Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that:

(a) Australia has one of the highest incidences of food allergy in the world;

(b) one in ten Australian babies aged 12 months have a food allergy;

(c) the number of reported life threatening reactions due to a food allergy has doubled in the last 10 years; and

(d) in the past 20 years, hospital admissions for food anaphylaxis in Australia have doubled and increased five-fold in children aged zero to four years; and

(2) calls upon the Government to make anaphylaxis and food allergy a national health priority, including:

(a) establishing a national food allergy register to capture an accurate picture of food allergy reactions in Australia and statistics on patient outcomes; and

(b) developing a model of care for food allergy management—to provide timely diagnosis, current information and ongoing access to quality medical care for people with food allergies.

Why do I move this motion? Because allergic disease is tragically on the rise. This is a disease that is not just about getting a bit of a rash or getting a bit of a welter, this is about life-threatening, severe allergic reactions often appropriately referred to as anaphylaxis. It is the fastest growing chronic disease in Australia but most people know very little about it or underestimate it severely. Allergic diseases include food, insect and drug allergies, asthma, allergic rhinitis or the often much maligned hay fever, and eczema. These are a mounting public health issue in Australia. Surprisingly, it is often just an Australian epidemic. We have one of the highest rates of food allergy in the world, with one in 10 Australian babies aged 12 months having had a food allergy already. The number of reported life-threatening reactions due to food allergy has doubled in the last 10 years and in the last 20 years hospital admissions for food allergy have doubled. It increases strikingly fivefold in children aged 0-4.

There is a whole series of reasons why this is happening and why we are going there but that is not the intent of the motion today. The intent of the motion today is to bring awareness to both government and citizens about this national health epidemic and to call for this area to become a national health priority. Many people have said that is not the way to go, but at least it gets this issue on the map. Until now the only time it raises its head in a public debate is when tragically a child dies, and that is happening way too often. The statistics about allergic disease in Australia are startling. One estimates that allergic disease is actually costing Australia $30 billion per year. Around 20 per cent of the Australian population has an allergic disease. Recent studies report that 10 per cent of infants in Australia now have an immediate food allergy. Anaphylaxis due to food allergy has doubled in the last 10 years and around five per cent of adults are allergic to one or more drugs. This is often overreported, and that is another great concern. People think they are allergic to drugs when they are not; they need to get tested.

Access to care is difficult, particularly in regional and remote areas where trained immunologists are just not present, particularly childhood immunologists. Allergy specialists are not out there in the numbers we need them. But also there is a huge lack of awareness about allergic reactions. My son is anaphylactic and that is probably why this is so close to my heart. He has been told on numerous occasions, 'Just eat more and you will grow a tolerance to it.' As he said when he was five to an adult, 'If I eat those nuts I will die.' The woman thought he was carrying on. There was a bit of a screaming match at a function I had when my five-year-old was defending his understanding of his disease. Now at 12 he just brushes people off and says, 'No, I don't want some, thank you.'

While there is currently no cure for anaphylaxis, it is manageable and the majority of deaths are completely avoidable. We need a national allergy strategy to better coordinate and streamline how allergies are managed across the country. Tragically, I have now met many families who have suffered the absolute fate of being related to a sufferer with an anaphylactic reaction. I travelled to Canada to meet with Sarah Shannon, the mother of Sabrina, who was the creator of Sabrina's Law following her tragic death. Only last sitting week in parliament I held an anaphylaxis awareness day and we had Fiona Cho come and speak about the tragic loss of her brother Raymond, who died at 16 and at school—a completely avoidable death. Raymond knew he was allergic and the school knew he was allergic to nuts. A teacher brought them into a cooking class and they were put into a biscuit. Raymond, at 16, took that biscuit. He probably did not know there nuts in it. Raymond died as teachers stood around not knowing how to administer an EpiPen and they stood around when he should have been given CPR. Raymond's family will never get over his death. Fiona was in floods of tears. Her parents have never come to terms with his death.

Coronial inquest after coronial inquest have said that we need more understanding, more training and more consistency across the states. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy are calling to make this a national priority in health. It is not an answer to everything but it is the beginning. We need for the premiers to come together at COAG. We need consistency. We should not have any more tragedies. The Bapters should not have sent their four-year-old off to kindergarten and not have him come home alive. I want to ensure we never see this happen again.

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion put by my colleague the member for Chisholm on this very important issue in our local community. I would like to associate myself with the comments that she has just made. Food allergy has the potential for severe and life-threatening reactions. It affects an estimated four to six per cent of children and one to two per cent of adults. My first experience of this was as a former teacher. I remember having to be particularly careful when a student of mine had an allergy to nuts. I remember that it was incredibly difficult to monitor the food that was in the classroom and in the playground because it may cause a severe allergic reaction in this student.

