Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to pay tribute to the member for Chisholm for moving this motion. She has been a long-time champion for the cause of allergy and anaphylaxis and has moved a number of motions like this in this chamber. I pay tribute to her interest and to her campaigning. As a number of previous speakers have said, the incidence of food allergy and anaphylaxis has increased dramatically over a generation. The scientists have some theories but no definitive answer as to why. There have been explanations proposed which have not yet been proven. People having less exposure to infections in childhood is the hygiene theory. It may be due to delayed introduction of allergenic food such as eggs, peanuts or tree nuts, to food processing or to skin exposure to products such as unrefined nut-based moisturisers. The increasing incidence of food allergy affects 10 per cent of children up to one year of age, between four to eight per cent of children aged up to five and approximately two per cent of adults.

Like the member for Chisholm, I also have a child who was diagnosed at a very young age with a peanut allergy. We had a number of meetings with a specialist and went through what all parents of children with allergies go through, wanting to make sure that the processes are right at the school, at school camps and at organisations like Scouts. We have been quite lucky in that, while it appeared his allergy was a serious skin reaction, there was no anaphylaxis and he has responded to a challenge and is now able to eat peanuts.

I agree with the previous speaker. Schools, in my experience, are thinking through this more and more. Teachers are getting better at making sure that certain foods are excluded from the classroom and, if one child has an allergy, every family has to keep those foods are out. We are seeing better training of teachers so that they are aware of what needs to be done. But there is still a lot more that we can do.

The Medical Research Future Fund, which was announced in the budget and which will have $1 billion go towards it initially, and hopefully over time $20 billion, does offer the benefit of more research being done in this area. It is important that we do continue to find what is causing the increase in food allergy and also what can be done in terms of children who have the potential, with strict avoidance, to actually grow out, as it were, of this condition.

There have been a number of pleasing initiatives since we last had a motion on this. The National Healthy Schools Canteens project, which was funded by the Australian government as part of the Australian Better Health Initiative, developed national guidance and training to help canteen managers make healthier food and drink choices for school canteens, and food allergy was definitely a part of it. Food allergy needs to be diagnosed by a specialist, and if someone does have an allergy then strict avoidance of the food is extremely important. So there are guidelines and resources for school canteens across Australia, drawing on existing material and the Australian Dietary Guidelines. There is also an Allergen Collaboration, which is a food allergen portal which provides different sectors in the community—people in the food industry, health professionals and schools—with links to best practice food allergen resources and key messages to promote in the different sectors. But this is an important issue and I want to commend the member for Chisholm for raising this issue.

Debate adjourned.

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