Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion was originally drafted to try and coincide with international diabetes day and to recognise the landmark decision that was made by the United Nations General Assembly to adopt a resolution making 14 November World Diabetes Day. Since long before the landmark UN resolution to recognise diabetes with its own international day on 14 November, Australian governments have ranked diabetes as a national health priority. Why do they do this? Because the impact of chronic illness is the new frontier for governments, which, without a vigorous management plan, will struggle to stem the chronic illness pandemic that is sweeping the globe.

Few chronic conditions are more challenging than diabetes. Diabetes is a silent killer: it creeps up on people. Often by the time it is diagnosed incalculable harm has already been done, and once diagnosed diabetes involves a lifetime of complex and special care. Left untreated, diabetes is the leading cause of heart disease, kidney failure and stroke, and each year worldwide every 30 seconds someone has a limb amputated due to diabetes and 2.8 million people die from diabetes related illnesses somewhere in the globe.

In many cases diabetes is preventable and early diagnosis and treatment of its complications can reduce the mortality rate. Diabetes Australia, whose theme is turning diabetes around, has and continues to have a pivotal role in assisting Australian governments to find ways to prevent, treat and manage diabetes and is strongly supportive of joining with the UN in highlighting the problem of diabetes in the community on international diabetes day as well as every day of every year. Diabetes Australia is always at the cutting edge in delivering services to people with diabetes and it manages the National Diabetes Service Scheme, the NDSS. This scheme is a world first in terms of subsidising diabetic products for people living with diabetes, ensuring effective and affordable treatment options.

Diabetes Australia has made a long and distinguished contribution to the health of the nation, always searching for ways to improve health outcomes for those with diabetes. Diabetes Australia today and each day continues to build on all that it has done in the past. To highlight World Diabetes Day, Diabetes Australia joined with Microsoft in using groundbreaking technology to provide population data about Australians diagnosed with diabetes. Almost a million Australians live with diabetes, and 715,000 of them have type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes used to be a disease of the aged but today we see a disturbing trend of it being diagnosed in children. In fact, 350 children aged to the age of 15 live today with type 2 diabetes. This is mainly but not exclusively a lifestyle disease brought on by overeating, poor quality diet and lack of activity and exercise.

Type 2 diabetes is largely preventable. That is why I enthusiastically joined with my colleagues the Hon. Dick Adams, member for Lyons, Senator Barnett, the member for Isaacs, the member for Moore and all the colleagues in this place who support the Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group in their work to highlight the problem of diabetes in the community.

I would also like to pay tribute to the work of Professor Martin Silink, who is President of the International Diabetes Federation. His term comes to an end shortly. I think we can be very proud that he was the first Australian elected to this prestigious international body and has done an extraordinary job in highlighting worldwide the difficulties that our communities face in managing diabetes.

It is nice to see the member for Lyons take the chair, and I once again acknowledge the work that he does in the Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group to work across parties, to make sure that we have the best practice medicine against the scourge of diabetes in this country.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

According to Diabetes Australia, type 2 diabetes costs Australia about $3 billion a year. The cost of diabetes to the community for a person with no complications is $9,625 a year. For a person with complications, the cost to our community is $15,850 per year. Four per cent of people who have diagnosed diabetes account for 12 per cent of the health costs in Australia, and there is no cure for type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Diabetes Australia supports research through the Diabetes Australia Research Trust. Lifestyle changes can prevent or delay type 2 diabetes. This is a big issue for my electorate of Blair in Queensland. The study of diabetes will be part of the focus of the Ipswich study, conducted by the Healthy Communities Research Centre at the University of Queensland Ipswich campus. All the organisations who attended the Ipswich GP superclinic indicated that the study and treatment of diabetes will be a particular focus for the Ipswich GP superclinic. According to the 2006 census data, in my electorate of Blair in South-East Queensland 5,743 people have been diagnosed with diabetes, including 118 with gestation diabetes, 136 with type 1 and 4,773 with type 2.

