Inquiry into Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025: Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee

This submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025 reiterates Research Australia’s support for an Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and advocates for a stronger role for it within the health and medical research and innovation system. Research Australia describes a fragmented ecosystem in which several federal portfolios, state and territory governments, philanthropy and industry fund research with little coordination, and proposes that the CDC act as critical research infrastructure: pooling funding across portfolios, identifying promising interventions for piloting and scale-up, funding systematic reviews, commissioning research in emergencies and building sovereign capability in vaccines, diagnostics and treatments. It makes five recommendations: an expanded CDC role in aligning research and innovation with unmet health needs; capacity to direct emergency Australian Government funding outside normal streams during a health emergency such as COVID-19; data governance arrangements that provide for sharing data with researchers, ideally written into the enabling legislation and drawing on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and Australian Bureau of Statistics; technical capability to share data safely and securely; and engagement with existing policy frameworks, including the National Health and Medical Research Strategy, the National Preventive Health Strategy 2021–2030, clinical trials reform and the medical manufacturing priority of the National Reconstruction Fund.