Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the National Health Amendment (Immunisation) Bill 2006. Before the member for Blaxland leaves the chamber, I want to say that I was very pleased to hear him acknowledge the work of the former Minister for Health and Aged Care, the Hon. Dr Michael Wooldridge, who used his fine medical experience to ensure that we returned to a strong immunisation program in this country. It is always good to hear the opposition acknowledge the particular efforts of ministers in that regard.

The purpose of this bill is to amend the National Health Act to deal with an unintended consequence of the National Health Amendment (Immunisation Program) Act, previously passed in this place, and to enable the current Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon. Tony Abbott, to arrange for the provision of goods and services associated with or incidental to the provision or administration of designated vaccines.

Since coming to government in 1996, the Howard government has placed a very strong and major emphasis on improving immunisation rates. I understand that, prior to that, it was a responsibility of the states. Former health minister Michael Wooldridge was alarmed at the low rate—in fact, in 1989 and 1990 it fell to as low as 53 per cent of children of 12 months of age. That gave rise to considerable concern. The government recognised the failure of the states to maintain a strong and comprehensive immunisation program and the serious risk that this posed for an outbreak of preventable childhood diseases occurring.

Modern reality demands that immunisation be given priority as, apart from the usual risks to school children, more children these days are placed in child care and at increasingly younger ages. Some of the babies placed in child care are not at an age where they have received their first immunisation shots or completed them. So they are particularly at risk if other children have not been vaccinated and there is an outbreak of some of the more common childhood diseases. They are the realities that we have to deal with today. It is important that we maintain a strong immunisation program and seek the cooperation of the state governments in doing so.

I understand, as the member for Blaxland pointed out very graphically by illustrating a case in his own family, that there are small risks involved in vaccination, and this concerns some people. I have had people in my electorate come to see me about vaccination. They do not believe that their children should be vaccinated. Although one must of course respect individual beliefs on this, there is absolutely no doubt that overall immunisation has proven to be one of the best medical interventions in our time for reducing the risk of many common childhood illnesses, which often have complications and are life threatening or, as the member for Blaxland illustrated so well, have the impact of taking away the quality of life of those who have the disease. There are occasionally risks from the vaccine—but that is fairly rare. As I said, there are many benefits provided through immunisation. These include: happy healthy children and peace of mind for mums and dads and, I suspect, for many grandparents, and a reduction in hospital visits and, therefore, a decrease in the emotional strain that many families might otherwise suffer.

Who could forget the terrible polio epidemics in the early 1950s? I am old enough to remember those, as are some others in this place. I know children from my own school who were afflicted by polio who either lost their lives or whose quality of life, particularly in childhood and later, was seriously impacted because of that disease. Today, thankfully, we have very little risk to our children from such diseases. So there are important reasons to maintain strong immunisation programs.

It has been proven worldwide that immunisation forms an important part of any health program and assists to reduce the incidence of disease, and even death, time and time again. The Australian government has had an excellent record in recent years when it comes to vaccinations, and it continues to provide adequate funding to assist people with what could be a very high-cost health care measure.

I am informed that the largest vaccination program ever undertaken in Australia was the National Meningococcal C Vaccination Program, which has achieved significant results. In 2003, before the program began, there were 213 cases of meningococcal C disease reported to the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System. In just two years, by 2005, that incidence had reduced to about 40 cases. That is a great result—a significant decrease of 81 per cent. At this time, deaths from this disease have also been reduced further.

Funding for this and other similar vaccination programs is delivered by the federal government to the states and territories to assist them in purchasing vaccines under the National Immunisation Program, for the delivery and storage of vaccines and for pre- and post-vaccine tests. The government understands that Australia needs a strong National Immunisation Program and continues to ensure that it runs as effectively and efficiently as possible, in consultation and collaboration with the states and territories. This is evident by the considerable amount of federal government spending on vaccines, which went from $13 million in 1996, when the Howard government took office, to $285 million in 2004-05. That is a huge jump in spending, and there can be no greater priority than protecting our children in particular from these childhood diseases.