I am pleased to say that the Rudd government did listen to various people, including me, amongst others, on these matters. I do not claim any special privilege but I certainly wrote to the Minister for Health and Ageing before the last budget in relation to insulin pumps. In the 2008-09 budget, the Commonwealth government announced that it would subsidise the cost of insulin pumps for young people with diabetes from 1 November 2008. This program was well received by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and by Diabetes Australia. It will provide a means test subsidy of up to $2,500 for people with type 1 diabetes who are aged under 18 years.

The Rudd government really is committed to tackling diabetes. It is committed to confronting diabetes as one of the eight national health priorities. The government has backed up that commitment strongly with real investment in short-term and long-term strategies to tackle this problem. For example, we have put in over $57 million in 2008 for diabetes research, provided through the National Health and Medical Research Council; $126 million has been allocated for the administration of the National Diabetes Services Scheme; and over $400 million was spent last year on diabetes products supplied by the NDSS and on medicines for diabetes through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. COAG last November made a really strong commitment with an historic $850 million for the national partnership on prevention. That was agreed to with the states and territories. According to the Department of Health and Ageing, around 700 young people will benefit from the insulin pumps subsidy. This is an important strategy from the Rudd government, but it is also important in terms of prevention because it will make a difference in terms of type 2 diabetes.

Childhood obesity is a real problem. You only have to visit schools and preschools to see that it is a real problem in our community. The Healthy Kids Check for four-year-olds will help to improve childhood health, and the Get Set 4 Life—habits for healthy kids guide is important for parents, because kids need to eat fruit and vegetables and have a balanced diet. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Project is another program, which is being run in 190 primary schools and has been allocated $12.8 million. Exercise is also important, so we have the Active After-school Communities Program. And on and on it goes. The Rudd government is strongly committed to tackling this problem.

The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission released its interim report on 16 February this year, and the government have established a preventative health task force to assist us to prepare a national preventative health strategy to tackle the burden of chronic disease. This really is a chronic problem in our community. I warmly welcome the commitment of the Rudd government. It will help my constituents who have come to see me in my electorate. It will help the people in Ipswich and the people in the rural areas outside Ipswich. I thank the member for Pearce for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. This is an important commitment from both sides of politics, and I thank her for her longstanding work in the area. Well done.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise in support of this motion, and I also thank my colleague the member for Pearce for her longstanding work, commitment and drive on this issue. It is very clear, from what we have seen with the decision of the United Nations General Assembly to adopt Resolution 61/225 that this is a desperately important problem that needs to be worked on. I do not say ‘solved’, because I think that a lot of medical advances are going to be required before we see this solved.

I would like to look at this from a different perspective. I am not going to go into the technical matters to any great degree, but I note that from the year 2010 it is estimated that 1.23 million people in Australia face the potential threat of diabetes. As we know, some 90 per cent of cases of diabetes in this country are type 2—which is heavily influenced by lifestyle. This is something that parents really need to be aware of. As a parent myself, I know that when I ask my children which takeaway food or other food they would like, they will always say fish and chips or some sort of happy meal with some dodgy game in it. But I know that these things need to be for the rare occasion. Certainly I do not think that we should ever be in the position where we continually eat out at the worst of the fast-food places day in and day out; but I know that there are some people who live that sort of life, and that is not good news for the children. As I said before, as parents we need to be aware that these foods should, as a general rule, be avoided but occasionally it is okay. Parents need to set the example. They need to concentrate on the fresh food, vegetables, lean meats—responsible diet options. As it is, we do face a major problem in this country. I know that, like the member for Blair and the member for Pearce, there are some people in my electorate who face the problems of diabetes and who are overweight.

I have noticed in some of the documentation that a man with a waist measurement of 100 centimetres or more is considered to be obese, and I know that I sail close to that line myself—which is a cause for great concern. That is why I like to join the member for Blair down in the gym almost every morning that we are at parliament, apart from when I am out rowing. These things are really important. We need to think about lifestyle. I know that I cannot afford, particularly at my age of 44, to eat fast food regularly, or almost at all—although I do indulge on some occasions. It is a matter of a personal commitment and a personal acknowledgement of what we can do for ourselves, and we all should acknowledge that. We should make sure that our kids are starting off with those right habits, those good habits, of eating well and indulging on fairly rare occasions.

