Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to commence my contribution to this debate by congratulating the member for Riverina for bringing this motion before the House tonight. In addition, I would like to put on the parliamentary record that she is renowned worldwide for the contributions she has made in this area. Recently, she was invited to participate in an IPU briefing held in conjunction with the 2008 high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly on AIDS. I would like to congratulate her for the work that she has done in this field and the recognition that she has brought to this parliament.

I believe that the only way that we can have the best outcome in relation to HIV and AIDS is by adopting a bipartisan approach and having all levels of government involved in the fight against this deadly illness. We need a whole-of-community approach. As rightly mentioned by the previous speaker, people in developing African countries are some of the worst affected by AIDS and HIV. When you look at those countries, you can see just what happens if you do not adopt an approach where you attack the disease and try to resolve the issues that surround it. You can see that there is absolutely no benefit at all to putting your head in the sand and pretending it does not exist. Now, 25 years post the epidemic, we need to think about what it means to be HIV-positive and ageing. People with HIV are now living longer than previously as a result of antiretroviral medications. Those are the medications that need to be made available in Third World countries. Also, we need to look at alternative treatments.

Something I have never before shared in this parliament is this: a member of my extended family was bisexual, and he had HIV-AIDS; his wife contracted the disease as well, and they both died. They had four children, and their deaths caused great anxiety and great upheaval in the lives of those children. When I look back to that era, there was much secrecy surrounding the illness and little treatment available. Moreover, there was not much of a mindset to actually attack the disease.

It really does worry me that we are in an age where the number of HIV infections is increasing and we have developed a complacency about the disease. I would like to strongly support what the member for Riverina has said. We need to have more research. We need to have a very wide community campaign where we embrace the fact that this disease is out in the community and that it is actually increasing in prevalence. We need to look at the issues that are causing this increase. I do not want to see other families go through what the members of my family went through, with four young children having to be brought up without a mother or father. We need to have proper policies in place, and we need to have proper recognition of this disease and to ensure that the knowledge that we as a nation have is shared with other countries. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am mindful of the fact that I have jumped up the list of speakers so I will end my comments there.

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