Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The annual Walk to Cure Diabetes was held yesterday, Sunday, 12 October, in my electorate, as it is being held on a variety of dates this month in many, many locations around the country. Thousands of people walked the five-kilometre route along Adelaide’s Glenelg to Somerton Park foreshore, raising valuable funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The foundation identifies itself as the world’s leading non-profit, non-governmental contributor of funds to diabetes research, funding an estimated 35 per cent of all type 1 diabetes related research globally.

The walk was an opportunity to raise greater public awareness of the perplexing condition of juvenile diabetes. I participated in the walk last year partly as a result of discussions with a young woman who came to my electorate office to speak to me. Michelle Teslik of Glenelg East, a courageous individual, had given me a better insight into the life that so many of our young people are forced to lead through no fault of their own. Michelle told me of injecting herself with insulin up to four times a day, each and every day, and the need for her to monitor her blood sugar levels several times a day.

There are some 140,000 Australian children with this condition—that is 140,000 young people around our country needing to be almost continually confronted with getting a needle, every six hours of every day, year after year, and continually monitoring their condition for the rest of their lives. Juvenile diabetes is not caused by poor diet, lack of exercise or any of the other factors that contribute to what most of us think of as diabetes. Researchers cannot find the causal factors that lead one sibling in a particular family to have the condition while the other sibling does not. We actually do not know what brings it on. It does not have anything to do with lifestyle, being overweight or having a poor diet.

Research into the condition continues with the much needed assistance of support from events such as yesterday’s walk for a cure, which took place, as I said, in my electorate of Hindmarsh from Glenelg to Somerton Park. The South Australian pollies team—our non-partisan grouping of supporters consisting of nearly 38 federal and state MPs, senators and legislative councillors, staff and their families and friends—is continuing to raise funds until the event’s official close in weeks ahead. Among the team members, I am very pleased to say, was Minister Kate Ellis, who opened the walk; Senator Dana Wortley; Senator Anne McEwen; Senator Don Farrell; the member for Boothby, Dr Andrew Southcott; and quite a few politicians from the South Australian parliament. Congratulations to all team members and all other participants in this year’s walk, who are making a contribution towards raising necessary funds for ongoing research into this condition.

I mentioned earlier that I spoke with Michelle, a young woman, about her experience of type 1 diabetes. Last year I also met with a much younger woman, a student from Henley Beach, Kate Cox. Kate lobbied me for federal support for the creation of a program to assist young people such as herself access a better means of managing their type 1 diabetes—that is, an insulin pump. The insulin pump is a device that mimics a healthy pancreas in maintaining appropriate levels of insulin in the body, making the constant piercing of the skin with insulin injections a thing of the past. Earlier this year I met with another very young woman, around 13 years old, Amelia Lester. Amelia had written a heartfelt letter to me requesting my help in the management of her diabetes. She was kind enough to come and meet me at the Hindmarsh electorate office with her mother, Wendy Harmer. Their request was for Commonwealth support for access to insulin pumps for children with diabetes to help manage the condition.

These meetings have been heartbreaking—children barely out of primary school seeking support from the government for their survival of a life-threatening condition that was thrust upon them as a matter of fate. Of course, as you and everyone with a child or niece or nephew would be, I was so incredibly pleased that the Rudd Labor government will be supporting children like Amelia and the others to get the insulin pumps that they deserve so much. The government has already announced that $5.5 million is being made available over four years to assist families with a child with type 1 diabetes to access an insulin pump. This assistance commences on the first of next month and will help as many as 700 children and their families to better cope with and manage this condition.

Question agreed to.