In January of this year as a result of the passing of last year’s National Health Amendment (Immunisation Program) Act 2005, as I said earlier, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee now undertakes the role of recommending to the minister for health which vaccines should be funded under the National Immunisation Program. As an indirect and unintentional result of the passing of that act, I understand that certain goods and services such as the important Q fever skin tests were no longer subsidised. This bill will rectify that situation and ensure that the Q fever skin tests are covered again.

People in the electorate of Pearce, whom I represent, who live in rural and regional areas and particularly residents who work with livestock are required to have Q fever tests, and if they have not been exposed to the disease they must have a vaccination. On several occasions constituents have contacted my office to inquire about the rising costs of these necessary tests and vaccinations. Many people are aware that the Q fever program used to be covered but was stopped. I know that these people will be very pleased to know that these will be included once again. Shearers, those managing shearing teams and owners of big agricultural enterprises informed me that they could ill-afford to pay the costs for each of their workers to have these tests and vaccinations and that if workers were unable to pay for the tests themselves they would be unable to work in that job. So this further exacerbated the shortage of workers in rural areas, particularly farm workers. So I think people in the constituency of Pearce who are running agricultural enterprises will certainly welcome this amendment to the act today.

The second service to be added back onto the list is the provision of the five per cent incentive payments to states and territories. The five per cent payment is an incentive to state and territory governments to increase their immunisation rates and to reduce wastage of vaccines. Under the Australian Immunisation Agreements, five per cent incentive payments are provided if the states and territories succeed in ‘controlling leakage and wastage of vaccines and have high immunisation coverage rates’. The incentive funding can be used for activities such as cold-chain management and transportation of designated vaccines, which I guess avoids wastage and spoilage. I understand that these changes will come into effect fairly quickly after the passage of this bill, and that is very welcome.

The government acknowledges that it is also important to have a strong public information campaign to provide education and information to the community and to the professionals working in these areas so that they can take advantage of the immunisation program and make sure that people get the best information possible. It is always sobering to consider that probably fewer than 100 years ago, and certainly in my lifetime, if people did get certain childhood diseases it often meant that people died and, as I said earlier, their quality of life was interfered with to a very great extent. So immunisation protects children and others against disease, and certainly if they do get a disease there is likely to be a reduced complication rate.

We are a lucky country when it comes to health. When you look at the health systems around the world, Australia has a world-class health system. When you look at other countries—and I had the opportunity to visit Africa earlier this year—you see that some of the people in some of these countries do not have access to very basic healthcare. In some countries we know that when mothers are giving birth, often both the mother and the baby are exposed to tetanus, with devastating results. I think I spoke in this House some time ago about this particular matter, trying to get greater coverage worldwide to prevent tetanus of mothers giving birth and of newborn babies, because some doctors say it is the most painful of deaths. So we are indeed a lucky country to have pretty much eradicated all of these kinds of diseases. In fact, I venture to say today that we have dealt fairly efficiently with the issue of childhood diseases.

The issue that challenges us today is that of chronic illness, particularly diabetes. While it is not the subject of this bill today, I am always pleased to have an opportunity to talk about it, because diabetes of course is one of the great challenges for our community, particularly type 2 diabetes, and particularly type 2 in young children. It was never seen before in young children, and it is being seen at an increasing rate, with devastating consequences. It can often—but not always—be linked back to lifestyle choices: obesity, lack of exercise, eating the wrong foods and overeating. So they are the kinds of challenges that substantially face us today.

But we cannot ever let up on making sure that we continue with a strong immunisation program against preventable diseases because, when those rates of immunisation fell to 53 per cent, it did put many people at risk. As I said, with the modern reality of children entering child care at a much earlier age and babies being cared for in centres with other children, they are particularly at risk when they are unable to be vaccinated when they are so young. So we cannot ever let up on our concerns for strong immunisation programs in this country.

The Commonwealth government continues to provide excellent healthcare to all Australians. I am confident that this bill will help us to maintain our vaccination rates through its subsidies, through the considerable educational and promotional activities of the government and through its overall health strategy and its willingness to work in partnership with the state and territory governments to ensure that we have appropriate action in regard to immunisation. I am supportive of the amendments made by this bill today.

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