Terry Slevin
As 2025 winds down towards a holiday season, it’s time to reflect on the year that was for public health issues.
2025 will be long remembered as the year that Parliament created the national Centre for Disease Control from the current interim version. After decades of advocacy by PHAA and others to create such an Australian body, the wash-up of the Covid-19 pandemic finally made the case indisputable. As of January 2026, a team based in Canberra but with links around the nation will take up tasks not only of preparing for the next pandemic, but fighting all forms of endemic communicable disease.
Although this is a landmark achievement in public health policy, there is more to do. So far the government has proved reluctant to complete the mandate of the CDC by giving it a mission to address non-communicable diseases, which make up more than half of all burden of disease in Australia. The public health community won’t relent in seeking to have this situation corrected as soon as possible. The scheduled review into the CDC by 2028 will be the key opportunity to emphasise that.
From an organisational point of view, a key highlight has been the establishment of the PHAA Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collective. Inspired by the “Voice to Parliament” idea with sadly was not supported by a referendum in 2023, a team of First Nations public health people, led by then Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Vice President Alana Gall, created “the Collective” through a co-designed process as a means of engaging Indigenous people in key matters within PHAA. The motion to change our constitution so as to create the Collective was overwhelmingly passed at our 2025 AGM in September. Work on its implementation is underway.
As a national organisation to protect health was being born, our oldest and most well-established state health promotion agency, VicHealth, suddenly came under serious threat in early December, with the Victorian Government announcing an intention to abolish it. Despite an impressive track record in improving the health of millions of Victorians over four decades, a consultant’s report condemned the independent agency in a mere five sentences. They didn’t even speak to VicHealth before formulating their opinion. The State Government this week made the specious argument that duplication with the Department of Health justified the result. It didn’t examine what (shrinking) staffing in the health department that duplicates independent VicHealth activity might be reduced instead. The Victorian health community are rallying to the fight, which will play out in 2026 – a state election year.
There has been a lot happening in food and diet-related disease policy, including the dragged-out Review of the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act, and ongoing preparatory and review work to strengthen the Health Star Rating system. The need for comprehensive and enforceable restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children has continued to gain urgency, alongside increasing concerns about the regulation, composition, and marketing of infant formula and toddler milk products. While the federal government has yet to signal how ambitious it intends to be in tackling the structural drivers of poor diet-related health, PHAA’s advocacy across these issues remains strong.
We are optimistic for a wider ranging “round table” process to commence in early 2026 to find ways for implementing a suite of policies and programs to better address Australia’s obesity-related disease challenges.
There are also early signs of interest in big reforms to bring oral and dental health care into the Medicare system. Although we are still waiting to see how the Government will engage, discussion is percolating across Parliament towards what could be a historic ‘Labor government’ style national reform to health care. Cost barriers are a significant hurdle.
2025 was a year of both settling in and disruption of our national tobacco and nicotine control policy. Major legislative reforms to the law on tobacco and other nicotine products, including vapes, flowed through our national and state parliaments in 2024 and 2025, and their positive impact is beginning to be felt. Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has been a consistent champion of the public’s health against the ever-evolving tactics of the tobacco industry. Simultaneously, years of weak enforcement of tobacco laws, and extremely aggressive illegal supply – some believe driven by big tobacco – have seen the growth of an illicit tobacco retail market, mainly run through retailers willing to break the law. States and territories, with strong federal government assistance, are upping their game. Predictably, the tobacco supply chain sectors have lobbied that the solution is to give them a massive tax cut to tobacco importation customs duty, which all the players down the supply chain would simply pocket. One way or another, it is essential that cheap tobacco products are not present in Australia, as part of our world-leading integrated strategy of many measures to reduce smoking.
It is also sad to see the influence of corporate power on the control of devastatingly harmful gambling. The path to end gambling advertising, and to constrain the massive surge in online sports gambling, was laid out in the cross-partisan 2023 parliamentary report You Win Some, You Lose More. Lobbying influence has crippled the national government from taking action, despite the widespread sense that parliamentarians would back it if a conscience vote permitted. The failure to advance key reforms remains a signature moral failing of our political system and leaders.
As a nation, we don’t invest nearly enough of our health budget on prevention. PHAA champions the ‘5% for prevention’ call for one dollar in 20 of national health expenditure to go towards keeping us healthy, not treating us after getting sick. On top of enabling us to live healthier lives, spending on preventive health is proven economics and would save governments billions long term. It was pleasing to see the rather economically conservative national Productivity Commission advance work during 2025 on what it calls a Preventive Investment Framework, to guide future budgets. We believe they will be passing on a formal report to Government in December, and we all await the national response.
Environment and climate health have also had a rapid period of development in 2025. The long-awaited Environmental Protection and Biosecurity Conservation Reform (EPBRC) legislation was presented, five years after the review was completed. Its passing in November, albeit rushed, included welcome changes such as establishing national environmental standards, increased auditing and serious penalties against infringements of national standards. Also, Australia will get an independent National Environmental Protection Agency. However, the EPBCR Act still fails to incorporate measures that would adequately ensure that our environmental protection laws are mitigating climate change.
The second half of 2025 saw the release of several key resources on climate and health, including the damning 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. Mitigation is the best long term preventive tool we have to reduce the harms of climate change.
There were many more highlights, including outstanding conferences and events at Branch and Special Interest Group (SIG) level, all denoting a vibrant Association.
Congratulations to all of you who have contributed to public health achievements of 2025. Thank you for your commitment and energy. And a special thanks to those who have contributed, in any way, to the work of PHAA.
The holiday season is upon us. I hope all in the PHAA family take the chance for a well-earned break and rest. And to spend time with the people you love.
We look forward to seeing you in 2026, when the fight for many public health goals will resume.
Adj Prof Terry Slevin is CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia
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