Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise today to speak in the debate on this matter of urgency and about the Ebola crisis that is facing West Africa—indeed, it is a problem for the world. As Labor has consistently put on the public record, we acknowledge that the Abbott government has made a contribution of funds—we acknowledge that. Senator Singh has acknowledged that. Our shadow health minister has acknowledged that. We have given funds. But funds are clearly not enough. We cannot give money and then no personnel.

The view that we have heard from senators from the Abbott government this afternoon quite frankly makes me feel quite ashamed. This is not about people, of their own free will, volunteering; it is about Australia making a proper effort as a modern, democratic, well-resourced country to support those in West Africa. I have listened to the government, and a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday I heard our health minister say that we would commit medical personnel—if the disease reached New Guinea. Heaven help us if it gets that far, because then we would all be in trouble! I could not believe that the government of Australia, through its health minister, was seriously suggesting that that is when we would commit medical staff. I sat as I listened and could not believe I was hearing that someone in a very responsible position, such as the health minister of our country, could make that short-sighted comment. I just wondered what was motivating that kind of response.

As a rich, resourced, democratic country we have some responsibility, as do other countries in a similar situation to us, of ensuring that West African countries do have robust health systems that can prevent these outbreaks. That is part of our responsibility; it is part of our moral responsibility, it is part of who we are as human beings.

Then, this morning as I listened to the news I heard this ridiculous assertion that tourism numbers in Cairns and other places have been dropping off because people were fearful of somehow contracting the Ebola virus. Then I wondered what is being created here—fear. Earlier we heard Senator Di Natale, a medical practitioner, refer to that. It is not appropriate for us to be evoking fear in fellow Australians.

I also read in the newspaper last Saturday this horrific story of this young girl of 15 who had lost her mother and her father. She did not really know, but they had gone and had been placed outside of a hospital, because they could not get in. We all know the truth of this. Both her mother and father had died of Ebola and this young 15-year-old was left without any resources. Everyone in her village was shunning her because her family had contracted Ebola and died. She was left with very young siblings to care for, and one of them subsequently died. I put myself in the shoes of that family and was heartbroken, yet we have this cold callousness coming from the Abbott government, and indeed some of the senators here today, that if want to go off and volunteer, off you go. That is not what this is about. As part of the Australian community it is our responsibility to act as a country, to give funds—and, yes, we have done that—but to also enable our health workers to go under the umbrella of an Australian volunteer, not a personal volunteer. But, no, what we are seeing is this narrowing down and this attitude that we are only going to act in our region, this closing of our borders. We have stopped people from West Africa now being able to get visas, when really we should be looking forward and looking to how we can help.

There is no doubt that there are not enough medical personnel working in West Africa. That now is the crux of the problem. Yes, we initially did have a problem about evacuating health workers from the region. But that is not a reason to say no. That is a problem we solve. We solve that by building field hospitals and by calling on other countries to support us. When we act as countries assisting in these sorts of crises we do act together. It is not the Americans, the English and the Cubans. We are there together with our comrades and colleagues in West Africa, working together to defeat this virus. That is what we have to do, because I for one do not want to see many more deaths in West Africa. These are people just like us, who have families and jobs and want to live a full life, and they are dying in huge numbers.

I for one want to be part of a community that reaches out and says 'Yes, along with our funds you will also get our best medical personnel,' because we are equipped to do this. Nobody is questioning whether our hospitals in Australia can cope with a crisis. We would expect that, and as Australians we have a right to expect, in a well-developed country, that we are adequately protected. But the reality is that we now have 6,000 confirmed cases of Ebola in West Africa. Yet we sit on our hands and start to be small-minded. We attempt to close our borders and we say things like, 'We will only look after those in our region.' That is wrong. We are part of the world community and we have a responsibility to support West Africa, not only with funds but also with medical personnel.

Along with the tragic story of the young 15-year-old girl losing her family, we know that more than two and a half thousand people have already died. That is a crisis by anyone's imagination. By any stretch, by any measure, that is a crisis, and it is a crisis we need to act on.

Health experts are telling us that the disease is increasing incredibly fast. Experts are predicting that 21,000 will be infected now. We must act to stop Ebola spreading. We know, and the UN have told us, that there is a very small window to which we can contain this crisis, before it gets completely out of hand. Heaven help if it ever spreads to New Guinea. I certainly do not believe that New Guinea and many other countries in our region are equipped to deal with a crisis like that. It is a very short-sighted and uninformed view to suggest that that is when Australia will step in and help, because by then the whole world is in crisis.

The time for us to be helping is right now. As other senators have said, we have the Australian Medical Association urging the Abbott government to get on board and help. They are the experts in this. We have our own government medical people telling us that we need to be supporting and acting with personnel in this crisis. We have MSF out there, who are always one of the groups that are in the frontier risking lives. There would not be a crisis in the world that MSF is not actively participating in. Doctors and nurses, many of them from Australia, are saying that we must act. The government could arrange for these volunteers to be attached to existing operations. The government does not have to spend a lot of money setting up new resources. They could be attached to MSF, to the Red Cross, to the UK or the US. There is no reason why Australia should not be committing personnel. It is not good enough for the government to say, 'You can volunteer.' We need to show that, as a country, we are committed to stopping this virus in West Africa, to saving lives so that children can grow up with parents and to stopping this disease right now—because the window will start to close in the next couple of days—before we well and truly have a crisis which will spread. I would hate to see that happen. I would urge the Abbott government to get on board and look at how we recruit those desperately-needed medical staff and to do it very, very quickly and in the partnerships I have just outlined.