Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As always, it is my pleasure to speak in the Australian parliament as the federal member for Ryan in the western suburbs of Brisbane, an electorate that I grew up in and that I represent very proudly here in the national parliament. I am delighted to speak on the National Health Amendment (National HPV Vaccination Program Register) Bill 2007 because it is something that is of great interest to all my constituents, particularly to the parents of young women in my electorate. They will be very pleased and very proud, I think, that their government has acted very strongly to protect their daughters. I am very proud to be an advocate of this bill and to continue, as a local member, in working to promote this very significant piece of legislation and policy content therein.

Australia has a long history of using immunisation in targeted and mass vaccination programs in order to control communicable diseases, although it should be said that in 1996 our immunisation rates were at a disturbingly low level with some 53 per cent of children aged zero to six years fully immunised for their age—so much so that Professor John Horvath, the current Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Health and Ageing, described those levels as ‘on a lower rate than in some developing countries’. I am pleased to say that today those rates are very different. In 1996, interestingly, only $13 million was spent on vaccines by the then Labor government. Again, I am pleased that this is a very different figure today. In the past 10 years the Howard government has been able to turn around this sort of figure. We have been able to increase our immunisation programs to the point where we are the envy of many developed countries around the world.

I think that the turning point might be the Howard government’s introduction in February 1997 of the Immunise Australia strategy, which consisted of a seven-point plan and a comprehensive range of initiatives to increase Australia’s immunisation rate as quickly as possible to international levels. Overall, the government increased expenditure on immunisation some 22-fold to a figure of $283 million in 2006. We have been able to do that in the last few years only because of our very prosperous economy. A very strong economic performance allows the government to be able to inject this kind of money into very worthwhile and significant programs. The flip side of that is that, if an economy is going backwards or stuttering along, there is no way in the world that a government will be able to invest heavily in social services and in the communities around the country. It is a very indicative and a very salient point to make that it is only when an economy is performing robustly that governments can invest in their people, and in their young people in particular.

The Gardasil vaccination program alone represents an expenditure of $107.4 million a year—eight times the yearly expenditure on all vaccines by the previous Labor government—which brings the predicted expenditure on vaccinations in 2007-08 to $443 million, or a 34-fold increase on 1996 levels. These are not insignificant figures. I am sure that the constituents of Ryan will appreciate this massive 34-fold increase on 1996 levels. Again, it points to the capacity of the government to be able to do this because we are generating revenues from the business community as a result of business doing well in Australia thanks to the policies of the Howard government in the economic area.

Immunisation coverage rates have also increased dramatically, despite being at levels as low as 52 per cent in 1995 for children aged zero to six years of age. Since the introduction of the Immunise Australia program, childhood immunisation coverage rates have increased to all-time highs, with over 90 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 months now fully immunised. The Howard government has of course conducted a number of very successful vaccination campaigns during its time in office: firstly, the measles control campaign in 1998, where 1.9 million primary school children were vaccinated with MMR, and, secondly, the current immunisation program against meningococcal disease, which commenced in 2003 and targeted all one- to 19-year-olds over a four-year period. At the time of its commencement the meningococcal vaccination program was the largest of its kind ever undertaken in Australia, at a cost of $298 million over four years. Just think about it: almost $300 million over four years of taxpayers’ money invested in the people of Australia by the government, which is a very significant investment in the people of Australia. Again, I just make the point that the government had the capacity to be able to do this because it has been able to manage the economy very well over the last decade.

The benefits of such a large-scale vaccination program are already evident with the reported cases of meningococcal disease dropping from 213 cases in 2002 to just 40 cases in 2005—a decrease of 81 per cent. In 2006, the numbers were better still, with just 24 cases of meningococcal disease reported and one death. The success of this vaccination program is indicative of the benefits of these large-scale immunisation programs and reflects very well on the Howard government’s ability to effectively manage them. The Gardasil vaccination program, of which I will speak in a moment, will be the biggest of these programs yet.

