Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the motion of the member for Higgins on World AIDS Day and commend the member for Higgins for this initiative. I always remember 1 December because it would have been my mum's birthday—it would have been her 81st birthday, so, happy birthday, Mum.

This globally recognised event raises awareness all across the world about the challenges associated with HIV-AIDS. I picked up some interesting facts from the speech by the member for Canberra, and I was waiting for the member for Brisbane to make a comment on the closing down of Biala in her electorate, but she failed to mention it in her five-minute speech. But I will come to that in a minute. Obviously we need to recognise that Australia, sadly, has seen an increase in HIV infection rates of more than eight per cent in 2011. It was interesting to hear the suggestion of the member for Canberra that it can be linked to those phone apps, because it did seem to defy all other logic. And obviously the opportunities that are there so readily are both a blessing and a curse. Perhaps linked also to that is the fact that there has been a 50 per cent rise in sexually transmitted diseases over the past 10 years, and perhaps with that information the member for Canberra gave there will be a further spike.

We need to look at ways to promote safe sex practices, especially in our young people, to reduce the transmission of HIV and other diseases. We need to look at endorsing education programs and information campaigns. And I can say, as someone with an eight-year-old son, having a conversation recently with a doctor who said, 'This is when you should be talking about having vaccinations,' scared the bejesus out of me. I thought an eight-year-old would be thinking about Lego and things like that. So, to all of a sudden hear that now is when we should be thinking about having that conversation and with young girls reaching puberty so much earlier than when I was at school, is scary. It is scary to think that someone's body can be so out of sync with their mental development.

So, we need to do what we can to ensure that people living with HIV and AIDS in our community can live their lives without fear of discrimination or exclusion. The days of the eighties are, hopefully, long behind us. And again, we need to invest in programs such as youth education that will break this cycle. One of the scary things mentioned in the motion by the member for Higgins is that there are 25,000 people living with HIV and 1,253 new diagnoses. That 10 per cent increase is the scariest thing.

Sadly, last year in Queensland we saw the Newman government make a harsh decision to dramatically slash services at Brisbane's only free sexual health clinic, Biala, located in the electorate of Brisbane This service had trained specialist nurses and doctors. There was a suggestion put forward by the health minister, Mr Springborg, that people would be able to go to their local GP. The whole point of an anonymous clinic like Biala was that men—or females for that matter—who sleep with men and men who are cheating on their wives cannot just go to their GP and have a conversation about the things that they are doing. This state government decision—this horrible decision—to cut 30 jobs at the clinic and refer STI treatment and diagnostic services to GPs was completely wrong. It was very short-sighted and dangerous—and just plain wrong.

Obviously, the government, at the state level and the federal level, needs to consider the long-term implications of closing these anonymous sexual health services. GPs need to be specially trained not only in terms of counselling but also in terms of the conversations that need to go with such things. The reality is that there are people in relationships, men particularly, who then have sex with men even though they ostensibly have children and have a normal heterosexual relationship. They still go off to beats. They still use the phone apps that the member for Canberra touched on which allow them to hook up with people and have anonymous sex. That means that the opportunities for having protected sex may not be as high as they are, especially if we go back to the bad old days when people started removing condom machines from health services. That was something that they used to do in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen days. Hopefully, we are a long way away from those sorts of behaviours.

I urge the health minister, Mr Springborg, to reverse this decision, because we need these services. I commend him for the response that was touched on by the member for Brisbane, but we need to go back to anonymous clinics like Biala. Otherwise, as Dr van Lieshout warned, there will be an increase in syphilis, gonorrhoea and all those things, particularly coming through fly-in fly-out workers, tourists and travellers. (Time expired)

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