Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2009. I want to start by congratulating the minister for introducing this important bill, a bill which is designed to tackle the complex and growing challenges of preventable chronic diseases. This bill will establish the Australian National Preventive Health Agency to support all state and federal health ministers to manage the challenges associated with the growing incidence of chronic disease.

The bill also specifies the functions, governance and structure of the agency, including how it will closely interact with the Minister for Health and Ageing. The impetus for the Preventive Health Agency comes from the decision of COAG in November last year. It builds on the national agreement that focuses on preventive health initiatives to improve the health and wellbeing of all Australians.

The Australian National Preventive Health Agency’s role will be to facilitate best practice in the delivery of preventable health interventions and activities. The governance of this agency will be interactive in nature, whereby the CEO will be responsible for working with and supporting all Australian health ministers in their efforts to combat preventable diseases before they become chronic in nature. With millions of Australians suffering from preventable chronic diseases, the role and importance of this agency will be immeasurable. Education, promotion and community awareness will be key responsibilities for the agency, as will its role in research—ensuring up to date data on preventable chronic diseases and their lifestyle related risk factors is made more readily available.

A healthier future for all Australians can be achieved by removing the impact of preventable chronic diseases, which often chokes the heart of our public health system. We know that there are around 670,000 hospital admissions every year due to preventable chronic disease. You only have to walk down the local streets to see some of the lifestyle behaviours that contribute to our growing incidence of chronic diseases. Obesity, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating and smoking are often key contributors to chronic disease such as heart disease, cardiovascular disease, cancers, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and respiratory diseases such as the chronic obstructive airways disease.

All of these chronic diseases can be prevented, to a large extent, by initiating healthy lifestyle choices. A key role of the preventive agency will be to provide leadership and to successfully coordinate health based initiatives that will promote and support Australians to choose a healthy lifestyle, thereby diminishing their risk of developing these chronic diseases. Heart disease, cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, asthma, diabetes and obesity are often given the chronic label, as the symptoms that people suffer from them tend to be long-lasting and persistent. In many circumstances, the symptoms people suffer develop to an acute stage, when intense medical and nursing interventions are required to treat the patient in a hospital environment. This is what we want to stop.

I spoke earlier of the national partnership that focuses on preventive health measures. Under this partnership, the Commonwealth will be providing funding of $133.2 million over four years to the Australian National Preventive Health Agency. This funding will be used to establish and maintain the agency, but the funding will also provide for some social marketing to educate and support the Australian public in healthy lifestyle choices. More importantly, the money committed to this agency will also ensure preventive health research is carried out to further foster the evidence based approach which remains crucial to this area of health.

I support this bill because it will contribute to reducing the burden of chronic disease in our community. For a long time, the focus of debate on health care has been in the secondary and tertiary context. It is now time that we shift the focus to the primary level, where we can prevent rather than cure. Chronic disease is an area where we can certainly achieve this. Strengthening the focus of primary health care by promoting good health and reducing lifestyle risk, such as smoking and obesity, must be a common-sense starting point.

A national health survey released by the ABS in June this year reflects on the health of Australians throughout 2007-08. I want to go through some of the statistics. We know that the body shape of Australians is changing considerably, especially that of our children. In 2007-08 around 600,000 children aged between five and 17 were overweight. That is one quarter of Australia’s children. Since 1995, obesity in children has climbed by 21 per cent. Due to lifestyle changes, our children are at risk of developing chronic disease. An example is type 2 diabetes. This preventable disease is often associated with people in their 60s and 70s. The figures now reveal that type 2 diabetes is an ever-increasing health issue for Australians aged in their 20s and 30s.

I have to say I was quite shocked and surprised when I first looked at the chronic disease statistics from my home state of Tasmania. The ABS figures reveal that around 390,000 Tasmanians have a health condition that will affect them for six months or more. That is around 77 per cent of Tasmania’s population who suffer from a health condition that could easily become chronic, where they may suffer long-lasting effects. Obviously this impacts on our health system.

When you look at the key health risk factors for Tasmania you start to realise the impact not only on the health system but on Tasmanians themselves. The ABS found that 65.6 per cent of adult males and 62.4 per cent of adult females were overweight or obese in Tasmania. The highest proportions in Tasmania were in the older groups, of 65 plus, which is also very interesting. For the first time the ABS focused the spotlight on children’s consumption of alcohol, and in Tasmania approximately 19 per cent of males aged 15 and over and 29.1 per cent of females aged 15 and over report that they consume alcohol. The highest proportion of those who consume alcohol is in the 25- to 34-year age group. Around 24 per cent of Tasmanians still smoke. Alarmingly, the figures reveal the highest proportion of smokers is in the 24- to 34-year age group, but unfortunately it is also growing in the 18- to 24-year age group, where I was amazed to find that 42 per cent of those who smoke are young females. The lifestyle behaviours listed above—the obesity, the alcohol consumption and the smoking—have the capacity to increase the risk of people developing chronic disease.

