Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on this very good report. The excellence of this report indicates the importance of the committee system to the House of Representatives and the need to continue to have a well-funded and working committee system.

The report came out of surveys from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that found that more adult Australian were overweight or obese in 2007-08 than in 1995 when the last surveys had been done. The survey found that 68 per cent of adult men and 55 per cent of adult women were overweight or obese. This shows a growing incidence over 12 years. There was a significant increase in the proportion of children who were obese. This has huge implications for us in the future and for the health system. There are, of course, high personal and economic costs associated with this increasing incidence. So I was very pleased that it was decided that a report should be produced, looking at solutions right through to the design of urban development, where councils can play a role with exercise programs, community gardens and cooking classes—which I will mention a bit later.

This is something very close to my heart, and I gave evidence to the committee about my experiences—wrestling with weight since childhood, but going through the adult stages of life when one is doing a lot more activity, one gets through those issues. As one gets older, one is inclined to put on weight because of lifestyle, and not doing the exercise one used to do. Of course, there is also the downhill spiral which we can all get onto, and I think it is important that we do have knowledge to assist us.

I think recommendation 7 is very important. It asks the minister to put obesity on the Medicare Benefits Schedule as a chronic disease requiring individual management planning. This would make a huge difference to people struggling on their own to control their weight. I also think recommendation 9 is an important one. If adopted, the Commonwealth and states would develop a tiered model of health management, incorporating preventative community based primary care and acute care models. This is a bigger issue than just a medical model, and I think there needs to be a broader process in this area.

There are recommendations for tax incentives for fresh food, which is an interesting one, as well as for access to physical activity programs, especially for those in the bush. The member for Parkes was very articulate about that, noting that there is little opportunity for people in those areas to access the modern gyms and programs which people in cities and certain occupations have access to. I think that is important for those bush areas.

I have spoken before about the importance of urban planning and local government walking tracks. People will use walking tracks if there are signs on them saying how long they are. They feel safer about it and will utilise those tracks. We were talking earlier about how, in some of our low-socioeconomic areas, there are no footpaths for people to walk on. You have to walk on the road if you are going to go for a walk with your family and get that important exercise. Those are important issues that should be addressed and should be on the health agenda.

The other issue that I am very passionate about is swimming pools. Local governments usually run the other way, trying to get away from swimming pools. Bureaucrats in councils are always talking about the cost of swimming pools. Of course, there is no economic gain for councils from health budgets, so the states and Commonwealth should be looking at how to help create those very important opportunities for people, particularly young people, to use swimming pools. Pools should be connected to the broader health debate as a part of the solution.

It is important to understand food and the growth in easily available, cheap fast foods, which is an issue that is becoming more important and which has caused some of these problems as well. My colleague the member for Kingston spoke about the reduction of salt and fats in food. These are important issues—the eating of pure fat and salt and not much else. They are addictive and it is hard to give them up, just as it used to be with cigarettes. We are tackling a similar issue to smoking. We have achieved a lot in that area because we took it on as a nation, and a lot of people played a good part.

Also important are cooking classes, starting at school, to help children get curious about food and what they eat. Knowing what they eat, knowing what is in the food, having the opportunity and the knowledge to grow food, knowing what growing is all about and knowing what nutrition is in that food are all important parts of the future. I am very pleased that Stephanie Alexander’s School Gardens programs are underway. These issues are very important. Those programs are marvellous things and I hope many more opportunities will grow out of them. I have a daughter who is a chef and who is now training as a teacher, and she is very keen in this area. I am sure that she will make a very good contribution to the future of this area. Getting young people to appreciate gardening and growing things will change things.

We heard about the nag factor, getting kids going home talking about fresh food. There is a great opportunity to change how the nag factor usually works, when kids say, ‘Take me down to one of the fast food chains.’ Let us turn that around and have the nag factor working the other way. We can do that through good public education processes. Of course, making things fun and enjoyable is one of the important ways to do that.

I come to the situation, which is mentioned in the report on page 56, which deals with bariatric surgery and the issues around that. I have had that surgery and it achieved great results for me. The figures that I have seen indicate that this is a very successful way of helping people to significantly reduce their weight and the effects of type 2 diabetes. The figures point to significant drops in blood sugar levels. This assists in turning around type 2 diabetes results and in people getting management of their sugar levels. With a cost of around four or five thousand dollars, this surgery is a very cost-effective way of managing such problems, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of dollars of costs associated with the ongoing problems of having diabetes.

As the report has recommended, I certainly believe in the need for a very tough criterion to limit how this surgery would be used but I believe it is one of the opportunities that we have to use another tool in the process. It does need to be done under a proper criterion, but the cost-effectiveness is very important here. Federal and state treasuries should look at this report as there are real important issues here about spending some money now on some of the recommendations because it will certainly help us reduce spending a lot more money in the future.

There is a need for planning with this surgery and for people to understand that it is only a tool. There is also a need to continue to change one’s lifestyle, to think about one’s food and to take on the physical opportunities that will help to continue to reduce health problems. As other people who have been involved in this report have said, there is no silver bullet. As the report has recommended, you have to take a whole range of measures to achieve these goals. We should use the tools available and we should look at these. Of course, an issue with this surgery is that it has been very difficult for people at the low end to get it. Most of this surgery has been done in the private sector, in private hospitals, and not very often in the public sector. We do need to turn that around and give people opportunities to use this tool to assist them in managing their health needs.

I understand that the figures that have been used state that the cost of obesity is $58 billion in Australia. I think that is probably underdone. There are the ongoing costs of other complications that come out of some of the diseases that latch onto obesity. Through my conversations with the medical profession and the knowledge that I have gained, that could be a very conservative number. I think there is so much more that we need to do. The report gives us a great opportunity to pursue those. In starting with the kids and getting them to understand more about food, nutrition and eating fresh foods, I think there is are great opportunities here for industry. In the way that we present food and fruit, there is lot more that can be done in the marketing of fresh foods. That needs to be given much more time and consideration.

In relation to labelling, I have always found that there is a difficulty in using the knowledge you get from a GP or a dietician when you are in a supermarket looking at a label. There is not much of a relationship. There needs to be a lot more done in the area of what comes out of a GP’s surgery and what comes out of a dietitian’s recommendations as related to what somebody gains from a food label. I think we are underdone in that area. I am sure there is a lot of self interest in that area that is protected. We should be putting the public health first, knocking over some of that self interest and getting to where we can actually provide the right information for people who need it.

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