Radio interview with Minister Butler and Sabra Lane, ABC AM Radio - 30 October 2024

SABRA LANE, HOST: The Federal Health Minister joined me earlier. Mark Butler, this review says Australia isn't prepared for the next pandemic. How anxious are you about that?
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: The really striking conclusion of this report is, if anything, we're probably in a worse position than the country was in early 2020 to respond to a pandemic. Our health care system is deeply scarred. Our governments are in much more debt. We don't yet have the pandemic plans that the report says were so obviously missing at the time COVID broke out and perhaps most importantly, most significantly: trust in the community and public health decisions has been seriously eroded by our pandemic response.
 
LANE: Yeah, the report says in a future pandemic, Australians will only have appetite for short, sharp lockdowns, if at all, and there would be decreased public compliance. In rebuilding trust. Should the leaders who oversaw the prolonged lockdowns, like Dan Andrews, say sorry?
 
BUTLER: I have enormous respect for all of the leaders who led our pandemic response, whether it's Scott Morrison, Dan Andrews, Gladys Berejiklian who were in the particularly hard hit jurisdictions. They worked enormously hard. They made some incredibly courageous decisions. It doesn't mean that they got every decision right. I've been critical at a national level, at some specific decisions that the former government made. But I think the key takeaway from this report is that our leaders did not have the tools that they needed. There were not the pandemic plans in place when this thing hit. And we have to make sure that the next generation of leaders who have to lead the response to the next pandemic, because there will be a next one, are much better equipped.
 
LANE: Sure. But you also point out the most worrying aspect is public trust. The public is scarred by this in rebuilding trust would it perhaps be best for them just to say sorry?
 
BUTLER: No, our contribution to rebuilding trust is going to be to put in place a Centre for Disease Control. That's the key recommendation: to have a single, authoritative source of expert advice about how to respond to a pandemic like this, and to ensure that response is based in evidence and grounded in really good data. One of the really key takeaways is that leaders didn't have data in front of them to understand how this disease was spreading. A lot of the responses were based on UK data or US data. Too often our systems were still based in paper, facsimile machines were being used. Even when I came in as the Health Minister, I was not able to get good understandings of who was dying of COVID, whether they were vaccinated, whether they were indigenous, because we just don't have the sorts of systems we should have in the 2020’s and we're determined again to fill that gap.
 
LANE: Many people would think, well, a Centre for Disease Control is another layer of bureaucracy. Premiers would be involved in a future pandemic that doesn't tie them to abiding by advice given by that Centre for Disease Control. And again, we might see arbitrary decision making that's inconsistent and not in the public interest. This report does nothing to fix that.
 
BUTLER: What a CDC would deliver, and it's important to note that we're really the only developed country that doesn't have one of these bodies, what it would do is ensure that there was transparent, evidence-based advice given about the response. One of the conclusions of the report, a really important conclusion, is that after the initial response, when really we were trying to understand what was happening, we didn't shift to a more evidence-based approach, which ensured that there was an analysis of the risks and the benefits of a particular decision, so that non-health impacts, importantly, mental health impacts of the community, particularly of kids and young Australians, were considered as well. What a CDC will deliver is evidence-based approaches in a transparent way. It would be a very brave leader - very, very brave leader - to disregard that sort of advice that was presented transparently to the Australian community.
 
LANE: You talked about the welfare costs that weren't really weighed up. The report says a large number of kids are still now suffering social and emotional tolls from the lockdown and home schooling. What is the lesson in that for you?
 
BUTLER: That's just one of many examples of the need to have evidence-based approach, to have a proportional response to the health threat, particularly when you get through the second and the third stages of a pandemic that balances all of the risks and benefits of a particular decision. Some of them are not directly related to the pandemic threat, but are other impacts, including mental health impacts, and that is what a CDC will deliver. And that's what leaders did not have at their fingertips. And that's not a criticism of the leaders at the time. It's a criticism of the system not having those plans and those structures in place when this pandemic hit.
 
LANE: Do we know now how many people are suffering with long COVID? And are you confident that they're all getting the medical attention they need?
 
BUTLER: We've got a long COVID strategy in place that was overseen by the Chief Medical Officer. We've got substantial resources into research, into understanding this condition better, but there are some recommendations from the report for us to do better on that. We take those recommendations seriously and we'll be working through them as part of the whole of government taskforce that Cabinet set up on Monday to work through those recommendations carefully and quickly.
 
LANE: The ABC is reporting this morning on a separate story on limited access for surgical abortion in hospitals, the worst is happening in New South Wales. That it's affecting equitable access for regional women. How worried are you by this supposed unspoken ban?
 
BUTLER: I am worried. We have 750 public hospitals spread across the country. It's not possible to have every possible health service delivered in every single public hospital. But there are parts of Australia where it is too difficult to get access to what is a fundamental health right. And we've done what we can do as a Commonwealth to expand access to medical termination, to the medicine MS-2 Step. There are far more GPs, far more pharmacists now prescribing and dispensing that medical termination. But states do have to consider whether there is something they can do to ensure that their regional communities have better access to surgical termination.
 
LANE: On another issue, the Prime Minister is losing a lot of paint at the wrong end of the political cycle. It's very difficult to remove him under caucus rules. How solid is Cabinet’s support for him?
 
BUTLER: Completely solid. We're very focused on the challenges that Australia confronts now, particularly around the cost-of-living pressures and building a strong future economy as we continue to battle the legacy of COVID, as we've been discussing this morning and the global inflation crisis. There's a very strong sense of resolve in Cabinet on those issues that are really impacting Australian households and business.
 
LANE: And you're not worried about the damage it's doing to him?
 
BUTLER: No. Look, he's answered all of these questions forthrightly. He declared all of the upgrades that are subject of these stories in a timely fashion and consistent with the rules. And we're focused on the job we have to support Australian households and business.
 
LANE: Mark Butler, thanks for talking to AM.
 
BUTLER: Thanks, Sabra.