Approximately half a million women worldwide develop cervical cancer every year, and 230,000 of these women will die of the disease—many of them from the developing world. In Australia, about 800 women get cervical cancer each year, and about 270 women die from it. Thanks to the success of the Pap smear program in Australia, cervical cancer has dropped from the eighth to the 18th most common cause of cancer death amongst Australian women. Indeed, Australia has the second-lowest incidence of cervical cancer and the lowest mortality rate in the world. However, we all know that one death is still one too many, so whatever our government and our brilliant medical scientists, researchers and doctors can do to minimise cancer—or should the good Lord allow them to rid our society of cancer—would, of course, be a wonderful blessing upon us all.

The Cancer Council of Victoria estimates that the Gardasil vaccine has the potential to prevent up to 500 cases of cervical cancer each year in Australia and to save in the order of 200,000 lives every year worldwide. Looking at this figure, one finds it enormously disturbing. However, when one goes beyond it, one must stop and think that this is not just a number on a piece of paper; it is someone’s loved one, someone’s relative, someone’s daughter, someone’s mother or someone’s sister. Whatever we can do, we must do. We must do all we can within the powers of humanity to rid our earth of such cancers and all the other ills and evils of our world.

The Gardasil vaccine is a breakthrough in the treatment of cervical cancer, and the Howard government is very proud to be able to make it widely available to young Australian women. It is a good example of politics and government at their very best. Previous speakers and colleagues have mentioned Professor Ian Frazer. He can claim much of the credit for discovering the vaccine, in cooperation with his good friend and colleague—a man who has now sadly passed on—Dr Jian Zhou. I never had the opportunity of meeting Dr Jian Zhou, but he did live in my electorate of Ryan. I do know his wife very well, Ms Sun Xiao-Yi, who still lives in the suburb of Mt Ommaney in the Ryan electorate. She is a wonderful lady. She has become a family friend to me and my wife in the last 10 years, through mutual friends of ours. I regret very much that I did not have the opportunity of meeting her husband, who, from all accounts, was an incredibly gifted man and a wonderful human being. He spent some time at my old alma mater at Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom. I wish very much that I had had the pleasure and honour of meeting him.

Ian Frazer, also a Ryan constituent, lives in the suburb of St Lucia and works at the University of Queensland. He is a very distinguished professional, a very smart man and a very kind man. His compassion, humanity and decency and just sheer determination to make an impact on the world through his medical and research skills is an inspiration to all of us and certainly to those in the medical profession. Someone like my brother, who is a young neurosurgeon in this country, looks up to Ian Frazer. My sister is about to graduate from Sydney University as a doctor and aspires, as I think all doctors and medical researchers do, to make a difference in their professional endeavours. I have had the pleasure of meeting Ian Frazer—or as the press like to call him and as media magazines and feature stories like to label him, ‘God’s gift to women’—on many occasions. I am very fortunate that he is a Ryan constituent. His wife has just retired as a teacher at a local primary school in the Ryan electorate, and I want to pay tribute in passing to her for her dedication at that local primary school. She and Ian are wonderful people. Everyone knows Professor Ian Frazer for his Australian of the Year honour in 2006. He relished, of course, this opportunity to promote Australia’s medical research capabilities and to inspire others to pursue a career in this very important field.

The vaccine that he came up with protects girls and young women against four strains of the human papilloma virus, which is sexually transmitted. Two of the four strains are responsible for 70 per cent of all cervical cancer, and the remaining two strains cause over 90 per cent of genital warts. Before the vaccine was cleared for use in Australia, more than 8,000 women across 16 countries received the vaccine as part of the clinical trials designed to test the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. The results, as published in the very prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, are remarkable and demonstrate that Gardasil protects against a range of cancerous and precancerous conditions.

The worldwide take-up of Gardasil has been incredible, with over six million people now being vaccinated in the United States alone. Germany, Italy and France have now also instituted an Australian style widespread immunisation scheme. In November 2006, the Howard government announced a funding outlay of $537 million for the national HPV vaccination program using the Gardasil vaccine. I am pleased that I can stand here and say that I was a very strong advocate of that in the corridors of government here. The $437 million over five years is for the vaccine itself, which retails at approximately $460 over the counter. An additional $100 million over four years is provided to support the implementation of the program with an education campaign and the establishment of a national register, which this bill specifically establishes.

The free vaccine is being provided through school based programs to girls aged between 12 and 13 years on an ongoing basis. As part of the program, the Howard government will also fund a two-year catch-up program at schools for girls aged between 13 and 18 years. As well, there is an additional two-year catch-up program to enable young women, aged up to and including 26 years, who have left school to be vaccinated through their local GPs.

