‘I jumped at it’: Australia’s new CDC chief on trust, misinformation and never being surprised by a health threat

Prof Zoe Wainer, director general of the Australian Centre for Disease Control, 8 April 2026: ‘It’s an extraordinary opportunity and investment that the nation’s made to keep Australia safe.’ Photograph: Ashley St George/The Guardian

In 1987 when the HIV pandemic was at its peak, the doctor and epidemiologist Prof Robert Douglas wrote a report for the Medical Journal of Australia describing how disease control was “fragmented, inadequate and poorly coordinated”, lamenting a lack of national coordination.

“Now is the time to begin to plan for a national system of disease control,” he wrote, calling for state and federal governments to share a strategy and “play their proper roles in the prevention of disease and the minimisation of its effects”.