Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join this debate. I welcome Senator Siewert’s motion and the Oxfam Close the gap report. I want to talk about two things. On Wednesday last week several parliamentarians went to a dinner which was hosted by Vision Australia. One of the presenters at that dinner was Dr Katrina Rooper from the Department of Health and Community Services in the Northern Territory. She is part of the National Trachoma Surveillance and Reporting Unit in the Northern Territory. She talked about the impact of trachoma on Aboriginal communities. I remind honourable senators here today that trachoma does not exist in any other developed country around the world. But it does exist in our Aboriginal communities, where there are a large number of cases. The most shocking aspect of this is that it can be treated relatively easily. There is an antibiotic which if administered in good time—that is, when children get it; and they do, all the time—can solve the problem. For just $22 million we could eliminate trachoma from every Aboriginal community.

I remind the Senate that trachoma in the end makes people blind. The eyelid becomes so deformed that it turns inward and the action of the eye eventually destroys the eyeball. So this is a hugely debilitating condition. It is hard to believe that, in this day and age when we know that there is a way of curing this problem—as I say, it cannot be cured if you do not get it early—we are not even taking that minimal step forward of providing antibiotics to those at risk. Those can be administered as a preventive measure and have the added benefit of clearing up a whole lot of other infections as well within Aboriginal communities.

The other condition which is almost as debilitating which I often cite is scabies. It is a condition which, again, occurs in no other developed country around the world. But it affects every Aboriginal community. When I travel around with committees I go into schools and ask what the incidence of scabies is. Very often the answer is that it affects 80 per cent of students. Scabies is caused by a mite that gets under the skin. It makes the skin so itchy that you want to tear your flesh off. What happens over time with scabies is that it affects all the major organs in the body. It is a major factor in Aboriginal people not living as long as non-Indigenous people. It too can be fixed. There is a simple ointment that can be applied to people who have scabies. In one wonderful school that we went to some time ago at Elcho Island I asked the principal about scabies and he said, ‘We only have about a five per cent rate of scabies infection.’ The kids were very bright and shiny. They had black hair and black skin and looked fantastic. He said that they hold scabies at bay by closing down the school for one day every term and going into people’s homes with the clinic. They administer the ointment, they clean up dogs and they assist the community generally to keep scabies away. This is utterly crucial. If we want children to learn in schools then they have to be free of scabies. It is appalling that in so many communities 80 per cent of them are not.

We all know that if there were better housing, if there were better sanitation, if kids washed their faces and eyes so that they were less likely to get trachoma, if there were better jobs, if there were a better environment in many of these places, if there were better nutrition and if there were better health services generally—all of those things—then our Aboriginal community would not have such an appalling health record and shorter life expectancy. But the two examples that I have given could be done without fixing all those things. I am not saying the other things should not be fixed, but it is possible to fix those two things and it is disgraceful that this government, after 10 years, has not done so. I might also say ‘the government before it’, because governments have neglected Aboriginal health. This is not something that has happened since 1996. Governments have overseen an appalling record in this country. They pay lip-service to doing better in Aboriginal communities, but even the simple solutions to some of these debilitating problems are not adopted.