David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The issue of immunisation is what I rise to speak about. As we all probably remember from our earliest science teachings, the amazing Louis Pasteur not only pasteurised milk and beer so that it did not spoil but also invented the rabies vaccine. He went onto introduce vaccines for fowl cholera and also for anthrax, which were scourges at the time. In fact, if you got bitten by a dog—as is still the case in some countries where they do not have regular vaccination—a very painful death would ensue. That man changed the course of medical history by introducing vaccines.

In Australia we have a wonderful vaccination program, but I am concerned that amongst certain sections of the community the idea is afoot that vaccinations are somehow bad for people and that all you need to do is eat your fruit and veggies and be strong and you will prevent yourself and your children from getting serious infectious diseases. In my years of clinical practice, and there were 33 of them, two were spent working full time as a paediatric trainee specialist. In my experience morbidity and mortality in little Australians suffering from the humble measles illness was a rarity, whereas these days it seems to be happening ever more frequently as people are not vaccinating their children, because of this popular misconception that vaccination is dangerous to your health. We all know that the ill-informed reports that vaccination causes autism have been totally discredited and debunked as myth. Yet that is a popular conception in many areas of the country. In some areas of the North Coast and in inner-city Sydney there is this idea that vaccinations are bad.

Measles is a wicked illness. The child gets really quite sick. With things like rubella, chickenpox and all the childhood illnesses, a proportion of people get long-term sequelae. Vaccination is so important. Not only is measles coming back because vaccination rates are dropping but also other illnesses like whooping cough are coming back with a vengeance because the prospect of herd immunity is vanishing in some communities. Some vaccinations give 100 per cent cover and some give less cover, but as a community you get an added benefit that if enough people are vaccinated the disease does not have a portal, or an area to break out—the so-called herd immunity effect. If you get more than 90 to 95 per cent of your herd vaccinated, the disease—whatever you are vaccinating them for—will die out, because there are not enough avenues for it to break out.

That is what has happened in humans. You only have to see what we have achieved around the world with the smallpox vaccination. We do not vaccinate people for smallpox any more, because worldwide vaccination has eradicated it. It had no avenue to erupt. Same with polio—we have virtually eradicated polio around the world. This vaccination across mass populations is really important. If we are to prevent childhood illnesses and the serious neurological or respiratory consequences of things like whooping cough, which little children actually die from because they cough themselves to death they are impaired so much, and the chronic illness this causes amongst adults—adults are even getting it—then vaccination rates will need to rise. It is vitally important.

What I would like to know from the minister is: what are the current immunisation rates across Australia, are these rates are high enough and what are we, in the government, doing in this budget to improve immunisation rates across Australia? This is something that everyone wants to know. They want to know that their children, and their preventable illnesses, are covered by our immunisation processes.

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