Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the National Occupational Respiratory Disease Registry Bill 2023. Silicosis is a lung disease caused by inhaling silica. Over time, the constant inhalation of respirable crystalline silica, RCS, can cause scarring on the lung tissue, which can lead to stiffening of the lungs, which in turn makes it hard to breathe. Sadly, at present, there is no cure for silicosis, but there are management strategies, such as corticosteroid medication, oxygen therapy, a trial procedure of washing out the lungs or lung transplantation. Those are very significant steps that are required in order to repair the lungs.

Silicosis has re-emerged as a public concern due to the increased importation and use of engineered stone in Australia. We know it is young men more than anyone else who are getting this disease and suffering with this disease. Unfortunately, we still don't know the full scale or impact of silicosis in Australia, but we do know the numbers affected are increasing. Each of these numbers represents a life, a family and a community impacted.

In 1992 it was predicted there would be around 1,000 silicosis cases in Australia over the next 40 years. This was before the introduction of manufactured stone. As of May last year, there were 579 Australians living with silicosis, compared to 260 in 2019. So the trajectory is not good. We have seen the number of Australians impacted more than double in those three years and, tragically, it is estimated that 584,000 Australians are currently exposed to RCS, but we cannot know which of them will develop silicosis.

A 2013 study in China which monitored silicosis over a period of 44 years found that nearly 35,000 workers were exposed to silica and, of those, over 5,000 developed silicosis. If the silicosis rates in Australia match the findings in the Chinese cohort study that means between 60,000 and 90,000 Australian workers could be diagnosed with silicosis.

We can't just wait for this to happen. Setting up a registry was recommended by the National Dust Disease Taskforce, which was set up when evidence started to emerge of increasing new and accelerated silicosis cases among workers with engineered stone. Unlike many historical forms of silicosis, screening programs in Australia—

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