From the Chair

It is with sincere gratitude and respect that I complete this final report as the ANTA Executive Officer. Five years ago, I took up this role at the request of the ANTA Board of Directors in September 2018. I would like to thank all staff at the National Administration Office, the ANTA Board of Directors, our revered ANTA Seminar presenters and our lifeblood, the ANTA Members for their work in Natural and Traditional Medicine services since 1955.

After eighteen years as an ANTA Director, multiple terms as the ANTA President, twenty odd years as an ANTA member-therapist/ business operator, part time trainer, full time educator with a national reach, this national governance role proved to be a good fit.

Over the years, the ANTA Administration Team has transitioned through many challenging times. Since 2014 adverse events impacting our professions culminated in April 2019 when the Australian Government removed 15 natural therapies from the private health funds list. This was a serious blow to all Natural and Traditional Therapists across Australia and caused peak bodies deep concern for the future of Natural and Traditional Therapists nationally. One of the very challenging events was the removal of Naturopathy and related ingestive therapies as rebatable items from the health funds list.

Naturopathic education and training are among the more robust natural therapy training programs offered. Its removal from the rebate lists defies the most rational level of understanding about what Naturopathy is and how it has benefited so many Australians. Naturopathy’s education, training and practice in the current four-year degree will not fail to deliver excellent practitioners with higher level skills and methods to prevent many common, adverse health conditions.

The fact that in 2019, the Chief Medical Officer of Australia announced 15 therapies were found to lack any evidence base including safety, quality, clinical efficacy or cost effectiveness is a false premise. Statistics demonstrate otherwise! The evidence of these metrics are based on medical records preserved by mainstream health which clearly demonstrate the safety and quality of natural and traditional medicine commensurate with the miniscule (<1%) occurrence of any adverse events recorded against clinical application and client usage of natural and traditional medicine services.

On the one hand, the Australian Government established the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) to approve training standards, guaranteed to produce higher education graduates with inherent supervised clinical training requirements. These standards and criteria were established in collaboration with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Registered industry peak bodies. It cannot be said that there are no training standards or any evidence of client safety, clinical efficacy, quality outcomes or cost effectiveness when Australian Government agencies are appointed and funded to guarantee the requisite graduate outcomes and ensure public safety. It also cannot be said there is no statutory regulation or legislated oversight regulating these practices when almost all Australian States and Territories have now adopted the National Code of Conduct to hold all health practitioners accountable under the Office of the Health Ombudsman when their practices fall outside the auspices of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). This means all Natural and Traditional health practices in Australia are regulated under legislation passed into law by the Australian Government.

On the other hand, it beggars’ belief in the democratic society in which we live that another Government agency is able to position itself to ride roughshod over Government funded, tertiary educated health workers to deprive them of health fund recognition and force up the costs of legitimate health care services to users. All this because they purported to have unseen, unknown evidence of a lack of quality and safety in natural therapies. These actions quite clearly contradict the metrics the Australian Natural and Traditional education regulators possess in relation to the index professional training programs and their governance. Further to this, within six days of the announcement to ban 15 therapies from health funds list, the Australian Health Minister announced a further review of the 2014-15 review outcomes would begin following a challenge from the Natural Therapies Professional Associations. This challenge was based on evidence the reviewers appointed by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) failed to adhere to the standards and criteria for the review of the submissions made by the stakeholders. The second review is now nearing completion.

What the ANTA Board were able to do in the face of this seemingly insurmountable barrier was demonstrate the resilience within our profession at all levels across numerous collaborative Associations and fight back against the negatives, offering as much support to our members as we could muster. One of the many positives within ANTA is the initiation of change to Guild Insurance, ANTA’s preferred insurance provider to lower costs to Members and ensure only proven costs around genuinely higher-risk practices were accepted by the ANTA Administration. The outcome resulted in better coverage for all modalities with lower premiums. This initiative also sparked a professional relationship with a genuinely supportive partner for our members’ services. Our members responded positively, and we have all benefited from this initiative. We continue to search out ways to support our members practices through our improved facilities, services and marketing.

The continuing challenge to us all has been widely discussed and debates continue to surface about the invasion across Australia by the COVID-19 virus. Many people contracted the virus and some passed as a result. Sadly these events will affect the health record in Australia for some time with the trailing negative effects on the Australian population. The many ways COVID-19 affected us personally may be a matter for the history books. Here we are more than three years since the first recorded infections in Australia and these infections continue with serious and long ranging effects such as COVID Organising Pneumonia and Long COVID. Natural and Traditional Medicine has consistently proven its value alongside mainstream medicine related to avoidance, prevention and recovery from the myriad after effects.

I am impressed by the way ANTA Members endured the influences of the pandemic and we have emerged wiser, healthier and benefited in many ways through following our personal and professional experiences. While anti-viral medications found their place in treatment toward recovery from COVID-19, Natural and Traditional Medicine has contributed effectively in recovery for many through overcoming the after effects of the virus and even the life preserving treatments required in some cases. Now we have an opportunity to discuss evidence-based approaches from mainstream and alternative medicine protocols to aid post infection recovery.

I also see an increase in enthusiasm and commitment from Members toward pre-COVID levels of clinical practice while engaging in the treatment of post-COVID and other health effects experienced by many Australians. I encourage all our members to hold their faith in their client services and treatments. By following the naturopathic edict of “first, do no harm”, our future is secure!

Regards

Jim Olds ANTA Fellow ANTA Executive Officer & Company Secretary BHSc MST, BHSc Comp Med, GC Higher Ed, MSC, Dip Nut, Dip RM, Dip TCMRM