An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report released this week showed of all the deaths in Australia in 2012, almost 50,000 (34 per cent) were premature and of those, half were considered preventable.

The leading cause of premature death between 2010 and 2012 was coronary heart disease.

According to the Heart Foundation the condition kills 54 Australians each day, or one Australian every 27 minutes.

Lung cancer was the second leading cause, accounting for 9 per cent of premature deaths and suicide was the third accounting for 4.5 per cent.

For Indigenous Australians, 80 per cent of all deaths were premature in 2008–2012.

The Indigenous mortality rate was higher for both males and females, across every age group.

Heart Foundation ACT chief executive Tony Stubbs said the ACT government's Healthy Weight Action Plan was working well to address risk factors and it was great to see the ACT below the national average for rates of obesity and smoking prevalence.

"There is lots of good happing in this space in the ACT, but there is still only 5 per cent of the total health budget actually spent on prevention," he said.

"Hospitals get a lot of the attention and a lot of the funding, and that is important, but if we are going to make a dent in our hospital budgets we are going to invest a lot more in prevention."

Cancer Council Australia's director of public policy Paul Grogan said in 70 per cent of cases for women and 90 for men, lung cancer was related to smoking.

While overall rates were dropping, he said Australia still had 2.7 million daily smokers.

Combating premature deaths demanded an investment in prevention as well as into research for treatments.

Research was underfunded in relation to the harm it caused, Mr Grogan said.

"There's an inherit bias to research into cancers such as breast cancer as there are far more survivors. We don't want to bring that down, but we are trying to encourage research based on need rather than community engagement."

Smoking was identified in the report as the main preventable risk factor responsible for the higher mortality rate for many cancers among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Indigenous communities have almost double the rate of smoking prevalence compared with the non-indigenous communities.

An ACT Health spokesman said Indigenous Canberrans received on average the highest level of government service support in the country.

"Each indigenous person receives on average $13,533, versus a national average of $5309," the spokesman said.