Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That in the opinion of the Senate the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Abbott Government to respond to the Ebola epidemic and to take responsibility for Australia's role in the international effort to combat Ebola.

Before entering this place, I worked in public health. I was a public health specialist. I spent some time on HIV prevention in India. I also worked in Victoria's health department, for a time, as part of an outbreak investigation team. In that role we responded to all sorts of outbreaks—food-borne outbreaks from restaurants, influenza outbreaks from aged care facilities and measles outbreaks from childcare centres. The one thing that is common to each outbreak is that time is of the essence. With each day that we wait more people are exposed and the outbreak spreads further. And it becomes much more difficult to contain. That is why I am so concerned about this government's response to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

Ebola has always been of concern because of the deadly nature of the virus. There is about a 50 per cent chance that if you contract the virus you will die from it. But this outbreak in west Africa is unprecedented. It is unprecedented in terms of the scale of the outbreak and in terms of its spread into urban settings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States have said that if it is left unchecked Ebola could infect anywhere from half a million to 1.4 million people, with a good chance that over half of them will die. We already know that thousands have died and that many more thousands will face a horrific death. We have seen comments from Medecins Sans Frontieres' Executive Director, Paul McPhun, who said that responding to Ebola is a lot like responding to a bushfire, and he is right. Unless you combat the fire at its source, then spot fires will continue to burn right around the globe. In places that are unprepared—usually places with low capacity in terms of their health systems—those spot fires will take hold and soon we will be fighting this epidemic on many different fronts.

Thankfully Australia has a first-class health system. We are able to carry out the basic tasks that are the mainstays of outbreak containment. We can identify cases early through diagnosis and laboratory testing, we can trace contacts and we can ensure that there is appropriate isolation and quarantine measures, and it can all be done very quickly. But countries in our region are not so lucky. Like an ember landing on a tinder-dry forest floor, Ebola has the potential to quickly spiral out of control in a country like PNG. Its rudimentary health system just does not have the capacity to identify cases and put in the appropriate public health measures to contain it.

The global response so far has been insufficient. The United Nations estimates that, in order to beat Ebola, at least four and a half thousand beds are needed. We need about 20,000 doctors and nurses, but we have only a fraction of that on the ground. Thankfully we have seen some movement. President Obama is to be commended for the leadership he is showing on this issue. The US has now sent a major general to take over the US military mission to fight Ebola. One of its divisions has been in Liberia for six weeks. It has built two new laboratories and, along with the UK, is now building field hospitals that should be operational in the coming weeks. They have pledged 4,000 troops and they have trained health workers. Cuba has deployed 250 health workers to West Africa, Israel is sending medical crews and Japan has dispatched medical experts. China has expanded its medical deployment and Britain is working on five new treatment centres and 700 additional beds. Special mention goes to MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, who have around 3,000 staff in West Africa, are operating six Ebola case management centres and are providing 600 isolation beds. They are one of the biggest players in this crisis—bigger than any nation state.

Contrast that with the response from the Australian government, which has been, frankly, appalling. It is no wonder that the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, who is visiting the three West African nations worst hit by Ebola, has been very critical of the international community, and she has reason to be angry. Here in Australia, the Prime Minister stated that it would be irresponsible to send our people and put them in harm's way without getting an assurance that they would be evacuated. But we heard, through Senate estimates just last week, that Australia has been given assurances that people would be looked after on a case-by-case basis, and there has not yet been one case where a medical evacuation has been refused. We have also learnt that, with the UK and the US now building field hospitals, there will not be a need for medical evacuation. We have also heard the Prime Minister say that we should keep our trained health professionals in Australia so they can be first responders to an outbreak in a place like PNG, but that is a decision that displays incredible ignorance and runs the risk of putting their lives at risk. Unless our first responders have the field experience necessary to respond to this unique outbreak, their lives will be at risk and they will not be able to combat the epidemic in a place like PNG. It is akin to sending in firefighters to tackle a raging fire without ever having seen one.

There is a world of difference between responding to an outbreak in an Australian hospital and responding to an outbreak in the field in a developing country. That is why NGOs send their workers to intensive training in Europe and field experience under the supervision of mentors. This is not something you can do from a lecture theatre. If we are genuine about keeping our region safe, we would be sending our health workers to get that training and experience in the field. Why is it that we can agree to military intervention in Iraq in the name of saving lives and yet we cannot commit a fraction of those resources to an emergency that the UN has said is bigger than the threat of terrorism? I suspect that part of the reason lies in fear and ignorance. Those are the enemies in a crisis like this.

We had the federal government on Tuesday announcing that it would stop processing visa applications to people travelling from Ebola affected countries. On what advice was that decision made? I know that my colleague Senator Sarah Hanson-Young will have more to say on this. It is not based on science. Infectious disease experts and biosecurity experts know that these sorts of bans do nothing to keep Australia safe, but what they do is create a climate of fear and panic. As the United Nations say, it is that climate of fear and panic that discourages the vital relief work that is necessary to get on top of this epidemic. We have seen Liberia's president urging Australia to reconsider its travel bans. We have seen Sierra Leone calling the move draconian—a move that does not target Ebola; it is a move that targets the 24 million citizens of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Thankfully we have President Obama showing some leadership on this. He said that health workers who volunteer to treat Ebola patients should be applauded, and he has been very cautious about quarantine measures. Instead, what do we get from the health minister here in Australia? Just this morning he was talking about people cancelling their holidays to places like Queensland in response to the isolated cases that state has seen. Ignorance and fear are the enemies here. The minister needs to realise that words are bullets. What we need to hear are statements based on fact and evidence—statements that do more to encourage people to contribute to the field effort in West Africa.

There are many reasons that Australia should act. If this outbreak proceeds unchecked and the worst case scenarios predicated by the CDC are realised, it has the potential to disrupt trade right across the world and to cause a huge jolt to the global economy. We know that there are Australian health workers who are desperate to contribute. They want to be there. They are just waiting for the go-ahead from the government. But, most of all, there are hundreds of thousands of people—people just like us, people who share the same dreams and aspirations that we share—who will die if we do not act. That is reason alone.