Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week is Dementia Action Week. It goes until 22 September, but it's an ideal opportunity to raise awareness around dementia. To put it in perspective, there are over 410,000 Australians who are living with dementia here in this country today, but by 2050 they believe that those figures will actually triple. The impact is going to be felt in Australia, Japan, China, Indonesia, Pacific nations and South-East Asia. There's a significant issue coming as a tsunami on the world unless we finance dementia research and do more there. But we have to raise awareness. It's astounding that so many people still don't understand what dementia is or that there's early-onset dementia and, as I spoke about in this chamber recently, childhood dementia. Dementia is the leading cause of death for women in this country, so it is significant. I want to give a big shout-out to Professor Tanya Buchanan, who is the CEO of Dementia Australia. It is important that we embrace and share knowledge and raise awareness, because it will impact on your family or on a friend.

There are things you can do to help alleviate the risks: be healthier, exercise, use both sides of your brain and learn new things. My husband is learning to play the drums—which is quite painful, I might add—but there are things you can do around your diet and exercise. It is coming towards us, so we need more money, more research and more researchers that are prepared to undertake this very important work.