Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We often see reports throughout our news media that create the impression that life on this planet is getting a lot worse, that we're polluting the planet and here in Australia we're making it much worse for people to live. Perhaps one of the best indicators of how false that actually is are some statistics released last week by our ABS on life expectancy. They showed that a young girl born in Australia in 2016 will have an estimated life expectancy of 84.6 years. A young boy born last year will have a life expectancy of an average of 80.4 years. Let's go back 125 years. People think if we go back to Mother Nature we won't have all the so-called environmental issues that we have today. People often think Mother Nature nurtures us. But Mother Nature is full of disease, floods, famine and droughts. Under Mother Nature, life was short. It was brutal, nasty and short. In fact, in the last 125 years, we have increased the life expectancy in this nation by an incredible 33.2 years for males and 33.7 years for females. Our previous generations of Australians have bestowed upon children born last year an extra 33 years of life. That is one of the most amazing statistics, I think, as an example of how we've improved our society. Most of us think that life is the most important thing. But to grant each Australian an additional 33 years of life in just over a century is something truly remarkable.

How have we done this? We know how it's not done. We've seen in countries where they adopt totalitarian socialist policies that their life expectancy has traditionally gone backwards. We've seen in countries like Zimbabwe over the last 40 years that their life expectancy rates have grown stagnant or actually fallen. Over the same period of time, in Australia our life expectancies have increased 12 to 13 years. We saw it in the Baltic states—prosperity drives life expectancy. We can truly be thankful our world is getting much better. (Time expired)