I think it is very important that we acknowledge the limitations we have, that we acknowledge our responsibilities as adults and parents and that we have a commitment to maintain a healthy lifestyle. We should take those opportunities—whether it is before dawn or before work in the mornings or in the evenings—to try and get out there and do a little bit of work, get that exercise going. I am not talking about taking time away from families; but I am talking about maybe trying to add some extra time to the day to live that better lifestyle, eat good food and acknowledge the limitations of our bodies. I think that is the best way forward. We should be living that life and living that example in this place.

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

I too rise in support of this motion and to speak on this private member’s motion before the House today. I also welcome this motion and I thank and congratulate the member for Pearce for bringing such a critical issue to the parliament. I also thank and congratulate you, Deputy Speaker Adams, for your involvement in the Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group. I know how committed both of you and all the members are. I am the chair of the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing, which is currently looking into issues of obesity in Australia. We are all well aware on the committee of the growing diabetes epidemic caused by obesity in Australia. We are also aware of the personal impact diabetes has on people’s lives and the implications for the health budget. On a personal note, a direct member of my family has had diabetes for many, many years.

The incidence of diabetes in Australia—type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes—has grown in the past two decades. In the 15 years up to 2004-05, the number of people diagnosed with diabetes more than doubled, to 700,000 or 3.6 per cent of the population. Of these, 13 per cent had type 1 diabetes and 83 per cent had type 2 diabetes. In 2005, there were 901 new cases of children with type 1 diabetes aged under 15 years. This was a 20 per cent increase in the rate of new cases compared to the figure in 2000. Australia is already among the top 10 countries for incidence rates for type 1 diabetes in children. In my electorate, I have had many discussions with many people—including a young woman called Michelle Teslik of Glenelg East, who gave me a real insight into her life and how so many of our young people are forced to live with diabetes through absolutely no fault of their own.

As I said, I have had experiences with diabetes—my father has been a diabetic on insulin for over 45 years now. He was diagnosed when I was about 15 years old. He is from a non-English-speaking background and, even though he could communicate in English quite well, when he had to see doctors and talk to specialists I was taken along as a translator—this was in the days before interpreters. So I have a good insight into diabetes—how it operates and how it works. My father has been insulin dependent for 45 years, and he often says that if it were not for his diabetes he would be dead today, because he had not been looking after his diet. He was drinking perhaps a bit too much and doing a whole range of other things. But when he was diagnosed he took it upon himself to ensure that he led a very healthy lifestyle. Now he is 81 and he still rides approximately eight kilometres on his bike four or five times a week and walks one hour every night.

A couple of years ago we had a group of young children who were insulin dependent here in Parliament House. I told them that my father was a diabetic and in his 80s, and one of the immediate questions I got from one of these children was: does he have both his legs and can he see? These are the fears that children growing up with diabetes have. I think sometimes it is good to give them a positive role model and to say to them, ‘Look, if you do look after yourself, if you do the right thing, you can live quite a normal life.’ I gave them the example of my father. They were quite surprised that this insulin-dependent person had all his eyesight, had all his limbs and was leading a pretty healthy lifestyle.

Juvenile diabetes, of course, 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. We do not know what brings it on in children. It does not have anything to do with lifestyle, being overweight or a poor diet. I meet regularly with young children, and I have become very good friends with a young student from Henley Beach, Kate Cox, whose ambition is to be a politician one day. Kate lobbied me for federal support for the creation of a program to assist young people such as her to access a better means of managing their type 1 diabetes—that is, an insulin pump. Early last year I also met with young Amelia Lester, aged 13, who wrote me a heartfelt letter requesting my help in the management of her diabetes. Her request was also for Commonwealth support for access to insulin pumps.

I am very pleased that the government is supporting children like the ones I have just mentioned and others to get the insulin pumps that they deserve so much. The government made $5.5 million available to assist families with a child with type 1 diabetes to access the insulin pumps. This assistance will help many children and their families to better cope with and manage this condition. Diabetes has been a national health priority area for all Australian governments since 1996 and is one of eight national health priorities. In April 2007 COAG agreed to new measures reducing the cost of type 2 diabetes, with governments agreeing to collectively commit at least $200 million. (Time expired)

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.