Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Papua New Guinea is Australia's nearest international neighbour, and our countries have always had a close association both in times of war and in times of peace. As the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's own website states, 'geographic proximity and historical links have given Papua New Guinea a special place in Australia's foreign relations'. With this in mind, I condemn the Commonwealth and Queensland governments for their indication that they will terminate tuberculosis clinics on Saibai and Boigu islands, which currently provide vital tuberculosis surveillance and clinical care for PNG nationals.

Tuberculosis is a potentially fatal disease which debilitates those who suffer from it. It is highly contagious and, worryingly, TB specialists treating PNG nationals with this disease have seen the development of a drug resistant strain. In relation to a disease which already requires up to two years treatment, this development has serious and far-reaching consequences for the health of Papua New Guineans and Australians alike. For six years, PNG nationals have been making the short trip to Australia to access life-saving treatment for tuberculosis. It is a service that these sufferers have come to rely on, not only so that they themselves can recover but to ensure that the disease does not escalate throughout Papua New Guinea.

The international aspect of this issue is complex. The border between Australia and PNG is extremely porous, with tens of thousands of people moving back and forth between Papua New Guinea and the Torres Strait Islands every year. Putting humanitarian concerns aside, I think this movement of people between the two nations means that the stopping of treatment for PNG nationals suffering from tuberculosis is a dangerous prospect as it increases the risk of Australians being exposed to serious communicable diseases with which they would otherwise not come in contact. It is vital that the drug resistant strain of TB we are now seeing does not spread to the Australian mainland.

Just last year, a Senate inquiry was held into the issue of PNG nationals accessing treatment for TB in the Torres Strait Islands. This committee did not find that TB clinics should be shut down. In fact, it recommended the contrary: that the Commonwealth government should increase its funding to Queensland Health, which has been providing a service that essentially falls within national provinces. Why then has the federal government made this decision, a decision which has far-reaching health and diplomatic outcomes for Australia and Papua New Guinea? According to the Department of Health and Ageing the reason is financial. So, yet again, we see the people lose out simply due to the financial mismanagement by state and federal Labor governments.

Thankfully, there are organisations which can look past a budget black hole and address the human face of suffering. Youth with a Mission are one such organisation, and they are breaking new ground through their provision of an Australia-PNG medical ship used to achieve health outcomes in remote areas of the gulf and western provinces of PNG. In only its second year of operation, Medical Ships Australia has already provided 54,732 health services, ranging from issuing mosquito nets to dentistry and optical treatment. Just this month, MSA sailed into history by signing the memorandum of understanding with the PNG National Department of Health, committing the YWAM MSA to assist PNG in implementing its 2011-2020 National Health Plan. The MSA will also be assisting both PNG and AusAID in reaching their millennium development goal for the region.

Whilst the YWAM MSA helps provide an immediate solution to urgent health issues such as the treatment and control of tuberculosis in PNG, importantly it also emphasises a grassroots approach by engaging PNG nationals in their home villages and empowering them to address their own needs through training in and equipping and delivery of life-saving health services. It is clear that it is this approach which will provide a solution in the long term and which will see PNG have the capacity to address these issues independently. Simply cutting off treatment is not only cruel for sufferers and potentially detrimental to disease contagion; it does nothing to assist our nearest neighbour to develop. It will be, realistically, at least a decade before PNG will be in the position to self-manage its tuberculosis crisis. In the meantime, Australia must assist. I support my friend Dame Carol Kidu, the former Minister for Community Services in the PNG government, who said:

Sometimes people forget that providing the support in the Torres Strait also protects Australia from the spread of tuberculosis as much as it provides support to Australia's closest neighbours—those PNG citizens right on the border in Papua New Guinea. In PNG we appreciate that targeted assistance from Australia in partnership with the PNG Department of Health to improve the capacity and service provision in our own clinics near the border. However that addresses the longer term not the immediate issue of a potential threat to Australian citizens that relates to a global health issue, which is targeted in the Millennium Development Goal No. 6.

I condemn the government's action and call on all members to support this motion and put human lives before bureaucracy.

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