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

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that November is Lung Health Awareness Month;

(2) acknowledges that lung disease contributes to more than 10 per cent of the overall health burden in Australia, and was the cause of:

(a) 20,376 deaths in 2012, almost 14 per cent of all deaths;

(b) 276,505 hospitalisations in 2011-12, representing 3 per cent of all hospitalisations; and

(c) more than 1.4 million hospital patient-days in 2011-12, over 5 per cent of all patient days;

(3) recognises that at least 1 in 10 Australians will be affected by lung disease;

(4) takes note of the new initiative launched by Lung Foundation Australia (LFA), Just One Breath, which explores the extraordinary things that can be done with just one breath;

(5) shares the message with constituents, friends, family and other loved ones, to get everyone thinking about their own lung health, and encourages them to visit www.justonebreath.com.au and share the champions' stories; and

(6) commends the work of LFA in raising awareness, supporting those affected by lung disease, developing clinical resources and supporting research to find a cure for lung disease.

This motion notes that November was Lung Health Awareness Month, and it also highlights the fact that 10 per cent of the overall health burden in Australia is caused by lung disease—20,376 deaths in 2012 and 14 per cent of all deaths. So it is a very significant illness and one that needs to be taken seriously. There were 276,505 hospitalisations, representing three per cent of all hospitalisations, with more than 1.4 million hospital patient days, in 2011.

People that are living with lung disease quite often feel stigmatised by the fact that they have this illness, and quite often the reason for their not having healthy lungs is falsely attributed to their own behaviour. But, regardless of the cause of a person's lung disease, it is really important that they receive support, from a personal perspective and from a health perspective, in eliminating health costs. Lung disease impacts on people in various ways. They have difficulty walking long distances and are often unable to work or participate in leisure activities. You can see how the failure to be able to participate in work activities has an impact on our economy. Even simple things such as showering can be quite difficult for people living with lung disease. They can have panic attacks, anxiety and depression. Inactivity and inadequate self-management lead to a deterioration in health. These people can quite often become what is commonly referred to as 'frequent flyers' within the health system, simply because they do not get the right sort of rehabilitation that they need.

Last week the member for Hasluck and I launched the Parliamentary Friends of the Australian Lung Foundation, and that was a very interesting and informative launch. At that launch, Professor Jennifer Alison talked to those of us that were gathered there about lung rehabilitation and about one of the lung diseases that is very frequent, COPD. These people that are living with COPD are frequent visitors to hospital accident and emergency rooms and then end up being admitted to hospital. Pulmonary rehabilitation is an eight-week program of exercise and education. It is individually tailored so that the person can live to a safe level of functionality, participate in more community activities and also live within the community. It limits the symptoms of breathlessness so that panic attacks are minimised. They take their medication properly; they coordinate their breathing with movement so they can do their tasks in a more normal way. This all leads to a reduction in infection and reduces the signs of infection at a very early time.

Not only does it improve the quality of life by increasing functional capacity but it keeps people well and out of hospital. By reducing hospitalisation, it reduces the cost to our health system, it reduces the in-patient bed days, it reduces the mortality and it also, as I mentioned, reduces the health costs. The average number of bed days in public hospitals currently is 4.5 and in private hospitals it is 7.7.

There is a fantastic campaign that we also learnt about and which is mentioned in the motion. It is Just One Breath. It was launched in conjunction with Lung Health Awareness Week, and it has tips for good lung health and a simple lung health checklist. Also, music and sporting stars share their Just One Breath stories: Christine Anu, Casey Dellacqua, James Morrison, Melissa Breen, Matt Hall, Archie Roach and Justen 'Jughead' Allport all show what they can do with 'just one breath'.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion. I was always told that the first rule of public speaking was to take a deep breath. So here I go: in, out. Breathing is one of the simplest daily actions that we so often take for granted. Healthy lungs are fundamental to a healthy life, but half of all Australians rarely think about their lungs. According to recent research by the Lung Foundation Australia, most Australians think they have no lung health issues, and so lung disease often goes undiagnosed. Most are unaware of the symptoms, which can be as common as a cough or a feeling of breathlessness that many will attribute to being unfit or out of shape.

