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

by leave—On behalf of the member for Moreton, I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that 14 November is World Diabetes Day;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) there are 1.1 million diagnosed cases of diabetes in Australia and they are rising by 100,000 a year;

(b) Diabetes Australia estimates that:

  (i) diabetes currently costs the Australian economy around $14.6 billion per annum; and

  (ii) the cost of diabetes to the Australian economy is forecast to increase to $30 billion by 2025;

(c) Australia needs a stronger response to the challenge of diabetes;

(d) there is evidence that:

  (i) the onset of type 2 diabetes can be successfully prevented; and

  (ii) serious complications and hospitalisations from diabetes can be prevented; and

(3) commits to working towards reducing the impact of diabetes on the lives of Australians.

It is most unfortunate that the member for Moreton cannot be here today, but he is pursuing the cause of diabetes. He is currently attending the International Diabetes Federation forum in Vancouver. It is being held in conjunction with the Parliamentarians for Diabetes Global Network and the Parliamentary Champions for Diabetes Forum. It will host the second parliamentary champions forum in Vancouver just prior to World Diabetes Day. The forum has been running from 28 November and it concludes today. The member for Moreton is absolutely passionate about diabetes and he is one of the co-convenors here in this parliament.

World Diabetes Day was 14 November. This year the theme was 'Act today to change'. It was about highlighting the importance of diabetes, highlighting the importance of research, highlighting the difference that an individual can make in managing their own diabetes and highlighting information around the new technologies that have become available, such as the continuous glucose monitor.

This year, one of the key facts that was highlighted was the need to reduce free sugar consumption to less than 10 per cent of a person's daily energy intake—including foods with added sugar as well as foods with naturally occurring sugar, like honey, syrup, fruit juice and fruit concentrates. The campaign also highlighted the importance of enjoying a healthy diet rich in fresh fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, lean meat, dairy, legumes, nuts and also clean drinking water—all things that can lead to a decrease in the incidence of diabetes.

In Mr Perrett's motion, he points out the cost of diabetes to the Australian economy. It is currently costing Australia $14.6 billion per year and the projection is that it will increase to $30 billion in 2025. That places emphasis on the need to address diabetes. It places emphasis on the need to respond to the fact that there is such an increase. When we are looking at diabetes, we have to look at the cost of diabetes to our health system. The burden of disease caused by diabetes is enormous. People with diabetes are at risk of eye disease, amputations, hyperglycaemia—high levels of sugar, which cause enormous damage—and hypoglycaemia, where the person can black out and die. I once had a constituent whom in another life I was a case manager for. She was engaged to be married. They were planning the wedding. She had diabetes and her mother went around one morning and she was dead. That puts an emphasis on the importance of having that continuous glucose monitoring.

Some of the risk factors are family history; being over the age of 55 or 45; being overweight; having high blood pressure; being of Torres Strait Islander or Aboriginal descent; being over the age of 35, if you are a Pacific Islander—there is a very high incidence in the Pacific Islands—and a woman who gives birth to a child over 4.5 kilograms.

Diabetes is a very real issue that we, as a parliament, need to address. I encourage each and every member of this parliament to go back to their electorates, increase the awareness of diabetes and work within the parliament to undertake more research in react to this epidemic.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does anyone second the motion?

Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I second the motion.

I rise to speak about diabetes as recognised around the globe annually on November 14, World Diabetes Day. This day recognises a disease the UN describes as a 'major global health threat'. World Diabetes Day is celebrated, remembered and acknowledged annually on November 14, as it marks the birthday of Frederick Banting who, along with Charles Best, first conceived the idea which led to the discovery of insulin in 1921.

Last week, my good friend Dr Roza Sage, the manager of government and health system development at Diabetes NSW, was here in Parliament House meeting with relevant ministers and advisers regarding the aged and their need for care and special attention, if they suffer from diabetes. One of the major concerns with this disease, which makes it particularly menacing, is that it remains significantly hidden. Indeed up to half of all the people with diabetes globally remain undiagnosed.

There are some 1.7 million Australians with diabetes—that is 280 people a day in Australia diagnosed with this disease or one in four adults. In the electorate of Macquarie, there are more than 6,700 people with diabetes and, in New South Wales, we have 480,000 people registered as having diabetes.