We might recollect the scenes on national television when, in April this year, Professor Ian Frazer himself vaccinated the first Australian schoolgirl. Speaking of Professor Frazer and Australian schoolgirls being vaccinated, I had the pleasure, during the recess, to be part of Professor Ian Frazer’s visit to a very significant college in my electorate—Brigidine College at Indooroopilly. On behalf of the college principal, Ms Madeleine Sayer, I invited Ian Frazer to speak to the young women at the college about medical research in general, about his life and times, about what inspires him and, in particular, about the Gardasil program and vaccination. On the record in the parliament, I want to thank Brigidine College for having me visit the college with Professor Frazer. I want to thank the college captain, Stephanie Byrnes, for her assistance and hospitality in looking after us and showing Professor Frazer around the college and, of course, to thank the college principal, Madeleine Sayer, for her foresight and very strong reception of the visit by Ian Frazer.

For Ms Sayer this was an investment in the young women of her college in a broader sense as well as in the very direct sense, with Professor Frazer speaking of his experience and his skills. The day was a resounding success. This college is at Indooroopilly and has some 500 students. The Brigidine College newsletter published on 27 July and distributed to the parents of the girls states:

Mr Michael Johnson, the Federal Member for Ryan organized this visit to the College last Monday. It was a great privilege for the girls to meet and hear an address by Professor Ian Frazer. He spoke of his work in the development of the vaccine that protects women against cancer. All the Yr 12, 11 & 10 students have already been immunised this year (one more injection to complete the series). It is a great initiative of the Federal government and we were able to express our appreciation through Mr Johnson.

I thank Madeleine Sayer and Brigidine College for their hospitality. I know that the students of the college would have very much appreciated listening to a very distinguished Australian and someone who is in enormous demand by a lot of schools, organisations and companies for his time and his wisdom. Madeleine Sayer’s letter to me, commenting on this Howard government initiative, says:

It is a marvellous program and I would commend all associated with this decision for the investment in the future of our nation.

Yours sincerely

Madeleine Sayer

Principal

This bill will amend the National Health Act 1953 to enable the establishment and operation of this national program register. It will ensure the successful implementation of the national HPV program. The national register will enable the government to collect information on girls and women immunised by the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, to gauge the success of the national immunisation program. Through the compilation of data and statistics, the register will enable the government to determine how many people participated in the HPV vaccination program in relation to the eligible population, and also of course enable outcome based analysis as recorded by cervical cytology registers. The register will also provide a way for participants to be contacted if need be and will help women to find out whether they have been vaccinated and whether they require booster doses.

The register will contain personal and vaccination information about women who participate in the program. However, only registered vaccination providers will be given access to the HPV register to allow information to be entered on the register and to check the vaccination status of those to whom they are administering the vaccine. The bill also makes provision for vaccinated persons to make the request in writing at any time to have their details removed from the register.

In conclusion, I want to again thank Professor Frazer and pay tribute to him in the parliament. He is of course a very strong advocate of good health policy and of medical research expansion in this country. I know that when he was named Australian of the Year he was very proud of that—and, like me, he is not an Australian by birth. He is an Australian by migration, coming from Scotland—I do not come from Scotland—and is someone that many in this country admire because he has every decency about him to make a difference in our country.

Of course, we are a country of only 20 million people. I think the amount of money that the federal government invests in health alone is something we can be very proud of. There is always a case for more money to be spent in every aspect of government and public policy, but as a prosperous nation we can be very proud of what we have spent. That is not to say we cannot do more. We can always do more. Every government can always look to revisit its programs to try and invest in areas where it will really make a difference to people on the ground.

This is something that, as a local member, I want to continue to advocate. At the pointy end of life—at the grassroots of our community, in the day-to-day living that takes place across our country—we should always remember what makes a difference, at the end of the day, to people’s lives. It is this sort of thing that people look at very seriously. We can get caught up in theory and academic nonsense about a whole bunch of things but, at the end of the day, we should just remember what actually strikes at people’s hearts and souls. It is this sort of thing that makes a difference in the lives of children and in the lives of their family security. I commend this bill very strongly to the House.

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