It is interesting to note that only nine foods cause 90 per cent of allergic reactions—that is, cow's milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds, soy, fish, shellfish and wheat, among other things. I agree that more needs to be done to increase the awareness of food allergy and anaphylaxis in our local community, and the impact that it can have on individuals and their families. The Australian government is strongly committed to ensuring that there is sufficient information to make informed choices about the foods that consumers purchase. Food labelling in Australia is regulated by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, which has strict and comprehensive requirements on labelling standards. In addition to this, the National Healthy School Canteens project that commenced in 2008 and was funded by the Australian government as part of the Australian Better Health Initiative has also been a positive step.

I know that many schools in my electorate of Hasluck have found this project beneficial and it has increased the awareness of food allergies and their impact. Despite this, hospital admissions in Australia for severe allergic reactions have doubled over the last decade; equally in the USA and UK. In Australia, admissions for anaphylaxis due to food allergy in children aged zero to four are five times higher. Whilst out doorknocking in the northern region of my electorate, I met Sandra and talked about these issues and the increasing prevalence of anaphylaxis. Sandra's child suffers from a severe peanut allergy and she herself has a severe food allergy. Sandra believes that there is a lot that can be done to greatly improve the quality of life for those who live with the risk of anaphylaxis. I have had several discussions with Sandra and she has some interesting practical ideas as a mother and as a parent which I will be sharing with the Minister for Health.

Currently, there are no standardised protocols for acute food allergy management across Australia. In Western Australia, there are three different protocols and I know that the Minister for Health in Western Australia, Dr Kim Hames MLA, is very aware of the issues surrounding food allergy and anaphylaxis. I commend the WA state government for some of the actions they have taken to increase the awareness and response protocols for food and allergy anaphylaxis. I also note and commend the COAG Legislative and Governance Forum on Food Regulation. In May 2011, they endorsed the 2010 FSANZ review report and recommendations into determining whether improvements could be made to the existing regulatory approach, which allows wider food choices for allergic consumers without compromising their safety. This resulted in the creation of the Allergen Collaboration, which is a forum of representatives from state, territory and New Zealand governments, Australian and New Zealand allergy support associations and the food industry, including the food service sector. This is an excellent initiative and I look forward to the positive progress in the field of food allergy and anaphylaxis awareness in the very near future.

Among the challenges that we often face, as was referred to by the member opposite, is the level of understanding of the sudden and rapid impact on a child if they have an allergy. As a teacher, I did not understand the use of the EpiPen at the time. I think that we need to give greater attention to some of the preventative measures that would ensure that no child loses their life because we do not understand their needs. The comment that I often hear, which the member also raised, is 'Eat more—you'll grow out of the allergy.' But you do not know what the tolerance level is. You do not know what the reaction or response is. When that occurs, what we need to have is the knowledge to be able to help. I would certainly support any initiative that addresses the needs of those who experience anaphylaxis or food allergies.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the commencement of my contribution to this debate I would like to acknowledge the member for Chisholm for her contribution, for bringing this to the parliament and, even more so, for the role that she has played in educating the parliament on this issue. She has educated the parliament and she has educated us as members of parliament, and we can go back to our electorates and talk with some knowledge about this issue. This has been a longstanding campaign by the member for Chisholm and we should acknowledge the fine work that she has done on this.

When she says that we need to raise awareness, that it is a national epidemic, this is something that she has been doing for years. It is a message we need to take back to our electorates, because each and every one of us would have been approached by a constituent at some time who was suffering from some type of food allergy or whose child has had their life put in jeopardy simply because they have a food allergy. It is something that as a community and as a society we really need to take very seriously. It is not just a fad. It is not something that people manufacture. It is something that is truly life threatening, and that is the message that needs to get out there: this is life-threatening. As a country, we need to put it high on the agenda because it is increasing. We do not know why it is increasing but it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

As has been said by previous speakers, food allergy occurs in one out of 20 children. But the figure that is even more horrific is that one in 10 Australians aged 12 months has a food allergy. That is a very significant number in our population. These food allergies, as has already been stated, are life threatening, and particularly the allergy to peanuts and some seafoods. These allergies are extremely life threatening and are allergies that you do not grow out of by more exposure to the food. You do not grow out of it just because you get a bit older. They are with you for life and, as such, we need to address the issue.

To see somebody with a severe anaphylactic reaction to food is frightening and something that must be avoided at all costs. It is only by having more information about what causes this response that we will ever get to the core of the matter and understand what it is about.

