Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sound and fury signifying nothing has just come from the Minister for Health and Ageing. The minister who says he is responsible for his portfolio spoke for 15 minutes about his area of portfolio responsibility and said nothing in this MPI debate about health and its impacts on the workforce and productivity. In the last 15 minutes he said nothing about that, and it is an absolute indictment of him that he knows absolutely nothing about the health of this country. We had 15 minutes of absolute drivel; it is a disgrace.

In Australia we have a saying, ‘Play the ball, not the man.’ That was absolutely appalling behaviour from a minister who comes into this place and says we should show respect. Well, show some respect. Talk about the policies not the individuals, and have a go. Referring to women in this parliament as ‘she’ and not actually discussing things is just disgraceful. You have no idea what you are talking about so you just waffle on. That last 15 minutes was an absolute indictment of this government and an indictment of you, Minister.

Australia is facing an epidemic of chronic diseases with serious consequences for our living standards, and nothing in the last 15 minutes was said about it. It was all about treatment. You missed the point completely, Minister. We are talking about prevention. You went on about treatment plans. What we are signifying here is: let’s avoid someone having to go that step to get those treatment plans. Let’s ensure they do not get there in the first place. You did not mention it once, and you had the fudge factor around tobacco: ‘Oh, some governments.’ It is not your government that can claim that. You did not mention AIDS because, under your watch, the number of people with AIDS has gone through the roof. You dropped the prevention program and now we are seeing the rise of the HIV-AIDS epidemic on your watch. You should be ashamed of that.

The message is pretty simple, really, isn’t it? Eat less, eat better and do more exercise. That is a pretty simple message. Why aren’t we selling it? Why aren’t we out there promoting that message? We are going to spend $55 million advertising the IR backflip but we are not out there telling people to eat less, eat better and do more exercise. I suppose the minister will throw around, as usual, that it is up to parents and individuals. Tragically, there are some parents and individuals who do not actually understand that and who need the advice, need the support and need the understanding, and who actually need help with affording good food. Tragically, the surveys all show that bad food is cheaper to acquire. It is easier to acquire and that is why a lot of people buy it. They do not have the time to buy good food, they do not have the money to buy good food and they do not have the time to go home and cook it.

We have heard very little from this minister on issues around taking a preventive message out to the community. He did slip it into a Sydney Morning Herald article, back in November 2006. That article stated:

Speaking after a conference on diabetes among Indigenous Australians—

after the conference, not in his conference, and probably off the record—

the minister said that if soft drinks were consumed other than as an “occasional treat” they could be “very harmful”.

It’s distressing that soft drinks are overwhelmingly the biggest single seller in our supermarkets right around Australia and the problem with soft drink is that it’s basically water spoilt.

The article continued:

Mr Abbott’s comments mark a shift in his position, which up until now has left the responsibility of what children consume to parents and to the industry itself.

“So if, as a matter of course, kids have a couple of cans of Coke a day obviously they’ve got to get that much more exercise if they’re going to avoid the problem of childhood obesity,” he said.

Yes, but did he then give us a program to stop them from drinking soft drinks? No, he has done absolutely nothing about it. Most of the state governments have picked up the can and are running on this issue now. In Victoria we are banning soft drinks from school canteens. We are running programs about how dangerous the consumption of soft drinks is—and even about how dangerous the consumption of some fruit juices is, because the labelling is so difficult to read that it is difficult to explain to kids that they cannot have apple juice because it has more sugar in it than some of the cans of soft drink that are in those fridges out there. But we are not doing this. This minister has done nothing. The girls from Strathcona college, who are in the gallery today, know the message because we have just had Healthy Living Week in Victoria. Schools are doing their bit to educate their children and the state government is doing its bit. But for big preventive health measures it must be the federal government—and they have sat on their hands for over 11 years and done nothing. Yes, we now all know about obesity, but we have done so for 11 years. And what have we done about it? That is the point. In your 15 minutes, you made not one mention of it.

