Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Braddon for bringing this very important motion before the parliament today.

There is an epidemic of obesity in this country and in developed countries around the world. Australia ranks fifth among OECD countries, with nearly a third of all Australians living with obesity—I said a third of all Australians are living with obesity. This problem is hugely embarrassing for a nation as wealthy as ours. Obesity is expected to cost this nation some $87 billion over the next 10 years. We'd have to question why we're not doing more to address this issue. I appreciate the previous speaker, the member for Higgins, giving a doctor's perspective on this.

I grew up in a community, a very small community, in country Victoria, where all of our food came from within 10 kays of where we lived. If anyone looked at me they'd say, 'That's a long time ago,' but in my school and realm, there were very few obese children—very few. What was different about them? Looking back, they were from poorer families that didn't have the access to food that people like myself and most of the community had. And it was hereditary; there were generations of people who were not wealthy and who were different because they had access to different types of food to what we were having.

Even today, 40 per cent of the food that we consume is coming packaged—not necessarily from a supermarket, but packaged food. That's 40 per cent packaged food being consumed by the community. Something happened to me not long ago—and I won't name the township I was in—when I went to polling booths on election day. This community had gone from a small country community to an outer suburban community where they had Hungry Jack's, McDonald's, Red Rooster and all those sorts of things that they didn't have before. When I went to that community, I noticed the difference from the sixties and seventies. Then, there were very few obese people in the community, but on that election day, as I was handing out how-to-vote cards for Russell Broadbent, I noticed that there was obese family, after obese family, after obese family coming into the booths. I had never seen that there before. This was phenomenal to me, because that community had never had the type of dramatic change that I could see presented in front of me that day. People who were obese were so hot, on a very cool day—when I had a jacket on—that they had T-shirts and shorts on.

It was very clear from the parents and the children that they had the same diet. What have we done over these past years that has made this dramatic change? Is it cheaper to stop in at McDonald's on your way past? Is it cheaper not to buy the fresh food at the supermarket? I don't know what we've done, but this nation desperately needs a change of focus, particularly in health care, to point to issues that have to start at the family level and at the school level—at every level we can. When you see little, active kids—where you see Nippers down the beach—you don't see obese kids. They're active and their families are active—that's generational as well.

So I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that on this day Australians should think very carefully as to how they're feeding this generation and the generations to come. This is a great opportunity for this nation to change its ways.

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