The national peak body for Australian complementary medicines, Complementary Medicines Australia (CMA), warmly welcomes the Albanese Ministry and the appointment of the Honorable Mark Butler MP as Minister for Health and Aged Care. We appreciate Mr Butler's wealth of experience in leading health reform in Australia, particularly in the arena of mental health.

Carl Gibson, CEO of CMA, says: "Australia's complementary medicines industry especially looks forward to working with the Government to continue to enhance people's understanding of natural medicines and therapies and how they can benefit personal health. “There is no doubt that these can play an invaluable role in the health of Australians both preventatively and therapeutically, alone and as an adjunct to conventional therapy,” says Carl Gibson.

Australia is chronically ill

Research shows that almost half of all Australians live with at least one chronic condition, yet developing interconnected health and medical approaches can help Australia respond to these burgeoning national health challenges," says Mr Gibson.

In addition, 78.6 per cent of all Australians have a long-term health condition, almost half report at least one chronic condition, and 67% are overweight or obese. “Australians live longer, but we live more years in ill health – primarily due to preventable chronic diseases. Treatment of chronic diseases now consumes more than a third of health spending and has the potential to overwhelm the health budget and our health services,” explains Carl Gibson.

According to the Global Burden of Disease study, over a third of Australia's disease burden could be avoided or reduced by taking action on a range of risk factors, including tobacco use, obesity, dietary risks, high blood pressure and alcohol use. Natural approaches to health alone as adjuncts to conventional systems can undoubtedly aid health.

Protecting Australian consumers and the Australian industry

CMA works with the industry to promote appropriate industry regulation and advancement to ensure consumers access complementary medicines of the highest quality. This stringent quality has made Australian complementary medicines a national success story. With a revenue of $5.5 Billion and growth of 1.4%, and exports of $0.864 billion.

"We applaud Labor's commitment of $1.5 billion as part of the National Reconstruction Fund to create medicines and medical technologies in Australia and look forward to working together to systematically build Australia's capacity in commercialisation and medical manufacturing to meet local demand, grow industries and jobs and create export markets for products and services," explains Carl Gibson.

CMA has partnered with Chemist Warehouse to deliver a new initiative to tackle illegal imports in partnership with The Therapeutic Goods Administration to safeguard Australian consumers and protect our world-class industry. So far, 1,041 illegal products identified have been removed from sale from Australian eCommerce platforms, 850,514 illegal products have been seized and destroyed, and 124,299 counterfeit units have been captured and destroyed.

Oher important CMA initiatives include:

Supporting the supply chain and the Australian manufacturing base

The reinstation of rebates for natural therapies 

The protection of practitioner rights with OneCAM

Underlining the vital importance of sustainability at every stage.