Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the issue of Australian Lyme disease, more commonly known as the tick-borne disease. I want to thank the committee. A lot of the evidence was really heart-wrenching—it really was. It is right up there with veterans' stories, I can tell you. It was just heartbreaking to see the impact this is having on the people who are affected and their families.

The public hearings opened my eyes to the dysfunction of the medical system we have in this country. I was stunned and ashamed. Our government and the medical system have allowed a great number of people to suffer, simply to debate whether or not Lyme disease exists. You have heard me talk before on medical issues, but, like I said, this one leaves me determined to make things right for the thousands of people who have been bitten by ticks in their own country or in other countries and have been left sick, seriously debilitated, dying and stigmatised by the medical community, who is meant to be there to help them. They are told it is in their heads.

Just like the good senator, Senator Siewert, said, I can tell you I have never seen a child choose to live their life confined to a wheelchair. During my brief time with the committee, I heard heartbreaking stories of neglect, where people have been discharged from hospital to die alone, completely abandoned by our medical system here in our own country. I heard of children whose lives have been ruined due to the disease our medical experts maintain we cannot possibly have here in Australia. Ticks come in on birds that fly in and on imported livestock; people are mobile and they travel. Many in the medical profession would have us believe that Australia has magical borders that no tick might even pass through, which is absolute rubbish. Yet, in reality, people are being bitten by ticks in their own backyards and they are getting sick. Some develop meat allergy and some have seizures. Many more have a massive list of symptoms that put them in wheelchairs, unable to go to school or to work to earn a living.

We could help them, when they are bitten by a tick, with a simple course of antibiotics, and even if it is for an extended period of time there seems to be 70 per cent success rate by using this method—but not our medical folks, not our Australian medical doctors here. Our medical folks argue about that, too. Just recently they started a new campaign to further stigmatise these people as the creators of 'superbugs' and use this as a justifiable reason to withhold antibiotics that will save their lives. Our medical people and scientists are caught up in a ridiculous game of semantics; they say, We can't find that bug here', but they do not tell you they have not bothered to look for more than 25 years, so it is a self-serving argument, really.

What I want to know is: why won't we prioritise funding to sift through the questions and end the 25 years of suffering? During the inquiry I could not believe what I was hearing from our health department, who had done nothing in the four years since this issue was raised but 'discuss' it. A bunch of highly paid bureaucrats sit by 'discussing' the topic while Australian people suffering from years of illness and medical neglect have taken their own lives due to the lack of treatment and help available. I cannot imagine how appallingly helpless these people must have felt. This is shameful Australia; it is absolutely shameful.

And there are thousands still out there suffering. An internationally renowned expert on Lyme disease who gave evidence at our hearing referred to the 'dysfunctional politics' and the 'political-scientific quagmire' to describe the way in which our health departments and medical system have handled this issue. I am fairly certain that, when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refers to innovation and agility, this is not how he wants the Australian medical and scientific system to be viewed.

This situation must end with the tabling of the Senate inquiry report. It is not acceptable to dismiss these people because the medical system, the pathology system and the bureaucrats who administer the health system that is meant to support them have all colluded to deny a disease that absolutely exists in Australia. I will not be letting this go, and I have a feeling that especially the ladies on the committee will not be letting this go, either. So, this government has no other choice but to acknowledge that there is an issue here, prioritise the funding needed for research and, while that is going on, do something proactive to help those people who are sick with this disease in a way that is neither hostile nor discriminatory and immediately commence an awareness campaign to alert people to the dangers of tick bites and a medical education campaign so that doctors and the medical industry know what to do when faced with a patient who has this illness.

You know, there were some really harrowing stories. As I said before, we need to do something. If you want to talk about time-sensitive—this is now time-sensitive. We have done this inquiry and the recommendations are there, and I do not want to see those recommendations picked up and put on a shelf. These people have been through enough. This is time-sensitive. This is beyond time-sensitive. So, I am asking those across there to please invest some money in this and do the right thing, do the summit, bring these people to the table and finally bring this out in the open, because there are a lot of sick Australians out there. Turning our backs and saying that we do not have a tick-borne disease here is absolute rubbish. It is time to open our eyes, take it out of the too-hard basket and deal with it once and for all.