Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note to the House and those who are viewing or listening tonight that this is National Stroke Week. Every nine minutes, someone in Australia will suffer a stroke. That means that, in the course of this adjournment debate, which has gone for almost half an hour, three Australians, if not close to four, have suffered a stroke. By 2050, without further action, this number will increase to one stroke in every four minutes. In this year alone, Australians will suffer more than 56,000 strokes. Many of those will be experienced by people living in regional Australia. In fact, regional Australians are 19 per cent more likely to suffer a stroke than those living in metropolitan areas.

Advancements in stroke treatment and care mean that a stroke is no longer a death sentence for many. However, for more than 470,000 stroke survivors and their families living in our community, the impacts are far-reaching. Patient outcomes from stroke vary widely depending on where you live and your access to a stroke unit. If I can say, Mr Speaker, you and I personally have a former colleague in the previous member for Flinders, Peter Reith, who suffered a stroke. He's struggling with the outcome of that. He's just one of the former members of this place who have suffered this insidious condition and are now—and he and his family are—living with the outcome of it.

This week, the Stroke Foundation published a new document. If you'll allow me to breach standing orders for a moment, Mr Speaker, I will show it. The document No postcode untouched:stroke in Australia 2017 demonstrates the impact of stroke on millions of lives in suburbs like ours and, indeed, in cities and villages right across the nation, and into the future. It highlights the increasing burden of stroke, particularly in regional and rural Australia. The challenge to our health system is very significant. I say this because, even though I now represent a suburban electorate, as you do, Mr Speaker, I grew up in rural-regional Australia. What this document shows is that the incidence of stroke and, therefore, I suspect, the ability of people in those areas to be able to avail themselves of appropriate medical treatment, care and preventive measures may well be different to those who live in the major urban areas of Australia.

This latest report provides analysis of statistics and estimations, by federal electorate, on the incidence of stroke, the number of stroke survivors living in the community and the leading risk factors for preventable stroke. Risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, atrial fibrillation—that's an irregular heartbeat—and physical inactivity. Using population health and research data, the Stroke Foundation also estimated the number of new strokes in Australia over next 30 years.

I represent a middle-class, urban electorate in Melbourne. I was interested to delve into the document because, for five or six out of the risk factors, two of which were high cholesterol levels and physical inactivity, my electorate is in the top 15 electorates on the tables. For example, for high cholesterol, Menzies is at No. 14 out of the top 15 of the 150 electorates in Australia. The number of constituents with high cholesterol in my electorate is 39,598, representing 27.3 per cent of the electorate. That's a very high number of people. Then, for the top electorates in terms of physical inactivity—and I pride myself on physical activity, but, obviously, my constituents don't always follow my example!—12 out of the top 15 electorates in this regard were in Victoria. The number of people physically inactive in Menzies is 68,827, which represents 47.4 per cent of the electorate.

All I can say to my constituents is: I encourage you to get out and walk, run, cycle, swim—whatever—and check your cholesterol.

House adjourned at 20:00

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ) took the chair at 10:30.