Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last year there was a very interesting novel published by a former Western Australian, Joan London. It was a book called The Golden Age. Joan's novels are generally fantastic and this one was no exception. The Golden Age is abook about the polio epidemic in Perth, in Western Australia, in the late 40s and the early 50s. For those who did not live through that or only have a vague folk memory from lessons passed down from the older generation, it is absolutely critical to read this book and understand what can occur in a community like ours—a sophisticated Western society—with the fear that comes with epidemiological disease, where the community can be highly fractured. One of the things that Joan London points out and captures extremely well in this book is the fear and anxiety that emerged from this disease, which affected vast numbers of Australian children. One in 1,000 children in Australia ultimately contracted polio, so parents were incredibly fearful of the impact of this disease.

Joan's novel showed the way in which fear drove some very severe reactions in the community. It tore communities apart. People became suspicious of each other and marginalised others. If someone in a family contracted the disease, there was often a great deal of stigma attached to that—a belief that the family's lifestyle was unhygienic; that they were in some way less hygienic people because of this disease. Families had difficulties in dealing with the sheer physical disability created by this disease and there was the ultimate establishment of facilities where children would be basically exiled for numerous years. In many cases, in that process they became very separated emotionally from their families and they took that with them throughout the rest of their lives. So, for those of us who perhaps have never lived through an epidemic, it is really important to understand the direct physical result of this. I think one in 20 children who contracted polio died and many more had a disability that remained with them for the rest of their life. So it is not just the direct physical impact, but then there are all the psycho-social consequences that can attend upon that.

So it is important for us to consider what this great mischief is that requires us to take a pretty hard line on the issue of vaccination. On this side of the House we have supported the No Jab, No Pay policy and we support this latest extension of that policy, which is to remove the exemption on the basis of conscientious objection. We think this is something that is undermining the very nature of the policy. Also, we are supporting the strengthening of the data we have about the immunological profile of our community, through the formation of and strengthening of the various registers, which will give us a better understanding of the penetration of vaccinations.

I have had some letters of concern, and I think there are some legitimate concerns raised around the emphasis that is being placed on, perhaps, people of lower incomes—that is, those who, by and large, have a reliance on the family benefits and various subsidies to which we are attaching the No Pay, No Jab rules. I heard with interest the member for Higgins, representing largely a very wealthy area in Melbourne, noting that in her electorate there are some of the lowest immunisation rates. That indeed reflects the research that has gone on across Australia—that indeed it is those wealthier areas that have the lowest rates of immunisation. I think this is a question we are going to have to address. For the effectiveness of these vaccines in respect of highly contagious diseases, to get proper herd immunity we need about a 95 per cent coverage rate. For diseases that are still communicable but perhaps not as readily transmissible we need a coverage rate of around 90 per cent. I think it is only fair that we ensure the burden—if I can call it that—of ensuring this level of herd immunisation does not fall disproportionately upon those people who are in the lower income brackets.

So I think we need to keep ourselves very much alive to who is being immunised and who is not. We do in fact have another lever available to us if we do not see the immunisation rates increasing equally across all socioeconomic groups. I put it to the government that just as we are quite rightly, and with the full support of the opposition, looking at family tax benefits and the child care payments as the leverage point, it may well be that if we continue to see this disproportionate level of vaccination we should also consider attaching it to the subsidies the federal government pays directly to government schools.

This is a really important issue and we need to ensure that we have the vaccination rates up there. But we must make sure that the task of ensuring we do this is spread evenly. I have had a very personal experience with this. When my daughter was only four weeks old, before she was capable of having her first shot, she contracted whooping cough. It was a really quite horrific experience to take this very small baby into the hospital and learn that she was clearly struggling with this condition. In the weeks before, she had had exposure to a child whose parents had not immunised the child. It is quite possible that that was the source from which she contracted whooping cough.

We have this great vulnerability. We need to understand that the scientific evidence has overwhelmingly shown us that the benefits of this vaccination program outweigh the risks. And, of course, there is some risk with everything. There are no free lunches in medicine, as there are no free lunches elsewhere. But all of the scientific evidence is really showing us that overwhelmingly the benefits outweigh the risks. On this issue we need to be putting the rights of the community before the rights of the individual, because it is only as a community that we can stamp out these illnesses. This cannot be something that becomes purely a matter of personal choice, any more than the issue of paying tax becomes an issue of personal choice—although with some of our tax laws some of us might be forgiven for believing there is an element of choice, for at least some in our community!

This is very important legislation and it is very important that we develop a very sound policy and that we have a database that is going to enable us to understand, with great clarity, just exactly how we are going in terms of this coverage, so that we can really plan our health policies around that.

To repeat: I think we have to look very closely at the reality behind the reflection made by the member for Higgins about the groups in society that, in fact, may not be pulling their weight in an immunological sense and look at how we can apply other Commonwealth financial levers to bring them into the herd, along with everyone else, to make sure that we get this right.

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