Chronic disease generally involves prolonged illness and functional impairment or disability. Research shows that poor health outcomes are highly correlated with lower workforce participation. In the workforce, chronic disease results in absenteeism, reduced productivity and people dropping out of the workforce prematurely. We have the Treasurer saying, ‘Work till you drop,’ and that is literally what people are doing. But we are not helping them stay in the workforce by keeping them healthy in the workforce. Disease, injury and disability are all cited by those who are not in the workforce as a key reason for leaving their last job and staying out of the workforce. Deteriorating health is a strong predictor of reduced labour force participation at an older age. With an ageing population we have a vested interest in keeping people healthier for longer and in the workforce for longer. It is not really rocket science, but the government is not doing anything about it. Not only do people with better health participate more in the workforce, but people in the workforce are more likely to be healthy. In Australia we will face all these problems in the not so distant future, with disastrous consequences for national workforce participation, productivity and our health budget.

The six disease groups of cardiovascular disease, cancer, injuries, mental health, diabetes and asthma caused 78 per cent of all deaths in Australia in 2004-05. The sad but positive fact is that these chronic diseases are generally preventable. With positive government action we can do something to curb the impending disaster. A former editor of the Age, Mike Smith, who came close to death from a heart attack, has coined the term ‘cardiodiabesity’—maybe that is what the minister was trying to say before, when he could not get out the word ‘obesity’—to describe the deadly troika of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity that is sweeping the country. Cardiovascular disease remains Australia’s biggest killer, with 50,000 deaths a year—50,000 predominantly preventable deaths. That does not even account for the cost of the preventive surgery that so many people go through—bypasses and other things—which is brought on by being overweight and not attending to diet. Some people have to have cardiovascular disease, because it is natural, but for the majority it can be avoided.

Globally, the World Health Organisation has tipped a 30 per cent increase in cardiovascular disease in the next 23 years, with the number of deaths a year rising from 10 million to 24 million. What are we doing about it in Australia? Very, very little. Type 2 diabetes has doubled in Australia in the last 20 years. More than one million Australians suffer from this disease and another one million have a pre-diabetic condition that will almost certainly develop into full-blown diabetes.

According to a study by Access Economics, obesity alone is estimated to cost the country $21 billion in health costs, lost productivity and other costs. This is almost double the cost of running Medicare. What are we doing about it, in a preventive sense, so that we do not have people getting diabetes and so that we do not have to treat them? Two per cent of our budget. It is a disgrace.

Mike Smith, whom I quoted before, says the solution must come from a combination of public health policy, economic policy, taxation policy, education, advertising, marketing, research, communication, regulation, prohibition, persuasion, planning, construction and transport. He is right. This government is not doing that. We only need to look at what Canada is doing. Of course, Canada generally leads the world in public health outcomes. The Public Health Agency of Canada has actually set targets. By 2015 it wants to increase by 20 per cent the proportion of Canadians who make healthy food choices. They are going to provide surveys and statistics; they are actually going to provide the health information outcomes. By 2015 they want to increase by 20 per cent the proportion of Canadians who participate in regular physical activity based on 30 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity. I would recommend that to everybody in the House! By 2015 they want to increase by 20 per cent the proportion of Canadians who have a normal bodyweight, based on a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9, as measured by a national population survey.

Canada is setting standards and funding them through public health agencies and through preventive programs in schools and throughout the community. This government is doing nothing. This minister in particular is doing nothing. All he can do is come here and personally criticise. He is in charge of this very important budget and he should be doing very well. It is all very well for the health minister to talk about the government’s record on conservative implementation and delivering improvements in immunisation rates, boosting private health cover, improving pharmaceutical benefits and introducing the extended Medicare safety net, but what about the prevention of chronic disease? What about actually talking about prevention so that we do not have people dying from things that are completely preventable?

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