Australia’s healthcare system is burdened not by a lack of talent or resources, but by an increasingly suffocating layer of bureaucracy. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), AHPRA, and state health departments—once intended as stewards of public safety—have morphed into self-replicating ecosystems more focused on regulating process than improving outcomes.
Our patients are sicker than ever. Chronic disease, mental illness, metabolic disorders, and autoimmune conditions are rising year on year. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), nearly half of all Australians now live with a chronic condition, and those numbers are climbing. Meanwhile, health expenditure has never been higher, yet patient wellbeing continues to decline. Something is clearly broken.
Instead of confronting this uncomfortable truth, regulators have doubled down on paperwork, permissions, and performative oversight. Bureaucrats seem to exist to justify their own existence—reinforcing a system of approvals, restrictions, and reporting that adds little to patient outcomes but plenty to clinician fatigue.
The TGA continues to drag its feet on innovative therapies unless they follow a rigid pharmaceutical model. AHPRA, rather than supporting innovation and protecting practitioners acting in good faith, has created a culture of fear and silence. State health departments are more focused on compliance metrics than community health. And all of them are obsessed with process over purpose.
But tightening the screws on a failing system doesn’t repair it. We are labouring under a healthcare paradigm that isn’t working. We are not promoting health. We are not preventing or curing disease. We are managing illness—often poorly—and calling it care.
That is not what our patients want. That is not what our communities need. And it is certainly not cost-effective.
We need courage. Courage to admit the system is not fit for purpose. Courage to welcome evidence-based innovation, even when it doesn’t come wrapped in traditional pharmaceutical packaging. Courage to restore a focus on health, healing, and the potential of people—not just their pathology.
We don’t need more regulators. We need a new vision. One that puts health—not bureaucracy—at the centre of Australian healthcare.