Most concerning and frightening is that there are approximately 281,000 people who do not know they have diabetes type 2, which is the most common form of diabetes and accounts for approximately 85 per cent of people with this disease. It is the underlying or associated cause of one in every 10 deaths in Australia. The startling reality is that 7,750 people die from diabetes and its complications in Australia—that is more than breast, prostate and brain cancer combined.

Annually diabetes accounts for 840,000 hospitalisations, 623,000 with cardiovascular and/or kidney disease, 95,000 with vision loss, 5,000 end-stage kidney disease and, what is very disturbing is that 3,500 are required to have their lower limb amputated.

The cost to the health system is frightening: $14 billion a year nationally and, with $400 million in treating diabetes in New South Wales alone. For those that were born with type 1 diabetes, their disease cannot be prevented with a healthy lifestyle. For those having type 2 diabetes or preventing it, we must look to a healthy lifestyle. Although diabetes type 1 cannot be prevented, it certainly can be helped lifestyle.

The theme this year for World Diabetes Day is healthy eating as a key factor in preventing the onset of type 2 diabetes and as an important part of the effective management of all types of diabetes to avoid complications.

For the past two years, as a government, we have been concentrating our effort on the health star rating system on processed foods, which is now well accepted by the food industry and consumers. The statistics I have read say it all: it is crucial that we as a nation have a very serious conversation about diabetes, and that is exactly what took place this year. The health minister Sussan Ley announced the nation's largest diabetes conversation to help guide our election commitment to develop a National Diabetes Strategy. Its aim is to prioritise Australia's response to diabetes, identify the best approaches to addressing the impact of diabetes in the community and position Australia as an international leader in diabetes prevention, management and research. It drew on comments from people living with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, their families and their carers.

The conversation on diabetes resulted in the Turnbull government this November announcing the new national strategy to tackle diabetes, which has an emphasis on the strategy of prevention, early diagnosis, intervention management and treatment centred on the role of primary care. As Minister Ley said:

Under this strategy people will be better informed about diabetes so they can make better decisions. In addition, research and evidence will strengthen prevention and care and, hopefully, move us that much closer to a cure for diabetes.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Moreton for putting this item on the agenda today. Diabetes and the incidence in Australia and the rest of the world is a massive issue, and 14 November is World Diabetes Day, aimed at raising awareness about diabetes.

Australia and many parts of the developed and underdeveloped world are literally eating ourselves to death. When it comes to the increased intake of sugar, salt, processed foods with a lack of regular exercise in our diets, we are seeing an explosion in obesity, diabetes, cancer and other preventable diseases—and that is having a dramatic effect on our health system and our national economy.

As is outlined in the motion, diabetes is a significant preventable health problem here in Australia, with 1.1 million people diagnosed with diabetes. The numbers grow each year, with an additional 100,000 people being added to that list. The estimated cost of the affliction to the Australian economy is $14.6 billion per annum.

Unfortunately, we are not alone: the prevalence of diabetes throughout the world and, particularly within our region—most notably, in the Pacific—is high and increasing. In our area, in the Pacific Islands, it ranges from 14 per cent in the Solomon Islands to 47 per cent of the population—almost half—in American Samoa. That is outrageous.

According to the World Health Organization, in at least 10 Pacific Island countries, more than 50 per cent of the population is overweight—a risk factor for diabetes—with 51 per cent of people in Kiribati overweight, 45 per cent in the Marshall Islands, and 30 per cent in Fiji. Pacific Islanders are now 9.3 times more likely to die from diabetes than non-Pacific people, and lifestyle changes are the main cause.

The increased incidence of diabetes and obesity is not abating across the Pacific, and a drastic shift away from traditional to a more Western influenced, processed diet with the associated high levels of sugar are a fair indicator of the blame. Alarmingly, according to statistics published in the Pacific Peoples Health magazine in New Zealand, a Pacific woman is expected to die 7.1 years before her non-Pacific counterpart, while a Pacific male is expected to live 8.2 years less than a non-Pacific man.

