Hepatitis Australia is pleased to welcome the new Australian Government and looks forward to working with them to eliminate hepatitis B and hepatitis C in Australia by 2030.

We congratulate the new Health Portfolio and are excited to work with Mark Butler MP, the new Minister for Health; Ged Kearney MP, the new Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing; and Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, the new Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health.

The new Australian Government has shown their ongoing support for hepatitis elimination. A key vehicle for supporting parliamentarian engagement in elimination has been the Parliamentary Friends Group for Action on Blood-borne Viruses, and we look forward to re-establishing this group.

In November 2020, the then Shadow Minister for Health Chris Bowen, reaffirmed bipartisan commitment to eliminating hepatitis C at the Parliamentary Morning Tea: We Can Eliminate Hepatitis C! 

At the February 2022 Parliamentary Event: We Can Eliminate Hepatitis B! the now Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing, Ged Kearney, stated

“We can eliminate hepatitis B…One thing that leapt out for me was the importance of community-led solutions… We have seen this work so beautifully with AIDS, we knew it worked with COVID-19, and it can work with so many diseases and of course specifically with hepatitis B. Thank you for highlighting that it is very important that we make sure that community-led are the centre of any strategy and policy for the future and an elected Labor Government would make sure that that was the case.”

We look forward to working with the new Australian Government in service of 360,000 Australians living with hepatitis B and hepatitis C, and to achieving elimination by 2030!