It is much more common in boys than it is in girls. Quite a bit of information has been put out there showing that allergy experts and immunologists cannot explain this rise in food allergies in children over the past 20 years. That needs to be investigated. We need to know what is causing this increase, and to put in place strategies to deal with it and ways of managing it. A person that does have a severe allergy to a food must manage it. It is a lifetime management. The member for Chisolm talked about the trials her son went through. There is a lot of peer pressure put upon people around their eating habits. There is just no reason that has been put forward for this increase. There is no end in sight. It is occurring not only in Australia. As the member for Chisolm pointed out, we are leaders in that field. It is particularly common in developed countries. The member for Chisolm's motion calling for the establishment of a national food allergy register to capture an accurate picture about food allergy in Australia and statistics is very important and should be endorsed by this parliament. (Time expired)

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I said with DisabilityCare, and particularly with this issue, that whilst I can empathise with the family—in this case the member for Chisolm and her son—and whilst I can empathise with somebody whose child is disabled, I do not live it every day. I do not live it every moment of the day. I felt for the member for Hasluck when he was saying to this chamber that as a teacher he had to be on top of his task with regard to a child with an allergy. I cannot imagine what it is like to be a teacher these days, with the figures you have just heard from each of the speakers—one in 10 children may be affected, one in 10 babies, one in 20 young people, one in 20 adults. These have been described as large numbers. No, these are gigantuous numbers. These are very large numbers of people.

The reason I have chosen to speak on this motion today is this: I have no idea why in just my generation—our generation, for most of the people in this room, except for some of the beautiful young ones—this phenomenon has come upon us like a creeping cancer. So I ask myself questions. What is it? Is it the food chain? Is it something different that we are doing today that our parents did not do? The member speaking previously gave the example of a mother who had many allergies and whose child had an allergy. Therefore, it was generational. But we have many occasions now where both parents, and their generations before them, did not have any allergies to any of these foods. So that is a question. At least I have a doctor beside me who is nodding his head.

I say again: what is the question? What are we doing? Why have we got, even, cancer rates higher in this generation than before? I can reason that away by saying that in previous generations we did not know all the things we know now. We did not know children were suffering. Perhaps I could reason away and say we did not know they were suffering with an allergy. They just had to burst their way through it. Some did and some did not. We only came to that place where we found the children who did not grow out of it, as has been suggested here, by having more of the same.

As a member of parliament, I had a staff member who was allergic not to nuts but to one particular nut. She carried an EpiPen. In the fullness of time, after she left my care, she had an episode because in the food that she was eating there was a trace of that particular nut and she ended up in Canberra Hospital. Even with the EpiPen, she still ended up in Canberra hospital. For a family living with that knowledge, mums, dads and families and individuals just have to get on, accept and know that it is ever present.

I am sorry I did not hear the member for Chisholm's address but I gleaned from the other remarks that she has been directly in that position herself and having to send her son out into a community that has not got that knowledge, where he wasn't protected totally and had to be responsible for himself at every moment of the day. Whenever there was food around, he had to be aware.

You can imagine today what it is like at a kid's party. Today at a kid's party—I know it was only 100s and 1000s on bread and butter when we were kids—there would be a huge amount of food that they have to protect themselves from. It is not an easy question.

I hope that that the new research funds that the government are putting in place will have some long-term effect for this to be resolved. But, like all of the rest of you, I have a question: how did we get to this place?

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I begin by also acknowledging and commending the member for Chisholm for not only bringing this motion to the parliament but also her tireless advocacy on this matter. I regret I was unable to go to the morning tea a couple of weeks ago but I would have liked to.

I speak not only because I support this motion but because I understand it as my wife has food allergies. She is allergic to shellfish, and I know the constant battle of everywhere we go having to make sure that the food she is about to consume does not contain shellfish.

More specifically and perhaps more frighteningly, not long ago our baby granddaughter was diagnosed as being allergic to eggs, having suffered anaphylaxis. Even though I wasn't home, I am told that for my wife and daughter-in-law it was a terrifying experience not knowing how to deal with her at the time, not realising what was happening and then finally getting her to settle so they could to the doctor. As a result of that, it opened our eyes to the importance of this issue across the spectrum

I note that the member for McMillan talked about what it must be like for a schoolteacher. Again, I speak with a bit of authority, because I speak to my daughter regularly. She is a schoolteacher. She teaches grade 1 students, little kids that quite often do not understand the risks that they might be taking when they exchange or share food with one another. It has become part and parcel of her training to do what she can to ensure that the children are aware of the dangers of being allergic to certain foods. In fact only last week she was telling me that right now, as opposed to peanuts, the real danger is walnuts, which have become the food source that they always look out for.