The Australian Heart Foundation has also recently released some health statistics on cardiovascular disease prevalence. Its figures reveal that the four regions in Tasmania have some of the highest cardiovascular prevalence across the country. The bigger blow to the health of Tasmanians is that the island boasts the highest rates of cholesterol, the highest rates of blood pressure and, as I said before, the highest rates of smoking. Southern Tasmania, where my electorate of Franklin is, has the highest smoking rates of any region in the country. It also falls into the top worst 10 per cent for high prevalence of cholesterol and blood pressure. In the Greater Hobart area, 21.5 per cent of people suffer from cardiovascular disease.

These statistics give us more reason to support this important health bill. The initiatives included in this bill will, over time, contribute significantly to slowing down and abating the prevalence of chronic disease in Australia. We have to act to prevent the increase in chronic disease prevalence; we need to manage its effects and the impact on Australians and also on the health system. We can achieve this by a number of key measures that will be the responsibility of the new preventative agency that is the core of this bill. The social marketing, the evidence based initiatives, the robust preventative health research and the interaction with all the health ministers in all the states and territories will be vital to ensure we tackle the challenges which exist around chronic disease.

In the lead-up to the last federal election the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health and Ageing—the then opposition leader and shadow health minister—put preventative health care firmly on the national agenda by promising to invest more in tackling the rising incidence of chronic disease. Since coming to office we have done just that. This government, as part of the COAG agreement, has committed $872 million in the single biggest investment ever by a Commonwealth government in preventative health care. We initiated the Preventative Health Taskforce report, which was delivered to the government on 1 September this year. Its recommendations are now being considered by the government in conjunction with the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report, which is also a big issue for debate at the moment. We have also removed the tax loophole on alcopops, the drinks I have spoken about in this place that I believe are directly marketed to our young people, and as part of the strategy to discourage our young from binge drinking we have already invested in a National Binge Drinking Strategy.

But we are doing more than that. We are also investing, through other programs, in local sporting venues to encourage our communities to be fit and active. I was pleased to have $6 million allocated recently under the community infrastructure program to two sporting facilities in my electorate, at Bellerive Oval and for the Kingborough twin ovals development. For those announcements I had the local sporting clubs there, and they were really thrilled because they believe the projects will encourage young children in the area to get active and participate in sport, which is obviously a big deal when it comes to preventing some of these diseases. The local sporting infrastructure projects will ensure that the children have access to first-class facilities. At Kingborough, in the south of my electorate, for the first time there will be an AFL standard oval. AFL is a very big deal in my home state of Tasmania and we have been fighting for an AFL team for a little while now, so the young children are very encouraged by that.

Since coming to office this government has also undertaken, as I mentioned, the massive task of reforming the health and hospital system to ensure a healthy future for all Australians. The Prime Minister and the health minister have been travelling around the country holding meetings with clinicians and doctors in hospitals to hear their concerns and views on the current state of Australia’s public health system. I understand that to date the Prime Minister has personally attended 14 meetings and more than 55 direct consultations have occurred across the country. It is a huge task to undertake, considering there are 750 public hospitals across this nation. I was pleased to sit in on the roundtable discussion with the Prime Minister at the Royal Hobart Hospital just over a week ago, along with my federal Tasmanian colleagues. We had a community cabinet in Hobart. We also had consultations at the LGH on the Prime Minister’s recent visit to Tasmania.

At the Royal Hobart Hospital the clinicians and doctors gave us their passionate views about the future of the healthcare system. Some of the GPs talked about primary health care and its important roles. We also talked about the long-term reform of the health and hospital system being a vital component to ensure a sustainable, high-quality, responsive health system for all Australians. We all know that health is always one of the big issues when you ask Australians what they care about. To turn our back on it and not improve and act early when we can on preventable diseases, I believe, is a folly. The old saying ‘prevention is better than cure’ speaks volumes when it comes to improving the health of all Australians. Through measures such as those contained in this bill, the agency will drive many of the health initiatives that will address some of the challenges around chronic disease. It gives us something to build on, a springboard to launch other primary healthcare and preventive healthcare initiatives. It is a commonsense approach to abating the prevalence of chronic disease in Australia. It is a measure that I am quite passionate about and one that I fully support. I commend the bill to the House.

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