At least one in 10 Australians do in fact have lung disease. That figure is highest in children and older Australians. Lung disease is not just cancer. It ranges from illnesses we hear about commonly, such as asthma, bronchitis and the flu, to more serious diseases such as lung cancer, mesothelioma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Typically, younger Australians suffer from asthma, and older Australians suffer from lung cancer or COPD. Indigenous Australians die of lung diseases at a rate that is three times higher than other Australians.

It is easy to focus on the facts and figures about lung diseases, but it is harder to imagine what life is like for those experiencing it. I have had asthma since the age of 27. As a young schoolteacher I remember having to walk away from the blackboard and reach for a Ventolin inhaler in the middle of teaching, hoping I would not lose the attention of my lively class. Now as the member for Hasluck I take my puffer each morning and night and take care to carry it with me as I visit local businesses and schools in my electorate. I even have it with me here in the chamber today. In my case, the saying 'take time to stop and smell the roses' is more about taking time to keep my lungs healthy by monitoring my breathing patterns and living an active lifestyle—although not active enough. I am lucky to have been well supported in managing my asthma, and lung health has become part of my daily life. My experience is one of the good ones. It makes sense when you think about it, but in many cases lung disease has wide-ranging implications for quality of life.

I am in a multiparty group called the Parliamentary Friends of Lung Foundation Australia, and last Wednesday, with the member for Shortland, I hosted an event to launch a new lung-health awareness campaign for the foundation. We heard stories from lung disease sufferers who found that their lung diseases affected their daily choices. One Canberra woman with lung disease told us that her shortness of breath often influenced her decision to stay on the couch rather than getting up and being active. This is despite the fact that being active is a key part of the recommended rehabilitation for the lung condition she has. Through engagement with lung disease rehabilitation, she has learnt not to hold her breath.

What was interesting about the onset of my asthma at the age of 27 was that I, like every other Australian, took my lungs for granted before that. We think we are immortal with our lungs. Yet they are an organ that has a profound impact on so many other parts of the body—because if we do not get oxygen then we do not give our body the nourishment it needs in order for our brains to remain active. I know that my way of challenging the irrefutable fact that I had asthma was to not seek medical treatment but to try and exercise actively, until I was told that it only takes four minutes to kill you. That changed my mind, because awareness of that was important. I think, in the whole area of looking after our lungs, we need to give serious attention to what the implications might be. Even a short pain when breathing is often a sign that there is something wrong.

With just one breath, I can bring local issues from Hasluck to the floor of the parliament. With the member for Shortland, I will continue to be a strong advocate for developing awareness of the impact that diseases can have on our lungs and the importance of our lungs to being able to have a full, rich life with a future. Thank you.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I start by congratulating the member for Shortland for bringing this matter before the House? As a former chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health, she has been a passionate advocate for so many conditions that would otherwise fly below the radar and would not be brought to the attention of this parliament, were it not for the tireless work of the member for Shortland.

Like me, she represents an electorate which has long drawn its wealth and its identity from industrial activity and coal mining. Tragically, what comes with coal mining and with a lot of industrial activity, particularly in the years when we were growing up, are the associated dust diseases. When you come from a region like ours you are acutely aware of the impact of dust diseases and lung related diseases on public health—whether it is an uncle, a neighbour, a family member or somebody you know there will be somebody who is touched by it. In my own district there is dusty lung from coal mining, mesothelioma and any of the other asbestos-related diseases which are all too common in the neighbourhoods around which we grew up.

We take the view that people are entitled to healthy workplaces and healthy lives. The houses they live in and the places they work in should not be killing them. That is one of the things that propels many of us into parliament. So today we mark the end of Lung Health Awareness Month, held during November and which creates an awareness of the plethora of lung related illnesses that impact on millions of Australians, many of which have been outlined by the member for Hasluck before me.

