Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is great to have the opportunity today to speak on the Australian National Preventive Health Agency Bill 2010. One thing for sure is that everybody in this House agrees on the importance of preventative health. But the trouble is that, when you come into this place and follow government speakers, they stand up and give one side of the story. They can very easily just say, ‘You guys oppose this,’ or ‘You’re against this.’ It sort of hangs out there as though the opposition have no plan for health. The reality is that if you have alternatives then that is a plan. If we say, ‘You have a plan; we think it’s wrong for the following reasons; here’s our plan,’ then that is an alternative. It is another plan, another idea on the way health could be pushed forward in this country. The government say, ‘You opposed everything we did.’ There was good reason. We opposed things because we did not think they were going to work. We thought they were going to be too expensive and they were not focused properly. What is the matter with that? Nothing. We stand by our positions and by our policies.

When we look at what happened over the life of the last government, the Howard government, we know that all the time the health budget expanded. Yet there was a time when the state governments were held to account for their health systems. Of course, some people call that the blame game. But why shouldn’t focus and scrutiny be placed upon those who are running the state health systems? But a lot of that accountability appears to have just been pushed out of the door. I wonder whether those who live in Queensland and New South Wales really believe that the hospital systems in those states are exemplars of state-of-the-art systems. If you read the media or if you hear the personal experiences of many people in those states then maybe there is room for a little bit of accountability and scrutiny. I make those points before moving on.

In commenting on this bill, the two principles with which I will approach my contribution today are, firstly, that this legislation should be about outcomes and not about another layer of bureaucracy and, secondly—a personal favourite of mine and possibly of quite a few in this House, particularly on this side—that it should be about personal responsibility. This contribution will all be to do with preventative health issues. This morning, whilst in the gym, I was listening to the ABC. I certainly felt that on this occasion the ABC were providing some very interesting and balanced information. They were talking about the mental health situation with regard to teenagers, the point being that teenagers are moving away from physical exercise in their lives towards the focus of the school curriculums on academic achievement. Obviously, we have no problem with academic achievement. The pursuit of excellence, or at least reaching your potential, is very much an important part of the lives of our young people in this country. However, there is still a need for physical exercise. The point is that the lack of physical exercise and sport within the curriculum is leaving young people and teenagers just with academic subjects, so they are not getting tired through physical pursuits and are staying up later, still having to get up at the same time of day. As we know, and as has been proven, lack of sleep is bad for the mental health of young people. Younger children need enough sleep to keep growing and reach their physical potential. In addition, social interaction using technologies such as the internet and mobile phones—if you can call it social interaction—means that young people are staying up late and of course this is reducing their sleep. Those were the two aspects of the ABC report today. I would say there is a place in the curriculum for physical education and sport. I support that and I am sure we all support that.

But the thrust of the report was really about how this is a school responsibility—that was it: a 100 per cent school responsibility. That was certainly the implication from the report. But, in reality, what about personal responsibility? What about parents encouraging their children to become involved in sport, not just at school but afterwards as well—in clubs after school time and opportunities like that? There is a lot to be said for identifying, in your own life—or parents identifying in their children’s lives—the opportunities for this physical education as well, to supplement what is done in schools. This is a basic responsibility of parenting; it is not just the responsibility of curricula; it is not just the responsibility of government. It is time to look in the mirror, in a lot of respects, Mr Deputy Speaker Murphy. Sorry, I am not talking about you personally, of course—but any parent in this country should keep that in mind.

In the electorate of Cowan we have so many wonderful sporting institutions: the Wanneroo District Netball Association; the Kingsway Little Athletics Centre, which is another great example of opportunities for young people to be involved—and with netball, of course, adults as well. We have football clubs, we have cricket clubs, we have the state badminton organisation as well in Cowan, so that is also very good. So there are opportunities for parents to encourage their children to participate.

Recently, I was at Koondoola Primary School. Koondoola primary is in a more challenged area, a lower socioeconomic area within the electorate of Cowan. I was having a discussion with two of the deputies at the school. They were saying that the cost of fees for club sport participation for young people was quite an issue for people there—and that worries me. I wonder sometimes whether possibly the education rebate could be expanded to include an element of sporting club fees—I mean, that is preventative health for you, and I certainly think that would be a good way forward.

I think there is the opportunity out there in the community for sporting and physical exercise to be able to take place, not just in schools but in the wider community. And that, ultimately, is the responsibility of parents—to encourage and assist their children to participate, whether that is at primary or secondary school level; all through those ages. At the same time, of course, as parents we have the responsibility to lead by example. On Sunday, just before we flew back, I took the opportunity to take my kids to the local pool, Wanneroo Aquamotion. As the weather gets warmer and warmer, we will find ourselves at the beach more, in the park, maybe going for bike rides—with helmets, of course; another big preventative health issue: all children and all adults should wear helmets. So there are these sorts of opportunities where often you do not need to pay, particularly with beaches, bike riding, visits to parks, kicking the football around. There are no limitations on this. These are the opportunities where parents can lead by example.

I was talking to one of the parents at our local primary school, Hawker Park Primary School. Graham Barrett is his name. He has five children, and they all go down to the Sorrento Surf Lifesaving Club, doing the training. It is a very big thing now in Perth; lots of kids from our school go to surf lifesaving. Graham actually participated in the Family Iron Man at the end of last season, which involved a run and a swim. I think there might have been board paddling as well. So he was out there, not just talking the talk but walking the walk, and that is exactly the way forward.

When they take opportunities in the gym, a lot of people should maybe consider that, if you actually want to look at your weight issues, there are a number of ways to try to reduce your body weight. Getting the heart rate up into the sustained training range—which you can determine at your local gym, as they always have those heart rate charts; or you can consult with your family doctor—is very good. But above all—we can all turn up to the gym; we can all go for a walk or a bike ride occasionally—it comes down to diet. As a PTI, a physical training instructor, in the Army once said in front of a number of us, you can do a thousand sit-ups a day and you will end up with a fabulous set of stomach muscles; however, unless you reduce your food intake, they will be a fabulous set of stomach muscles underneath quite a substantial level of fat. So it is more than exercise; it is about diet. And when we talk about high-salt and high-fat diets then we also open ourselves up to the risk of stroke, diabetes type 2 and a number of other health issues to do with the heart and other more general issues.

So, in a lot of ways, I appreciate that there is a part to play for government in preventative health, and I think a big part of that is education. And there is a part for schools to play. But ultimately it comes down to the decisions we make in our own lives, the self-inflicted injuries that we so often incur—the pizza too many nights a week, or maybe too many nights a month; the KFC; the ‘Oh, I’m too tired to get up this morning to go out for a run or exercise’; or the ‘That’s all right, little Johnny, you can go and play with your DS or your PlayStation all day.’ These are personal decisions that we make, and maybe sometimes we should just look in the mirror and work out whether that decision has an impact on ourselves. And, more than that, as parents we have a responsibility to not only talk the talk about little Johnny, or little Emily—saying that we want them to go out and do physical exercise; our children should see that we also believe that and that we walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

As I said at the start, a lot of what I talk about is personal responsibility, taking that look in the mirror and judging ourselves before we look for some problem in society to blame for the problems that we so often place upon ourselves. In the very limited time left, I will just finish by saying that our position is that we want tangible outcomes from this sort of legislation. There are enough bureaucrats in Canberra and across the country without imposing more unless there are real, tangible benefits. Unless there are outcomes that can be measured, I wonder why we move forward with these things. Ultimately, it is about the individual doing the right things for themselves, first and foremost accepting that responsibility, and then it is about government putting education in place and then being able to assess the outcomes in the end.

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