Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Continuing from my earlier contribution, helping to drive stronger health systems on the ground in the Treaty Villages of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea is the Cairns-based Reef and Rainforest Research Centre. In December, I welcomed news that the Australian government has increased its support for the Building Resilience in Treaty Villages project. Managed by the RRRC, the project involves the recruitment and training of multiskilled community rangers to work in construction, sanitation, first aid and leadership.

Thanks to an initial $1.8 million from the Australian government in 2014, the pilot in four Treaty Villages saw 52 community rangers, including 12 women, trained up. It is a fabulous program, and the rangers have now used their skills to install more than 1.5 million litres of reliable, clean potable water storage, build eight new reinforced capped-and-sealed groundwater wells, provide emergency medical assistance on more than 100 occasions, including lifesaving first aid, transportation and childbirth support, and complete a top-down refurbishment of Mabaduan village's hospital outpost.

The pilot has now been extended through another $400,000 commitment in 2016-17. Subject to successful completion, the Australian government will support its phasing-up, thereby reaching all Treaty Villages by 2019-20. This new program means that there will be another group of locals trained up as rangers in this program. All of this is designed to establish a platform for each of these communities that will at last see delivery of appropriate health services, allowing us to meet the challenge of tuberculosis and other communicable diseases while also giving ownership of the solution to local communities. This guarantees buy-in by the community and a sense of ownership from the community, and this, in my view, will guarantee its success. I also believe that this model is transportable into other areas of high disadvantage, and I will be working with the minister to promote this.

Since 2012, Australia has also supported medical research and development into neglected diseases, including tuberculosis. Poverty-related illness affects over a billion people worldwide and it results in six million deaths each year. Most people who suffer from these neglected diseases cannot pay the market price for health products, and the lack of market demand to encourage investment in neglected diseases means that product development is largely the responsibility of not-for-profit product development partnerships that combine industry expertise and public and philanthropic funding.

Government backing of research and development can have an enormous impact, as new products developed from Australian-supported TB research show. For instance, Australian investment in the PDP Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, or FIND, has helped to develop a GeneXpert machine, which has allowed TB infections to be confirmed within a matter of hours rather than weeks. FIND is now working with Cepheid on the manufacture and launch of a new machine named the Omni. This is a portable diagnostic system that will run for eight hours on a solar-rechargeable battery. It is about the size of a milkshake maker, so it is very transportable.

Since 2015 Australia has provided a total of $30 million in funding for three PDPs: FIND, the TB Alliance and the Medicines for Malaria Venture. Sustained support for this kind of medical research is essential, as the benefits of R&D can take years to emerge fully. With the current PDP program concluding in 2017, the government will need to include a renewed commitment to medical R&D, including further PDP investments, in the 2017-18 budget. An appropriate goal for medical research and funding would be to increase R&D support to one per cent, or $60 million, of the overall aid program by 2020-21. Within this total, Australia should make a commitment of $15 million a year to the PDP program for the next three years to increase prospects for new diagnostics and treatments and also to allow for additional PDP projects, such as work being done to develop a TB vaccine. An increased commitment to R&D could also incorporate funding from the new regional health security partnership fund, which Minister Bishop announced in June 2016.

World TB Day is fast approaching, and on 21 March the Australian TB Caucus will be hosting a breakfast here in the parliament, to which all of our colleagues will be invited. At this event we will be celebrating these Australian investments, made under the leadership of Minister Bishop, in TB prevention and treatment in PNG and in the development of innovative drugs and diagnostics for TB. With tuberculosis, more so than in almost any other disease, helping others is helping ourselves. (Time expired)