Cancer for the first time has overtaken Heart Disease as the disease that takes the lives of the most Australians, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 

The Institute's latest data shows the number of deaths from all forms of cancer was 44,100 in 2013.  Lung cancer is Australia's most common fatal cancer.

"People are now living long enough to get cancer in greater numbers," said Professor Lisa Horvath, director of research at the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse cancer hospital in Sydney.  "Age is the biggest risk factor, apart from smoking, for getting cancer," she added.

But things are not going in indigenous communities, where health scores are worse than non-indigenous on almost every score.  Indigenous infant mortality rates, a key indicator of the general health of a population, fell nine percent compared with figures in the previous report.  But at six deaths per 1,000 live births, they remain much higher than the nonindigenous infant mortality rate of 3.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. 

Growth in health expenditure ran at 3.1 percent in 2012-13, well below the decade's average of 5 percent.