Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I'd like to thank my friend the member for Braddon for bringing this important motion to the House today. The breadth of the motion explains the extent of the chronic conditions around obesity and the detrimental impact this is having on the full breadth of the Australian population. There is no doubt that the level of obesity in this country is a public health crisis. It is extraordinary that two in three Australian adults are overweight or obese. What's worse is that we are seeing kids as young as five—we've also heard of kids as young as two—being obese. One in four kids aged five to 17 and one in two aged 18 to 24 are overweight or obese. You can just imagine the health outcomes they are going to have when they are adults if we don't take this seriously.

In my own electorate of Lindsay, Penrith City Council notes that almost 70 per cent of adults and over a quarter of local kids are overweight or obese. We have some of the highest rates of obesity in New South Wales. Prevention, I believe, is key. Parents, schools, community organisations, healthcare practitioners and governments need to come together and strategise and plan ways to ensure our children are not impacted. That is why the National Obesity Strategy, as mentioned by the member for Braddon, is absolutely key—not just having a strategy, but being focused on its implementation.

We need a strong national campaign to promote sport and activity and healthy living in every corner of Australia. Many of us in this place recently took part in AUSactive's Fit for Office challenge, and even though that was just a snapshot of the activity requirements, it's really important for us to be leading by example. It's why I started the Lindsay Healthy Active Living Network as soon as I stepped into this role as the member for Lindsay—because it is a serious issue in my community. Local sporting organisations, health practitioners and clinicians all come together to discuss some of the outcomes of what's happening in the community, and, most importantly, we discuss the practical things that we can be doing on the ground. It's also why I have been committed to delivering sporting and community facilities and upgrades in our community, for young people playing sport and participating in cricket and martial arts. Kids, as we all know, are footy mad in Penrith, with the Panthers as our great team—our winners—inspiring a new generation of kids participating in sport. Finding a sport or activity is key to lowering the risk of obesity in the future, including type 2 diabetes and mental health issues.

We're blessed to have the Nepean River in my community. We have such amazing places to walk. We have parks, walking trails and nature reserves. We have all these things, but we still have some of the highest rates of obesity. That's because the opportunities might be there to take up these sports and activities, but, sometimes, there is just so much more at play contributing to people's health outcomes. I want to give a shout-out to Dr Kathryn Williams, who works at Nepean Hospital in Lindsay, because she sees this every day. She's a clinical lead and manager of the Nepean Family Metabolic Health Services and is head of endocrinology at Nepean Hospital. She is a researcher and a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney. She works with some of the most severe cases of obesity, and, unfortunately, there is a backlog of hundreds of Western Sydney patients who need her care. She's an advocate for pharmaceutical intervention to assist with weight loss for patients, alongside a healthy diet with regular exercise.

Finally, I want to note as deputy chair of the health committee that—and I note the chair is here—we are working really hard on the current inquiry into obesity and diabetes and the correlation between the two, with a particular focus on diabetes. This is absolutely important, and it shows how serious we are in this place to solve this public health crisis.

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