Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Four years ago, Mr Peter Lindley and his wife Jill came to visit me in my office to talk about the urgent need to have an inquiry into hearing in our country. He had a severe hearing impairment himself, having had industrial hearing loss over many years. He came to talk about why it is so important for us as a government to look into the issue of hearing loss across our community, focusing on the need for access, support and, most importantly, looking at what the dangers are to the hearing health of our country into the future.

It has taken a long time but now we have been able to have a formal hearing into hearing—which we laughed about on the committee many times as we actually put those terms together. Nonetheless, we have now come forward with a report which has a large number of recommendations. It strongly vindicates the urgent need that there was for this issue to be considered by our government.

As Senator Siewert has said, there were no complaints about the quality of service for those who are able to access the service in our country, and there were significant amounts of praise given both for the people who worked in the Australian hearing services and for the amazing wealth of intellectual and professional knowledge we have in the areas of research in this country. Again, as so often happens, when you actually have the time to see what is available in this country it gives us great pride. Internationally, the work of the researchers and the work of the people in this industry are renowned across the whole world—and should be, most particularly by the people who live in this country.

We will not have time, in the very short time we have got to speak this morning, to talk about the range of important things that came out of this inquiry. I do want to put on record, though, some of the evidence that we received about the mental health aspects of people who have hearing issues in our country—such as the feeling of isolation, the feeling of not being engaged in the community and the way that people can have enormous problems in fitting in and being accepted. Those things were told to us with great difficulty by many people who chose to come and talk with us about their private pain. It was not only from those who actually had hearing loss but also from their parents, their friends and the community around them.

When we see that people have been damaged by the fact that they do not feel accepted by those around them, when their opportunities for employment and education and their opportunities to make effective choices about their future are all affected by something that so many of us take for granted—the ability to hear and communicate effectively with those around us—we as a wider Australian community must accept these issues. We must look at a way we can address them and then we can effectively say that we are working well with all those in our community.

As we talk further over many years, I believe some of these recommendations will be before us as we make decisions about how we best respond. There is the whole aspect of improving access to services. Most particularly, we heard from those people who were over 21 who had been receiving amazingly strong support—the best in the world. We were told on a number of occasions that the support that young people in this country have up to the age of 21 is unparalleled anywhere in the world; but the way that the system works now, and has for many years—this is not a new issue—is one that needs to be firmly on the agenda into the future. The access to services for people over 21 needs to be something that we consider; it cannot be just a personal responsibility. The costs are enormous. It was a huge surprise to me to see the large costs of getting hearing services and that is something no family can handle by themselves.

I could go on for a long time about the issues in schools and education, but I do know that Senator Adams wants to make a contribution in this area. I want to put on record my appreciation to the secretariat and my appreciation for so many people who gave their time to tell us their stories—again reinforcing the value of the committee system in this place. We now have those issues in front of us. We cannot run away from them. I had practised my Auslan to say, ‘Thank you, we hear you in this place’. I do not think it would actually work effectively in Hansard but I can assure you that many of us now have a greater appreciation of the need to widen our language services. Mr Lindley, we finally came through.