Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the men’s health committee report.

I will not detain the Senate too long, but I point out that this is Men’s Health Week and so it is very appropriate that the Senate Select Committee on Men’s Health report is being tabled today. It was a great pleasure and privilege to chair such a hardworking committee, and I thank all senators for their participation in it, because there were some issues with meeting quorums due to other Senate committee commitments. The amount of interest shown by all of our colleagues was exemplary. I also thank the Labor Party for their cooperation in agreeing to a report that was bipartisan. It was tabled and created in the best interests of developing men’s health and making a contribution to the government’s men’s health policy.

By way of my background, I have no particular reason to be interested in men’s health save that I am a man myself. I consider why I am so interested in and committed to ensuring that men look after their health and are able to take preventative and remedial measures to protect their health. In contemplating that, I believe that men have a very, very important role in our society, as husbands, fathers, workers and people that make an enormous contribution. Without casting any doubt on gender roles in Australia, I think that men’s contribution is often overlooked. Part of that is reflected in the fact that we are seeing men in this country have a life expectancy which is somewhat less than that of women. Women’s life expectancy and health have improved enormously since the advent of a longitudinal study into women’s health and an increased focus on some of the ailments and diseases that particularly affect women. It is high time that we applied the same sorts of standards and tests to men’s health, because, as I said, the fathers, the husbands and the sons all need to do more to improve their health and longevity.

The men’s health committee examined a number of aspects of men’s health, not limited to physical maladies but including the emotional and general wellbeing of all men. The committee identified a number of issues, and one of these was that we should be introducing a longitudinal study of men’s health to improve the health outcomes for men over the longer term. The reason we should do this is easily illustrated by statistics. More than five Australian men die every single hour from conditions that are potentially preventable—conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and prostate cancer. Whilst prostate cancer is a disease unique to men, some of the other conditions affect men disproportionately to women. Men are also four times more likely than women to commit suicide. Men are more likely to have trauma injuries and accidents. Men’s average life expectancy at birth is nearly five years less than that of women. These are all areas in which we can improve.

There are a number of recommendations that, if followed, would make it very, very easy for men’s health to be improved in this country. They include, as I said, a longitudinal study. Another one is an annual health check for men. It is easy to say that men should just go to the doctor and get checked out, but men face some real and perceived limitations in going to the doctor. One of them, as reflected to us, was the fact that they feel disempowered by sitting around in a waiting room reading Woman’s Day or some of the other magazines that they find in their GPs’ waiting rooms. Part of our inquiry also discovered that men are perfectly happy to have regular health checks in an environment that is conducive to men seeking that help—that is, in the workplace, in specialist men’s health clinics or with specialist men’s health practitioners. We need to do that, quite frankly.

One of the recommendations is that a standardised series of tests be developed for men that can be delivered not only in a GP’s surgery but also within the workplace, perhaps at field days. A number of organisations are doing something similar. I will name Pit Stop as one that is operating in regional areas, in more male-specific environments—as its name would probably denote. As Senator Williams remarked during the committee inquiry, it is like having your chassis checked—for the car buffs. He said his chassis was not in such good nick, but I will not pass any further comment on that! An annual health care check, checking things like cholesterol and blood pressure and dealing with potential questioning about men’s mental health and social needs, can offer a great many benefits to our nation over the longer term.

I think the government needs to implement this, I think the government is on the right path by trying to introduce a national men’s health policy and I hope they will not overlook the recommendations in this report. I commend the report because it explores a hitherto underexplored area. I hope a great deal more work can be done, in cooperation with the states, to introduce some national programs to deal with depression, which afflicts men very seriously indeed. We need to improve the trauma treatment in some male oriented areas, particularly within Indigenous Australia, and there is a recommendation about that.

The other thing we talked about, investigated and spent a lot of time on is prostate health. Prostate disease is a debilitating disease for many men, not only because it can kill them but also because the appropriate treatment is not always easily identifiable. Living with the knowledge that you have a diseased prostate or elevated levels of PSA can have a huge impact on a man’s general and emotional wellbeing. So one of the recommendations was to establish and further fund a prostate biobank to aid in research into prostate health, with the aim of developing an appropriate test and screening procedure. In the Senate a couple of weeks ago a DVD about men’s health and the treatment of prostate disease was released—because one of the complaints we hear is that, when men are diagnosed with prostate disease, they do not know the most appropriate treatment for them. We need to go down the path of exploring this and spending a lot more money on it.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that the committee received 130 submissions. A lot of them dealt with prostate health. A lot of them dealt with the causes of depression in men, which often comes back to family or custody issues. That is certainly something that we explored. But there were any number of other issues that the committee did not explore as fully as perhaps it could have, given the time constraints and the focus of the submissions. There are a whole range of men’s health issues which can be dealt with and improved upon.

In commending the report to the Senate, I thank my fellow senators on this side of the chamber and also on the other side. I also thank the secretariat staff, who did a wonderful job. This report is a building block for the future. I urge the government to pay attention to the recommendations in the report and incorporate them into the national men’s health policy, and I hope the men’s health policy will have the full support of coalition senators.

Question agreed to.