In government, Labor invested in initiatives designed to increase quality of life in the Pacific Islands through healthy lifestyle activities. A lot of that was aimed at fostering a greater awareness of the risks of type 2 diabetes—and I note that this year's World Diabetes Day has a particular emphasis on healthy eating as a key factor in managing type 1 diabetes and avoiding type 2 diabetes. Many of Labor's programs in government were aimed at that particular element of preventing diabetes. Funded by AusAID and managed by the Australian Sports Commission, the Pacific Sports Partnerships involved the Australian government partnering with Australian sports organisations and their Pacific, regional and national counterparts to deliver sports-based programs that contribute to increasing levels of regular participation by Pacific Islanders in quality sport initiatives, improving health-related behaviours of Pacific Islanders which impact on non-communicable-disease risk factors, focusing on increasing levels of physical activity, and improving attitudes towards the increased inclusion of people with disability in Pacific communities. By all accounts, these were successful programs. They included organisations such as the AFL, athletics, badminton, basketball, cricket, football, rugby, netball, swimming, table tennis and volleyball.

In conclusion, in support of this World Diabetes Day motion: Australia needs to tackle this issue of unhealthy eating, leading to obesity and leading to preventable diseases such as diabetes. But most importantly, we also need to be aware that many of the foods which are processed in our nation and in developed countries and which are sent to developing nations have a big impact on the diets and health of people living in those communities, to the extent that there are much greater risks for those people. More must be done to tackle diabetes at home and throughout the Pacific region in particular.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion. I would like to compliment those members who have spoken so far—the members for Shortland, Macquarie and Kingsford-Smith—on their speeches; and I compliment the member for Moreton for putting this on the agenda.

Diabetes is a huge health problem for the nation. In fact, it represents an epidemic which is probably best called the 'diabesity' epidemic, because the diabetes is driven by obesity and by the secondary resistance to the effect of insulin that comes from it; particularly, obesity around the trunk of the body. There are 1.1 million diabetics diagnosed in Australia, but the scary thing is that there are estimates of up to 250,000 other people who are wandering around Australia oblivious to the fact that they have diabetes. The statistics mentioned by the member for Macquarie are true and quite chilling. We are all aware of the threat of cancer, but everyday cardiovascular disease and the consequences of kidney disease and peripheral vascular disease can also come about as a result of diabetes—more often than we realise.

In this motion, parts (c) and (d) are particularly relevant:

(c) Australia needs a stronger response to the challenge of diabetes;

(d) there is evidence that:

  (i) the onset of type 2 diabetes can be successfully prevented; and

  (ii) serious complications and hospitalisations from diabetes can be prevented;

So what should we do? Basically, we can prevent most of those 1.1 million people—and most of those undiagnosed 200,000 people—from suffering the ravages of diabetes, mainly by losing a whole lot of weight. If you get rid of the insulin resistance, you can prevent the effects of diabetes—basically, your blood sugar control in itself is fixed. To do that, you need to lose weight by consuming a lot fewer carbohydrates. There are lots of arguments like, 'don't eat carbs,' or 'just eat protein,' or 'avoid fats.' The issue is calories. We need a mixed source of protein, carbohydrates and fats, because we evolved and came down from the trees: we are omnivores. What is best is that we eat less food—we are surrounded by and we are bathed in excesses of food. We need to do more exercise. I have often called my special diet Eat Less Food; I tell patients they need to go on the ELF diet—because most people need a jazzy name, or some program. So I tell them, 'Go on the ELF diet and the DME program.' That is sometimes married with the DLG program, which is the auxiliary program Drink Less Grog. Eat less food, do more exercise, drink less grog and you will lose weight. There is no secret recipe here; it is just common sense. You will lose weight and you might get rid of your insulin resistance. Another simple, cheap remedy is to put people with documented insulin resistance on a simple, old-fashioned drug called metformin. With this and the weight loss, the need for insulin can be avoided in many of the people who end up on insulin.

It is up to us to eat healthy food. If you are eating food that you pull out of the ground or off a tree, is harvested and unprocessed or runs, jumps, swims or flies, it is generally pretty healthy. If you get it out of a shiny silver pack or a cardboard box, it has usually been processed. If a hen lays it, it is good; if an animal lays it, it is good. That is how we were designed to eat. For most of us, who eat way too much food, it is a chilling thought to eat less of it, because food is really enjoyable. We want to support our agricultural industry and butchers and greengrocers, but we need to do that. We should also have our blood sugar checked once a year and our urine checked for glucose.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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.