The motion, quite rightly, talks about statistics, and I note the member for Chisholm has talked about Australia having one of the highest rates of food allergies in the world and, in particular, the concern that about one in 10 babies has a food allergy. I note that she talked about the $30 billion health cost but I point out that, specifically, over $1 billion of that, I understand, is directly associated with health costs in this country as opposed to the other costs associated with lost productivity and social costs that are incurred as a result of people suffering from food allergies.

I too sometimes wonder about how and why we have come to this point where food allergies are more prevalent. Perhaps it is because of the different medicines that are now available; whether it is the way we produce our foods both here and in other countries; or whether it is the use of chemicals generally for industrial applications and the like that we are exposed to on a regular basis. We don't know the answers, but something is happening and something is changing the way our immune systems are able to cope with the different allergies that have now become known to us.

The critical issue is that many people are not aware that they are allergic to a particular food or a chemical until they suffer an anaphylactic reaction. Probably then they are not certain what has caused the reaction or what is happening to them. So unlike an illness or another health problem where they can take certain precautions, food allergies quite often come from left field without any awareness whatsoever.

I believe the motion goes to the heart of this issue. It talks about information, awareness, diagnosis, management and expertise in caring. In other words, we may not know what the courses are but we certainly can take a much stronger stance in managing the fallout from the allergic reaction. Talking about education, education right across the spectrum from the medical profession, patients understanding how to manage their own symptoms, parents, school staff, restaurant staff, to cafeteria staff and sports club people is important. Where food is likely to be consumed it is important that people are aware how to react and to respond when somebody comes down with a food allergy and is unprepared for it. Education obviously is important. I believe schools are taking a greater role in ensuring that teachers, parents and children are much more alert and aware of the possible risks of reaction to food. This is an important motion. It is an important issue for the nation. I commend the member for Chisholm for bringing it to the attention of the House.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to pay tribute to the member for Chisholm for moving this motion. She has been a long-time champion for the cause of allergy and anaphylaxis and has moved a number of motions like this in this chamber. I pay tribute to her interest and to her campaigning. As a number of previous speakers have said, the incidence of food allergy and anaphylaxis has increased dramatically over a generation. The scientists have some theories but no definitive answer as to why. There have been explanations proposed which have not yet been proven. People having less exposure to infections in childhood is the hygiene theory. It may be due to delayed introduction of allergenic food such as eggs, peanuts or tree nuts, to food processing or to skin exposure to products such as unrefined nut-based moisturisers. The increasing incidence of food allergy affects 10 per cent of children up to one year of age, between four to eight per cent of children aged up to five and approximately two per cent of adults.

Like the member for Chisholm, I also have a child who was diagnosed at a very young age with a peanut allergy. We had a number of meetings with a specialist and went through what all parents of children with allergies go through, wanting to make sure that the processes are right at the school, at school camps and at organisations like Scouts. We have been quite lucky in that, while it appeared his allergy was a serious skin reaction, there was no anaphylaxis and he has responded to a challenge and is now able to eat peanuts.

I agree with the previous speaker. Schools, in my experience, are thinking through this more and more. Teachers are getting better at making sure that certain foods are excluded from the classroom and, if one child has an allergy, every family has to keep those foods are out. We are seeing better training of teachers so that they are aware of what needs to be done. But there is still a lot more that we can do.

The Medical Research Future Fund, which was announced in the budget and which will have $1 billion go towards it initially, and hopefully over time $20 billion, does offer the benefit of more research being done in this area. It is important that we do continue to find what is causing the increase in food allergy and also what can be done in terms of children who have the potential, with strict avoidance, to actually grow out, as it were, of this condition.

There have been a number of pleasing initiatives since we last had a motion on this. The National Healthy Schools Canteens project, which was funded by the Australian government as part of the Australian Better Health Initiative, developed national guidance and training to help canteen managers make healthier food and drink choices for school canteens, and food allergy was definitely a part of it. Food allergy needs to be diagnosed by a specialist, and if someone does have an allergy then strict avoidance of the food is extremely important. So there are guidelines and resources for school canteens across Australia, drawing on existing material and the Australian Dietary Guidelines. There is also an Allergen Collaboration, which is a food allergen portal which provides different sectors in the community—people in the food industry, health professionals and schools—with links to best practice food allergen resources and key messages to promote in the different sectors. But this is an important issue and I want to commend the member for Chisholm for raising this issue.

Debate adjourned.