Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to amend the motion standing in my name.

Leave granted.

I move the motion as amended:

That this House:

(1) recognises:

(a) that Brain Injury Awareness Week will be held from 9 to 15 March 2015;

(b) that over 700,000 Australians live with a brain injury; and

(c) the work done by the Bouverie Centre in conjunction with the Victorian Department of Human Services to improve services provided to people with acquired brain injury; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) provide more services to accommodate people with a brain injury; and

(b) develop a national scale partnership similar to the partnership seen in Victoria which helps people with a brain injury, and their family members.

(3)further recognises that Acquired Brain Injuries (ABI) can be acquired in many varied and different ways, e.g. as a result of an accident, a stroke, drug and alcohol abuse, tumours, poisoning, and disorders such as Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease; and

(4)calls on the Government to:

(a)work with Brain Injury Australia to establish a nation-wide policy which will reflect the needs of people with an ABI, as well as the needs of their families;

(b)undertake a public awareness campaign to inform the public about ABI, its causes, prevention and management; and

(c)provide more funding for research into ABI.

Last week was Brain Injury Awareness Week. I think it is a really important time for us to sit and look at the implications of acquired brain injury, something that impacts on the lives of 700,000 Australians who are living with brain injury. Acquired brain injury is any damage to the brain that occurs after birth. The damage can be caused by an accident, by trauma, by stroke, by alcohol and other drugs or by diseases such as Parkinson's. Three out of every four Australians living with acquired brain injury are under the age of 65 and as many as two out of every three of these acquired their brain injury before they turned 25, and three out of every four with acquired brain injury are men. Any number of factors can cause acquired brain injury.

I have a young woman who works in my office as a volunteer. She was attending university when she was diagnosed with brain tumours. It has had an enormous impact on her life. She now spends most of her time in a wheelchair. She cannot work, has visual problems and has problems with her speech, yet she is still intelligent and is an integral part of our team in the office. In this country, people do not really understand what acquired brain injury is, do not understand that acquired brain injury is very distinct from intellectual disability. When the brain is damaged, some other aspect of ourselves changes. People, after suffering a brain injury, quite frequently are a different person to the person they were before the brain injury.

If you look at how we view ourselves, if you look at the importance of the brain, if you look at so much of who we are, it is linked to our brain. If our brain is injured, it can affect our mobility, our ability to eat or talk, our intellect, our intelligence level, and our cognitive ability. As such, it has an enormous impact.

I would like to spend the remaining time talking a little bit about the Hunter Medical Research Institute which has teamed up with the Newcastle Knights. They have been looking at concussion in rugby league players. It is a neurological study that is of a very different kind where players are undergoing state-of-the-art MRI scans at the newly opened HMRI imaging centre. It is under the auspices of Professor Chris Levi, who is a leader in this area and in the area of brain and mental health research. He is undertaking this research that I think will provide a lot of information on the impact of trauma. The MRI scanning will complement assessments that are being provided looking at precise real-time visual perspectives of brain response. It will open up new knowledge in concussion and acquired brain injury.

This is just one aspect of acquired brain injury, one area where there is research being undertaken, one area that looks at the impact of acquired brain injury. I am calling for more studies and more research into acquired brain injury and for better services and better support for those living with acquired brain injury and for their families, because acquired brain injury is one of those acquired injuries that really are life changing.

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