Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise to contribute to this debate. I acknowledge Senator Di Natale for his professional experience and his work in the public health area. Let me make this first point: the primary obligation of any country is to ensure that it does not put its citizens unnecessarily at risk and without a circumstance in which it is able to assist them, should they be placed at risk—indeed, heaven forbid, should they pick up a virus such as this one. The second point that I make is that there is nothing stopping Australian volunteers at this time from making themselves available through NGOs or any other process in Africa to contribute to the work associated with getting on top of and hopefully eliminating this virus.

Senator Di Natale quite rightly says that, on a case-by-case basis, progress is being made in this area. Senator Di Natale used the bushfire analogy. As Senator Siewert knows, I have some expertise in the bushfire area. Using that analogy, Senator Di Natale, I can assure you that the last thing a fire service would ever do is say that it is ready for the fire season on a fire-by-fire basis. You are either ready, prepared and able to respond and eventually assist the recovery process or you are not. That is the circumstance in which Australia finds itself at the moment.

There is nothing stopping volunteers who feel that there are safeguards adequately in place from making a contribution. There are already people in the health and allied areas involving themselves. Australia's contribution to date has been some $18 million announced by the Prime Minister and the foreign minister: $10 million to the UN Ebola Response Multi-Partner Trust Fund, $3.5 million to the World Health Organisation, $2.5 million to support provision of front-line services under the Humanitarian Partnership Agreement and $2 million to support the UK's delivery of frontline medical services in Sierra Leone. Australia's contribution was praised by the United Nations as 'exactly the kind of quick and effective response the UN is asking of member states.' The issue of Australia's possible further contribution is alive, but it will be on the basis of doing what all governments should do—that is, ensure the safety of their citizens. There would be no circumstance at this time—as I, with some understanding of epidemiology and virus diseases, would understand it—where we could be strongly endorsing or conscripting people to participate.

The virus is an interesting one. It is a zoonosis, a disease transmissible between animals and humans. It has its name from a river, the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the disease was first described in humans in 1976. It is a member of the filoviridae family. As we have been told, its contagion is more akin to that of HIV-AIDS, which is not of itself highly contagious. Its transmission is through bodily fluids and is not of itself an aerosol based transfer as we would find with, for example, pneumonia viruses. Let me make this point strongly—this was confirmed the other day for me by the Chief Medical Officer—sputum, phlegm or nasal discharge is highly infectious. Indeed, if a person who has nasal discharge or mucus from the mouth were to cough or sneeze over other people, it certainly would be spread through the air. Whilst not an aerosol droplet as with an influenza virus, it certainly has the capacity to be so spread.

We know that in the very same geographic areas in Africa, in parts of South America and in the Indian subcontinent the horrific disease malaria is endemic. I have had this discussion with Senator Di Natale. Malaria is a blood parasite transmitted by mosquitoes, as nearly everybody knows. In 2012 alone, there were 207 million cases, of which 627,000 died—over 90 per cent in Africa. That is more than 1,700 deaths a day, affecting mainly young children, pregnant women, older people and those with low immunity. Why do I make that point? I do not in any way wish to belittle or demean the incidences we have had of Ebola; we have had 10,000 cases of which about 50 per cent have died. It is a very high mortality rate. But it is interesting that from the time that this particular outbreak was first diagnosed in December of 2013 there have been 510,000 deaths from malaria in Africa. That is over half a million. Even since August, when the Ebola epidemic ramped up towards the horrific numbers we are seeing now, 150,000-plus people have died from malaria. Let us ensure that when we are engaged in the activities of looking to prevent disease and to protect the health of people in underdeveloped communities we do not forget that we are losing over half a million people to a disease which is preventable.

In the last couple of moments available to me I want to turn attention to the circumstance here in Australia. We are very, very well equipped. Each capital city now has a hospital that is ready. We saw evidence of that in Brisbane only the other day, when a person presented with clinical signs that could have been those of the Ebola virus. The actions that took place were correct; they were timely. The lessons learnt in Dallas, Texas—obviously one of the world's leading medical and hospital systems—as a result of failures of biosecurity were well and truly addressed in Australia. I am very confident of our contribution.