Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to note some troubling statistics. International comparisons of drowning rates are indicating that Australia has the second-worst recorded in the world for toddler drownings. Each year in Queensland, over 500 children aged 15 years old or under present to emergency departments for injuries sustained in the home, backyard or garden, burned by hot kitchen implements, scalded by hot water in the bathroom, poisoned from accidental access to chemicals or bleeding from accidents involving sometimes innocuous household items. On average, these children will include 88 children aged four and under who are presenting at Queensland hospitals as a result of choking on parts of toys or other small household items. Many will be infants and young children admitted to hospitals with serious internal burns or other injuries sustained from ingesting button batteries—some of them, unfortunately, fatally.

I want to play my part in raising the profile of child safety and improve awareness about the simple actions that everybody can take around the home and in our lives to reduce the risk of injuries on the people around us, particularly our children. I also want to play my part in helping to raise understanding that these accidents are not automatically the parents' or anyone else's fault. This is an increasingly complex world where new products cause new and sometimes surprising risks in a world where goods flow quite quickly between places with sometimes very different approaches to product regulation, manufacturing standards and labelling laws. Education and awareness are key.

A few weeks ago, I was privileged to visit in organisation located in Brisbane called Kidsafe. Kidsafe is working hard to prevent child injuries and accidents from occurring. They do important work raising awareness around kid safety and trying to reduce accidents and injuries for our youngest Australians. The team at Kidsafe Queensland work tirelessly, with quite limited resources, to achieve the goal of fewer children and youth injured or killed from preventable accidents. They do tremendous work, including through education, advocacy, research and partnerships.

This year, Kidsafe celebrated the reopening of the Kidsafe House in Herston. The premises had been previously severely damaged in a storm, and Kidsafe's operations, as well as its financial position, suffered significantly as a result. In all of its work, Kidsafe teaches that high standards in equipment and products for children will mean a safer experience.

I feel that I have a contribution to make on these issues, having previously worked with the product safety specialists of so many of Australia's retailers; having previously worked for the ACCC, including with its product safety division; having run the National Retail Association's technical standards committee; and having been a council member on Standards Australia. I have had the benefit of working closely with many of the passionate advocates and the professionals around Australia who help to keep products safe and our kids safe.

Yet we do not make it easy. Labyrinthine agencies across all levels of government play different and sometimes duplicating or conflicting roles in the regulations around products, product bans and labelling. Those regulations are constantly changing, as they should, when products change and risks are better understood, but sometimes the change is painfully slow and sometimes our states take different approaches. It makes it incredibly challenging, even for the professionals, to stay up to date on our product safety laws, standards, bans and education and awareness activities. Consumers must be flummoxed.

Our regulators face challenges in this government's framework as well as difficulties, obviously, with the limits of their jurisdiction and global product markets where any Australian now can buy almost anything on the internet from around the world. Certainly, for the benefit of our regulators, industry and especially our citizens, we must do better, in an increasingly global world, to make our regulations more consistent with other major product markets such as the EU and North America.

I believe technology can also play a role not only in potentially reducing the regulatory burden around product safety laws—especially labelling—but also in the dissemination of education and awareness in the community. I note, in passing, that social media can have its drawbacks. Honourable members may sometimes reflect on the tone of comments on social media—in which case they should feel a special sympathy when they consider the treatment dished out to honest businesses who have sold perfectly legitimate and compliant products but are targeted by internet trolls who do not understand the facts or, indeed, the hatred targeted at parents who try to come forward to raise awareness when their kids have had a terrible injury.

I would like to formally record in this parliament the sincere thanks of the people of Brisbane to Kidsafe for their great work. Their tireless efforts and vital services literally save lives. I pay special tribute to the Kidsafe Queensland CEO Susan Teerds and the chair Ian Coombe for their advocacy. I want to pay tribute today to the product safety and child safety professionals around Australia, and I look forward to working with them very constructively on these matters into the future.