Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. The government is treating consolidated revenue as a fund for its own political purposes, and I think this is only one of many examples we have seen. These developments should worry all of us in this House, not simply as parliamentarians deprived of our ancient and important role. It should concern us all as Australian taxpayers, knowing that our government has the power, the opportunity and the inclination to waste our money on keeping itself in power.

I would like to turn now to a separate issue, which goes to the additional appropriations in these bills of over $350 million for the Department of Health and Ageing. I want to see more of that money go towards preventive health care for children. It is patently obvious to Labor that we need to address preventive health care in childhood, and we have outlined some plans in our recently released discussion paper entitled ‘Goals for Aussie kids’. Labor’s plan for the future health of Australian kids is through early intervention and prevention. We have outlined a range of programs to address childhood health issues, ranging from allergies to mental health. The issue I want to talk about today, which is also raised in our paper, is that of childhood obesity, which Labor has committed to addressing in our goals for Aussie kids policy. I am aware that the government has recently launched an advertising campaign aimed at children to encourage them to switch off the television and get active. This is a good message, but you do have to ask whether there a single problem in this country that the government does not think can be fixed by advertising.

In my view, to tackle childhood obesity and encourage healthy food choices in youth it is essential to establish long-term healthy eating patterns and an interest in food and cooking. This then becomes an important part of preventive health care. Obesity is a complex problem which requires comprehensive solutions. The literature on the subject suggests that a complex interplay between cultural, social, behavioural and economic pressures influence the incidence of childhood obesity. Around 17 per cent of Australian children and adolescents are overweight, and a further six per cent are obese. Over the past decade the percentage of overweight children has almost doubled, and the percentage of obese children has more than tripled. Obese children are eight times more likely to become obese in adulthood, and entrenched obesity is very difficult to treat. It is well documented that childhood obesity leads to a range of health problems later in life, and we need to begin to address this issue now. Obese children are more at risk of developing diabetes in childhood and cardiovascular disease in adulthood and to experience premature mortality.

It is imperative that we encourage better nutrition and healthier lifestyles to avoid health problems related to obesity in childhood and later in life, not only for the health and wellbeing of Australians throughout their lives but also because the costs of obesity related illnesses down the track will have an impact on all of us. I am interested in a project that has been established for a range of reasons, and in one main part it tackles childhood obesity. It is a program to introduce children to healthy eating, gardening—a result of which is a number of environmental issues, including water conservation—and the social benefits of sharing a meal with other people.

Last year I attended the launch of  the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. The project is an innovative program currently running at Collingwood College in Melbourne’s inner city. It aims to create positive eating experiences and engage kids in the process of producing food, through growing and cooking their own meals.

The kids are involved in planting, tending and harvesting an extensive vegetable garden and then cooking with the produce. They spend a period a week in the garden and a double period in the kitchen. The program brings together physical outdoor activity with education about food, the environment, healthy eating and social interaction.

This program has the potential to engage kids and teach them in a unique way, and to introduce them to food, cooking and healthy habits which increasingly—and unfortunately—fewer kids are experiencing at home. It was wonderful to attend the launch and to see the passion and excitement of the children involved in this project. Stephanie Alexander was there and told of the excitement and disappointment at growing their own food—what happened when an animal ate the large watermelon they had been tending so carefully. She said that some of the children were trying these vegetables for the first time and going home and talking to their parents about meals that could be cooked at home as well. It is a very exciting project which has the capacity to transform many children’s lives.

To run the Kitchen Garden program for children in years 3 to 5 costs approximately $60,000 a year, not really a large amount of money for a program that can have such an impact. At this stage there is no specific funding source to which a school can apply to establish a Kitchen Garden program, even though the pilot work has been done through the establishment of the program that has been running at Collingwood College.

In 2004, this government allocated $15 million to the Building a Healthy, Active Australia package.  This program was designed to grant schools a one-off payment of $1,500 to fund activities such as ‘developing canteen menus, establishing school vegetable gardens, healthy cooking classes and awards for students’. At the end of last year only $760,000 had been spent. Today I want to ask the Minister for Health and Ageing whether he is prepared to make this money available, and in more generous amounts, to schools which want to take up the kitchen garden idea. Clearly it is consistent with the objectives of the program when it was first introduced. There has not been the take-up rate that was expected, perhaps because there has been an underestimation of the cost to keep these projects operating in an ongoing way.

I would like to see the government investing in programs in areas such as my electorate of Gellibrand where socioeconomic disadvantage is high, where the health outcomes still rate poorly and where there is plenty of enthusiasm to make things change so that we improve health and social outcomes—particularly for children in our area. There are so many benefits from a program like this that it is worth revisiting how the money already allocated could be spent. I have to declare an interest, as a committed foodie from a foodie family: I think the benefits of teaching and encouraging children to eat with each other, understanding the aspects of talking during a meal and taking pride in sharing hospitality, is important not just for their health outcomes but also for their social outcomes.

I know that the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation has been inundated with requests to establish the Kitchen Garden project at many schools across Victoria. It seems a pity that the federal government cannot get the same level of response to its program. I think we can assume that this is due to a fairly serious and gross underestimation by the health minister of the resources that it takes to change entrenched behaviour. The piecemeal program that the government has in place does not do anything to address what the World Health Organisation is calling the ‘obesity epidemic’.

It is time to start looking further afield for fresh ideas because the ideas the government is using have become a bit stale. This is a good fresh idea. The hard work has been done. There are plenty of people who are enthusiastic and interested in setting up the program. They just need a little help from the government to get the projects off the ground. I invite the government to consider making this money available for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation projects and for these sorts of projects in general. We will be writing to the minister to follow up this suggestion further.

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