Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise, unusually, to give a contribution to the adjournment debate. I do so tonight to speak in particular on the work of UNICEF. And I do so in my capacity as Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Association for UNICEF, knowing that I am not the first one to have made such remarks in this place. The Australian Parliamentary Association for UNICEF was founded back in 1987. It was one of the first parliamentary groups in the world formed to support the work of UNICEF, and it continues to this day to strongly support that work.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is not funded by the United Nations, contrary to the preconception that exists throughout much of the community. UNICEF relies entirely on voluntary donations for its work from aid agencies, member countries or countries that support UNICEF’s aid work, and of course through corporations and the generosity of individuals worldwide. Its work stretches throughout 150 countries.

Everyday an estimated 27,000 children under five die from mainly preventable causes—27,000 children each and every single day. Across the globe nearly 93 million children are not in school, and the majority of them are girls. More than 15 million children have lost a parent to HIV-AIDS and two million children live with the disease themselves. Around 300 million children worldwide are subjected to abuse, through trafficking, working as child soldiers or undergoing harmful traditional practices. These are alarming statistics that would concern anybody. I know they continue to concern every member of this parliament and many people throughout Australia. It is because of statistics like this that the work of organisations like UNICEF continues to be so important.

Here in Australia, Carolyn Hardy, the chief executive, and the UNICEF team work very hard to raise valuable funds to support work to tackle these issues worldwide. Despite the economic problems that the world and Australia has faced, UNICEF Australia has managed to increase the funds it has sent to projects overseas over the last 12 months. Contributions from Australian pockets through this voluntary organisation to improve the lot of children and women worldwide have increased some half a million dollars to $9.7 million.

I will provide some examples and highlights of this work. For emergency relief work in Burma, Australia has sent more than $250,000 to provide emergency supplies following the cyclone that devastated that country last year. UNICEF continues to assist in the protection of children and their survival following the earthquake in China. UNICEF also works on what it calls ‘silent emergencies’, using its website to appeal for donations for those protracted emergencies that, tragically, fall off the front pages of the newspapers and fall out of the public consciousness—such as in Sudan’s Darfur region. Children make up over half of the population in this devastated region and are terribly disproportionably affected by the constant crisis.

During 2008 UNICEF Australia’s donors contributed over $2.1 million to UNICEF’s child survival interventions. These interventions include simple oral rehydration courses, which give children suffering diarrhoeal dehydration a chance at living. This condition kills almost two million children worldwide each year, yet a simple oral rehydration course can save their lives for just 6c per unit. That demonstrates the impact that a few dollars can have on the survival rates of children worldwide. Pleasingly, globally, fewer children are dying than ever before from highly preventable diseases. Nonetheless, infant mortality is still unacceptably high.

UNICEF works to promote education and gender equality, recognising that education and health go hand in hand to lift countries and communities out of poverty and to provide them with hope for the future. In 2008, UNICEF Australia appealed for funds to tackle the education challenge in places on the globe as diverse as Mozambique and Iraq and, in our own region, countries like Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. Over $885,000 was pledged, once again by generous Australian donors, by the community and the business sector. This education funding is especially important for girls, as in many countries, like the ones I just mentioned, girls are the first ones to miss out on educational opportunities and this can continue to disadvantage them throughout their lives.

I mentioned before the impact of HIV-AIDS. In 2007, some 330,000 children died from AIDS worldwide, 2.5 million were living with the disease and, tragically, 420,000 more became infected. During 2008, UNICEF Australia donors contributed over $900,000 to stop the spread of HIV-AIDS. Medications that can cost just $1.50 can protect an unborn child from contracting the HIV virus from their infected mother. Such cheap protection can prevent a life of despair.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on Rights of the Child. The world has come a long way. As I said, child mortality rates are down. Nonetheless, in our region there remain quite alarming statistics and the need for us to continue to work with and for children remains strong and vivid. Around 18,000 children under five years of age still die every year in the Pacific region—13,000 in Papua New Guinea, 2,500 in Timor-Leste and 2,500 across other countries. That is 50 deaths a day and one death every 30 minutes. The economic crisis, which, as with economic crises before it, has disproportionately hit the less developed countries of the world, could have a very serious impact in worsening those statistics even further.

During one of the recent parliamentary recesses, I had the pleasure of attending the launch of UNICEF’s new maternal health campaign. Deaths during childbirth remain at extraordinarily high levels. In Australia the risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth is less than one in 13,000, yet in Papua New Guinea it is one in 55 and in Timor-Leste it is one in 33. Each of us can appreciate the impact it has on families, children and communities to see so many women die during childbirth and the prolonged impact that has on the potential for those communities to break the cycle of poverty. Eighty per cent of maternal deaths, however, can be avoided by providing women with low-cost health services. I recognise that at that launch the Prime Minister’s wife, Therese Rein, agreed to become an ambassador for UNICEF’s work on maternal health. I applaud her for using the office that she holds of Australia’s first lady to pursue and champion this cause. Indeed, I note that she has already done so at the Pacific Islands Forum in Cairns, where she spent time with the partners and spouses of the leaders of other Pacific island countries in discussing maternal health issues.

UNICEF is committed to working to ensure that these issues are tackled. Their fundraising continues but in these times, when less money is being given, it is important to encourage people to continue to support the work of organisations like UNICEF. Whether by signing up as a global parent, by putting small change in the envelopes on Qantas planes or by encouraging business support or other fundraising activities, I hope that Australians will continue to give as generously as they have in the past into the future and that we will continue to see the advancement of the work that UNICEF is doing to protect not just women but, particularly, children throughout the world.