Summary
Public health focuses on prevention, promotion and protection rather than on treatment. It also focuses on populations rather than on individuals, and on the factors and behaviours that cause illness and injury. Public health includes a wide variety of activities. The estimates included in this report relates only to public health activities where the funding was provided by the key government health departments and agencies in Australia. Government expenditure on public health activities in this report was higher than government public health spending in Health expenditure Australia 2023–24 due to additional inclusions. For more information, see Technical notes.
Total government expenditure on public health activities in Australia in 2023–24 was $5.4 billion, which equates to $201 per person. After adjusting for inflation, government spending was 29.5% less than in 2022–23. The average annual growth in public health expenditure over the decade since 2013–14 was 5.8%.
The proportion of government public health expenditure to total government health expenditure was 2.9% in 2023–24.
In 2023–24, the Australian Government funded around 63.3% of total government public health expenditure ($3.4 billion). The state and territory governments contributed around 36.7% ($2.0 billion).
Government expenditure across various public health activities experienced modest growth during the pre-pandemic period, with an average annual growth rate of 2.5%. However, over the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20 to 2022–23), spending surged in several public health activities. Total estimated government expenditure on public health activities on the response to COVID-19 was $18.6 billion during that period. The largest increases in real terms were observed in Communicable disease control and Organised immunisation between 2019–20 and 2021–22.
The fastest growth rate occurred in Communicable disease control in 2020–21 which rose by about 280% in real terms from 2019–20, mainly driven by government spending on the COVID-19 response. The most significant increase in expenditure was in 2021–22 for Organised immunisation, where there was an increase of $4.4 billion in real terms compared to 2020–21. This largely reflected spending associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, including logistics and distribution.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Organised immunisation and Communicable disease control continued to account for the highest levels of expenditure, at $2.4 billion and $0.9 billion respectively in 2023–24.