Lung Health Awareness Month provides an opportunity to increase awareness of the prevalence, symptoms and treatments for lung diseases. They include lung cancers, cystic fibrosis and asthma; infectious diseases such as influenza and bronchitis; and, as I have mentioned, the dust related diseases. Lung Health Awareness Month aims to promote awareness of these illnesses and diseases to the wider community, sufferers and healthcare professionals. This is because, as Lung Foundation Australia states, lung disease does not discriminate; it affects young, old, male, female, smokers, former smokers and non-smokers—never smokers. It affects us all.

Currently, lung disease contributes to more than 10 per cent of the overall health burden within Australia. There were around 20,000—closer to 21,000, actually—deaths in 2012 and a quarter of a million hospitalisations over the period 2011-2012. There were more than 1.4 million hospital patient-days over that same period. It may surprise many to know that that represents around 14 per cent of all deaths and about three per cent of all hospitalisations—five per cent of patient-days within hospitals alone. At least one in 10 Australians is going to be affected by a lung disease. That is higher in the fibro suburbs of my electorate and for those who are working in heavy industry or in mining.

New initiatives launched by the Lung Foundation Australia, such as Just One Breath—just one example—are an organised commitment to explore the extraordinary things that can be done through just one breath. It is about sharing a message with constituents, friends, family and other loved ones to get everyone thinking about their own lung health. And it is about ensuring that we get access to early diagnosis and early treatment.

When you think about the importance of early diagnosis and early treatment, you have to ask yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker: what work does a price signal on seeing your general practitioner when getting medical imaging such as a lung X-ray or a blood test have to do with having a lung disease? What work does a price signal have? I would argue, and I am sure the member for Shortland and the member for Wakefield would argue that it has absolutely no work to do whatsoever. Anybody who knows anything about this area knows that getting to see your doctor, following up on a course of treatment, ensuring that you have the X-rays, ensuring that you have the blood tests and ensuring that you have that course a treatment which is necessary to getting something early and treating it is what we need to be doing.

So I congratulate the member for Shortland and the member for Wakefield, who I know are passionate about this area. The GP tax has no work to do and it is why I hope that this week the government will scrape that barnacle from its hull.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Shortland for moving this motion, and also my colleague the member for Hasluck for all his hard work on this important issue. Last month was Lung Cancer Awareness Month and I was delighted to participate in a Lung Foundation Australia Shine a Light on Lung Cancer awareness event. Every year, around 11,000 Australians are diagnosed with lung cancer. The symptoms of this disease can often be vague, sometimes leading to misdiagnosis, so Lung Cancer Awareness Month helps to promote community education on what a cough really means.

Lung Foundation Australia is a national organisation supporting research, developing educational fact-sheets, training health professionals, and undertaking community awareness activity and advocacy around the nation. As we saw through their informative event held in Parliament House last week, Lung Foundation Australia develops relationships with government in respiratory health to highlight the financial and personal impacts of lung disease. Their public awareness campaigns draw attention to the importance of lung health and the symptoms of lung disease.

I was delighted to participate in a Lung Foundation Australia fundraising event several weeks ago. This commenced as a result of the great generosity of a Boehringer Ingelheim, a multinational pharmaceutical company, whose Australian headquarters are located in my Bennelong electorate. Boehringer Ingelheim's Managing Director, Wes Cook, has regularly shown his generosity and the importance with which his organisation holds their social obligations. This includes regular support for the annual Bennelong Volunteers Recognition events. This year's will be held this coming Friday.

