Given Tuesday marked the second anniversary of the election of the Albanese government voters are well within their rights to demand an explanation from the Prime Minister, Health Minister, and the Treasurer over the length of time it is taking to establish an Australian Centre for Disease Control.
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The delay is certainly not something Labor can blame its predecessors for; it is entirely of the government's own making.
While it has invested $90 million in what Public Health Association of Australia boss Professor Terry Slevin describes as a "very scaled down" interim ACDC, ground has not even been broken for the full-scale and state-of-the-art facility Mr Albanese promised to build during the 2022 election campaign.
Labor has owned this project from the moment of its conception.
The original recommendation to create an Australian counterpart to America's internationally renowned Centres for Disease Control was made by a Senate committee of inquiry chaired by Labor senator Katy Gallagher.
The centre's role would be to prepare for, and to respond to, significant public health emergencies including another pandemic.
That said, while many people feel they are done with COVID-19, it isn't done with us. A spike in November saw as many as 21 deaths a day (on the seven-day rolling average) and in January an average of 70 people were in ICUs because of the virus at any given time.
It's also worth noting that with winter just weeks away we are seeing a spike in the number of outbreaks in aged-care facilities. There were 310 as of May 8.
And in Canberra medical authorities are already expressing concern about the increased transmission of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
According to ACT Minister for Population Health Emma Davidson "these are diseases that are impacting our community now and we need the federal government to have delivered this yesterday".
The government's response to why a project of such vital national interest is taking so long has been disappointing.
The response The Canberra Times received from a spokesperson for the Health Minister Mark Butler doesn't pass the pub test.
Apparently the government is "taking a phased approach to establishment" that will "allow for the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic to inform the design".
Really? COVID-19, as the name clearly states, has been around since late 2019. That's more than four years ago. How many more lessons are there left to learn?
It would appear the project is currently at that "phase" of its development where the relevant bureaucrats and the minister put it in the "too hard" basket and lock it away in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in the basement.
While a notional site owned by the ANU and close to Civic has been selected it is currently being used as light rail works depot. Meanwhile the initial exploratory funding that was announced in 2023 will run out midway through next year.
Given there is every chance Australia could be either in the midst of an election or recovering from one around then it is of grave concern that no further funding for the establishment of the ACDC was included in last week's budget.
While it may be possible that a decision has been taken to delay implementation until after the independent inquiry into the COVID-19 response reports in September the reality is that a valuable year has been lost.
One of the most important lessons from COVID-19 is that nobody knows what is coming down the pipe.
Australia was caught with its pants down in February and March 2020. Nobody wants that to happen again.
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