Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on this motion recognising that tomorrow is World AIDS Day. It is also my mother's birthday. Rest in peace, Mum. World AIDS Day is an annual day to acknowledge those who we've lost to AIDS related conditions and those who are living with HIV. The theme for this year's World AIDS Day is 'now more than ever'. Some 38 million people worldwide are living with HIV. Almost six million of those are living in our Asia-Pacific region. There were 1.7 million people diagnosed with HIV in 2019, compared to the peak of 2.8 million new diagnoses in 1998. This 40 per cent gradual reduction is testament to the global community's commitment and efforts.

Australia has made excellent progress towards our goal of eliminating HIV transmission by 2022. In Australia in 2018 there were 833 HIV notifications, down from 1,084 in 2014. This year so far 129 people have been diagnosed with HIV in Queensland. So HIV has not yet been eliminated. There is still much work to do. Despite a decrease in notifications in the wider Australian community, there have been rising rates of transmissions among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. I'm privileged to represent a diverse electorate. Moreton hosted a World AIDS Day multicultural forum in Acacia Ridge on the weekend. I went along and met with several local community leaders. This event is held every year by the Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland, who received some health funding to hold the forum. This is the 20th year that the mighty ECCQ have held the event, which attracts community leaders from across Brisbane and is particularly aimed at multicultural immunities. There were close to 100 attendees on Saturday.

Sadly, as that cruel data suggests, there is complacency about HIV in some communities largely due to some in the community who have travelled here from overseas. Before arriving they were screened for HIV as part of the health requirement for receiving a visa. Once they were in Australia they heard very little about HIV as a day-to-day concern. We are a victim of our own success. It's not at the forefront as a health issue for many in the community like it was when AIDS first appeared. It was 1987 when the Grim Reaper campaign first aired on television screens. The impact of those ads was crucial in raising awareness of the emerging AIDS epidemic to prevent the spread. Very quickly everyone knew what AIDS was and how to protect yourself from getting it, and the health officials and the gay community groups were magnificent working together.

Sadly, there is not that level of awareness and action in all communities anymore. Forums like the one organised by the mighty Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland are very valuable. They provide good, reliable information to leaders so they can then return to their communities and share that information. The guest speaker on Saturday, Joe Hand, spoke about his experience of living with HIV since 2000. He talked about the stigma that still exists in multicultural communities. He said that he's often asked to speak at events such as the forum on Saturday, but he's the only person who speaks publicly. He hopes that next year he'll be in the audience listening to someone else speak publicly about their experience of living with HIV.

Breaking down the stigma of HIV so that people talk about the disease and share knowledge is crucial in preventing its spread. We've seen the benefit this year of getting information into the community about protection from infection and stopping the spread. The efforts to stop the COVID-19 pandemic have enveloped the world and overshadowed the continuing efforts to beat the HIV epidemic. As did the AIDS epidemic in its early years, COVID-19 has exposed the inequalities that exist in our community. Millions of people in developing countries died waiting for HIV treatment. We've seen even here in Australia that some sectors of society have been less able to protect themselves from COVID-19—for example, the homeless, who could not isolate like the rest of us in our comfortable homes; those in aged care, whose carers were not provided with adequate PPE to stop the spread; or those in non-state-government run homes in Victoria, where, I think, about 95 per cent of the fatalities occurred, those without nurse-patient ratios. So 2020 has been a year like no other. We've done remarkably well to stop the spread of COVID, but we need to work more too. We can't be complacent about AIDS. The shared responsibility to increase awareness and stop HIV infection demonstrated by my local multicultural community shows that they will continue to work to eliminate HIV.

I'd like to remember today the Australians who've lost their fight against AIDS related conditions. My brothers and my brother's partner, Michael Trelfer, have told me just some of those tragic stories, of the families and friends who fought that fight with them. You are not forgotten. We will all keep fighting and we will remember those names. I repeat: we do not want COVID-19 to threaten the great progress that has been made in beating HIV.

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