Boehringer Ingelheim donated to charity earlier this year by being the highest bidder at the Press Gallery Ball for a tennis lesson with the great Ken Rosewall and me. They on-donated this to Lung Foundation Australia to raise even more money at their annual event in November. I was delighted to act as the auctioneer for this beautiful prize. The bidding was fierce; it went to over $1,000 for a game of tennis with the great man, Ken Rosewall. It went to $2,000, then to $3,000 and then above $4,000—there were two bidders. I could not bear to see a loser, so, without consulting Ken, I thought we would level it off at $4,250 each and we will give them both a game, which coincidentally managed to raise twice as much money for our Lung Foundation group. They were happy, although I have not told Ken the good news that he is up for two games. He recently celebrate his 80th. He has been off the circuit for a while, so he is fit and ready to go.

Lung health is an interesting issue in itself. Some of our greatest swimmers suffered from lung disease. Ian Thorpe is one. He suffered from asthma and it was recommended that he should train, and train he did and became one of our greatest swimmers and at the same time addressed his illness. The great trainer Les Gronow, who trained many of our great tennis players, from Lew Hoad through to Mark Edmondson, Pat Cash and others, wrote a book titled Breathe in, breathe out: health and fitness the Les Gronow way. His belief of physical performance was the criteria of lung capacity over your weight. At one stage he said to some of his players, 'There is not much more I can do about your lung capacity, you will have to push back from the table and reduce your weight.' It gives me great pleasure to speak on this subject, both from the point of view of health and of performance.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have to thank the member for Shortland for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I echo the words of previous speakers in congratulating her on this effort.

Some of my earliest memories as a child are of not being able to breathe—of having asthma and being taken down to the women's and children's hospital in the middle of the night by my mum. It is a particularly terrifying thing if you happen to experience it, particularly if you are young. But it is also pretty terrifying for those around you. I think my mother still has a fair bit of distress about those memories. I think she found it very worrying—having to make those emergency visits to the hospital with a sick child in the middle of the night. My grandmother had emphysema at the same time, so she and I shared a common bond, but my mother, who could breathe but had to take care of us both, really felt it. I think we need to be mindful of that impact on families when we discuss lung disease.

On Friday I was at the Asbestos Victims Association Memorial Day in Pitman Park in Salisbury. The City of Salisbury has a memorial to honour those who have suffered from and lost their lives to asbestosis, to mesothelioma or to lung cancer. It allows the families of those victims to honour them and to acknowledge their passing. This would not have happened but for the efforts and the energy of Terry Miller OAM, who has long been passionate—one of the most passionate people I have ever met—not just about honouring families and making sure that the victims, and the families of those victims, of asbestosis are looked after but also about prevention and making sure that others do not suffer from that terrible but entirely preventable disease.

At that event we heard from a lady named Tracey. She gave a stirring, heartfelt address to those present about the death of her husband, Rob Dietrich. It was one of those passionate addresses that did not leave many dry eyes among those present at that event. Even the MC had tears in her eyes. I had tears in my eyes. Nearly every politician there was affected by Tracey's very passionate address about what had been a very terrible death and the impact on her children, Andrew and Maddison, of the loss of their father—and the impact on her of the loss of her husband. As I said before, it did not leave a dry eye at the event. It made us all too aware of the importance not just of preventing asbestosis but of Lung Health Awareness Month and the importance of this motion coming before the House.

Lung disease affects families and it is something we need to be cognisant of when we are looking at our health budget—10 per cent of the overall health burden in Australia, 20,000 deaths, three per cent of hospitalisations and one in 10 Australians affected by lung disease. We do not have to go too far in this debate to hear from people who have suffered from asthma or who have family members who have had to care for those with lung diseases, so we know that this is an important motion. It deserves the efforts and energies of all of us in the House. I congratulate the member for Shortland for bringing this motion forward and all the other speakers in the debate. It is important that these motions are bipartisan, that we show our care and concern for those who are suffering—particularly for the families of those who are suffering from these very distressing diseases and events. My concern and my thoughts are with all of them.

Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too thank the member for Shortland for recognising the importance of this matter and I acknowledge the contributions of the members for Hasluck and Bennelong, as well as the contributions of other members here today, in raising lung health awareness in our electorates. I encourage all members to get involved in the Just One Breath initiative of the Lung Foundation of Australia.

Lung disease is a silent killer in our community, contributing to almost 14 per cent of all deaths in 2012. A lot of members have touched on the fact that this places very significant pressure on our health system. The Macarthur region in south-western Sydney has some of the highest rates of asthma and lung disease in all of the Sydney Basin. The Macarthur region also has one of the highest rates of lung cancer in New South Wales.

To breathe is one of the most basic functions of the human body but also the most important. The proper function of one's lungs is something that we take for granted. As stated by Lung Foundation Australia, at least one in 10 Australians have a lung condition. Commonly, lung disease goes undiagnosed, as people are unaware of the symptoms; for example, a productive cough or breathlessness. I also note that Indigenous people die of lung disease at a rate three times higher than non-Indigenous Australians. Lung disease is not just a cancer; it also includes asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, chronic cough, bronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis and much, much more. It is debilitating and constant and, as the Lung Foundation says, 'When you can't breathe, nothing else matters.' We should always be thinking of our lungs, and I encourage everyone to take the lung health checklist at www.justonebreath.com.au.

I am going to focus on one lung disease. In my electorate of Macarthur I have had the great opportunity to meet and get to know a number of young people living with cystic fibrosis, through my involvement with the Macarthur CF Swimathon. Cystic fibrosis is the most common life-threatening, recessive genetic condition affecting children and young adults today in Australia. According to Cystic Fibrosis New South Wales, a baby is born with cystic fibrosis every four days. Most will not turn 40. This is a sombre fact and one that I hope to make a difference about. At present there is no cure for CF, but the faulty gene has been identified, and doctors and scientists are working to find ways of repairing or replacing it.

CF affects breathing and digestion. Sufferers need up to two hours of intensive chest physio daily, to help break up the mucous in their lungs so that they can breathe. On average, a person living with CF will also take 40 enzyme tablets to help with digestion every day just to survive. The average life expectancy is slowly increasing, and now a person living with CF may live to their mid-30s. But there are still many children who do not reach adulthood and, sadly, there is no cure.

This year's CF Swimathon in Macarthur was a reminder of this fact. Local boy Michael Cotton passed away at age 20 from cystic fibrosis. Michael's family and friends in the Macarthur community rallied together at the swimathon to bring hope to the families and sufferers living with this terrible disease. So far the Macarthur community has raised more than $400,000 over the last six years for cystic fibrosis treatment and research. There is promising new research and new medications, which will help. I am proud that the Abbott government has listed new drugs on the PBS for the treatment of cystic fibrosis. The Macarthur community will once again rally around our local families living with CF, who battle this dreadful disease each and every day. That is why this February I will again be supporting Team Lozza, wearing pink tights and hitting the pool. It is not a good look in those pink tights, but these young people are an inspiration to me, and I take every opportunity I can to raise awareness of this disease that they live with every day of their lives.

While cystic fibrosis is a matter that is near to my heart, lung disease is a major contributor to our burden of health in Australia, with one in 10 Australians affected by lung disease. I thank Lung Foundation Australia for their Just One Breath campaign. I believe that this will be a very effective tool in raising awareness about lung health for children and young people and our elderly. I would encourage all members to share this message with their constituents, which I will also be doing with the Macarthur community. I encourage our community to get behind the local initiatives that will support residents who are living with lung disease. I am very proud of the organisers, sponsors, volunteers and teams who get together in Macarthur each year to raise money and awareness for the treatment and cure of cystic fibrosis through the CF swimathon.

As our nation prepares for the coming summer holidays, children will be thinking of what they want for Christmas. I know that at least 80 young people in my community will be wishing for a cure for cystic fibrosis. That is what I will be wishing for, too. I hope that one day CF will mean 'Cure Found'.

Debate adjourned.