with this stuff and in the meantime, they're stored in drums all around the country.
 
PANTELIS: The storage at Osborne and Stirling, is that a national repository for both those areas? So the nation's gowns and whatever else or just South Australia?
 
BUTLER: No, think about the process down at Osborne and at Stirling in Perth as essentially the same that clinicians are doing at cancer nuclear medicine facilities in the hospitals. They'll wear gowns they wear gloves which have to be disposed of. On a temporary basis they'll be stored probably in drums at Osborne. This is years down the track, because we're not going to start work on these submarines for years, well into the 2030s, I don't think at Osborne. But that's what's happening right now at the big hospitals and at some point they will have to transition either to Lucas Heights in Sydney, where a lot of it's currently stored on a long term basis, or if we can ever agree, a site for a permanent facility in time, they'll be stored there.
 
PANTELIS: Alright just while I have you, ever accepted an upgrade by Qantas?
 
BUTLER: I've checked my records. I think I do about 150 or 200 flights a year, that's the job of a federal minister in particular. I think I've received four upgrades over the last ten years and I declared them all in accordance with the rules that have been there for Parliament. Now, there's different numbers across the Parliament. I think Paul Fletcher, who's one of the shadow ministers, has done 69 upgrades and there's a bunch of people in between. There's currently a bit of focus on Bridget McKenzie, the Shadow Transport Minister, who appears not to have declared upgrades. But I checked my record. I've received four over the last ten years out of, I don't know, 1,500 – 2,000 flights I've probably taken and I declared them all.
 
PANTELIS: Did you ask for them?
 
BUTLER: No. Generally, it happens that you rock up at the airport and they just stick a boarding pass in your hand that is not the one you thought you were going to get. It's that sort of simple. If there's a spare seat up the front. I think it's really important that we have that process of declaration. Anyone can go online and check any MP, including me, for any gifts or hospitality that we've received and it's important that all MPs comply with those rules.
 
PANTELIS: So what do you make then, of the allegations in this book that the PM has asked for the upgrades in chats with Alan Joyce?
 
BUTLER: He made that crystal clear yesterday that did not happen. And he was assiduous about this. He's been in Parliament almost 30 years, well before Alan Joyce's time at Qantas. He had his office go back and check all of his records just to make sure because 30 years is a long time. And after that very assiduous process in his office, he issued the clearest possible statement yesterday that he had no communication with Alan Joyce about upgrades and every upgrade he has received has been declared in a timely fashion and in strict accordance with the rules, just as Peter Dutton's presumably have been and maybe not Bridget McKenzie's, but other MPs as well.
 
PANTELIS: Alright, Mark Butler, I have to leave it there. Appreciate your time. Thank you.
 
BUTLER: Thank you, Matthew.