Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge our very special and important guests in the public gallery.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I share with the chair my acknowledgment of students from seven schools around the Elmore area. Welcome and thank you for being so patient and staying in the gallery—we appreciate it. And, Senator Lundy, this is one Queensland senator who will always support Canberra. I think it is a wonderful place.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Moore.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week in Australia, World Vision will launch its Child Health Now campaign. It is an extraordinarily important campaign. In this place on many occasions we have talked about the importance of the Millennium Development Goals. I hope the children up there all know about the Millennium Development Goals. The Child Health Now campaign is focusing on millennium development goal 4, which looks at the issue of child mortality. To our horror, we know that nearly half a million people live in poverty. More than 350 million are absolutely poor just in the Asia-Pacific, and that means deprived of two or more basic needs. Most of them live in rural areas in South-East Asia, home to the world’s highest levels of child malnutrition and insanitation, and we have talked a lot about the issue of girls being out of education.

One of the things that World Vision is looking at is generating community involvement and engagement in this campaign. It will be focusing on education because we need to have a combined effort across our community to mobilise the Australian public in support of Australia taking a strong role through our aid program and through our very important resources to work in Asia, in the Pacific and also across the region to make sure that we address directly the horror of the unnecessary deaths of young children.

It is very, very confronting when we know that so many of the young children who die die of diseases which in Australia are very easily fixed. When children in this country suffer from diarrhoea or infection there are places to go and there is medical help and professional support which eases the concern of parents and families. In many parts of the world of which I am talking that security and safety is not there and children die unnecessarily because they do not have proper medical help, proper sanitation and genuine community strength. The World Vision campaign is looking to facilitate effective collaboration between civil society, international NGOs, health experts, academics, the private sector, public figures—in fact, everyone must become involved in this campaign so that we can share knowledge, energy, commitment and very effective lobbying of our governments at all levels so that we can take part in this program.

It is not a short-term program. The child health program is aimed over a five-year period. We know that we have five years before we have to examine how we are going with the MDGs across the international community. We are so far along and yet on so many of the MDGs we are just not performing well. We know that it is important that the nine million preventable under-five-year-old child deaths that occur annually across the globe are addressed. Certainly, the biggest areas with our current knowledge are India with about 2 million deaths a year, China with 0.4 million deaths a year and Pakistan with 0.4 million deaths a year. There are 3.8 million deaths of young children in the Asia-Pacific region which can be prevented.

The World Vision’s health and nutrition goal is quite straightforward. It will result in improved health and nutrition of women and children in the areas in which we work contributing to the global reduction of under-five and maternal mortality. That way I can get my favourite, which is MDG 5 about maternal mortality, into the picture as well so we are addressing both of them. It is most important that we actually have intervention at the early ages. I have seen some very graphic information that shows how the effects of malnutrition and deprivation can affect young children from birth and their early years of life. Most terrifyingly, much of the early damage is actually irreversible.

We need to make sure in the period just before pregnancy until after the child is born and up to about two years of age that we look at what we call the special cost-effective window of opportunity for impacting on nutrition and family health. Often it is so important that children and parents are able to access help early and are then able to build on strengths that can lead to effective childhoods and into strong and effective adulthoods in the economy.

One of the things that is impressive about the role of the MDGs and the UN commitment is that it brings together various streams of UN activity. The World Bank has been most effective in its work across most of the countries in our region and also at the international UN level to draw together information and to focus world attention on the purely economic benefits of ensuring that children have safe and healthy births and childhoods. We need to make sure that malnutrition is acknowledged as a core issue and the face of poverty. If we actually impose effective improved nutrition, in the words of an economist, Madam Deputy President—and you know that I am not one—this would be a driver of economic growth.

We have, as a community, to stop seeing nutrition as a welfare issue and most importantly reposition it as central to effective economic development in communities. Once that argument is won, it is going to be much more clear and we will able to focus political will. What has occurred through careful research and local knowledge is that we have seen the kind of impact that various forms of interventions can have. The No. 1 intervention for young babies and their mums to ensure that they are healthy is breastfeeding. We hear about it in our own country, but it has been calculated that if we can promote in the area of Asia, China, Pakistan and India an effective process of breastfeeding, it could lead to a reduction of 13 per cent in the proportion of deaths in under-five-year-olds.

One of the things that we have talked about before is the need to have insecticide treated materials made available to communities, particularly looking at the issues around malaria and blood-borne diseases. A number of the aid organisations now promote the purchase by community members of special nets that have been treated with insecticide so that people of all ages, in particular mums and babies, can be safe in their homes. This has proven to be a marvellous process for improving the safety of these families. It is calculated that insecticide treated materials could lead to a seven per cent reduction in the number of deaths. Strong complementary feeding processes with mums and children, because we know that the health of the mother is most important to feeding children, could lead to another six per cent reduction. The introduction of zinc, coming back to effective local nutrition programs, could lead to a reduction of five per cent. The so-important issue of water and sanitation hygiene, which we talk about a lot—and I know that Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, Mr McMullen, is particularly interested in providing effective water and sanitation through our aid program—could lead to a further three per cent reduction. Then we can follow through with vitamin A in nutrition and also the so-easily-accessible measles vaccine in Australia could be made available to children in other areas.

It does not seem to be such a big ask. We have the resources and knowledge to be able to make such a difference. Through this process through World Vision, working effectively with our communities, we can ensure that more people know what they can do individually through donation of the skills, knowledge and money through different programs—I am not promoting any particular one. There are a range of organisations that work effectively in the field, and it is something we can do as individuals to support this very valuable work.

I think that as a group we politicians have a particular responsibility to keep these issues in front of our parliaments and certainly to ensure that we get the information needed and that we know about what is happening internationally, what the issues are in meeting the Millennium Development Goals and what we can do locally as parliamentarians in our own country and also as part of international networks, because without political will we will never be able to meet the goals that we have set for ourselves internationally, and I hope personally, to address the issues of poverty in our community.