Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (No Jab, No Pay) Bill 2015 will ensure children fully meet immunisation requirements before their families can access childcare benefit, childcare rebate or the family tax benefit part A supplement. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of the members for their contributions, particularly the member for Jagajaga and the member for Solomon, and in a moment I might also touch on the contribution of the member for Makin. All members have touched on some of the very important issues that arise in the context of this bill and have also, I think, offered some very good statistical and historical information about why this bill is important to the parliament and to the nation.

It was interesting, Member for Makin, hearing you speak about the polio epidemics that occurred in Australia. I must say, it is a matter of great personal pleasure to be able to provide this summing up speech at the second reading point in this debate. I grew up with an older cousin, my eldest cousin, and he was one of the last handful of children in Australia who contracted polio. He was a lovely boy, is a fine man and has had an extremely successful career, but it is a life made very much more difficult than it would otherwise have been. The two vaccinations, the injected and oral vaccinations, are the Salk vaccination, which I think came to Australia in 1956, and the Sabin vaccination, which came to Australia in 1966. My cousin would have been one of the very last in the cohort around the time of the Sabin oral vaccination who was unlucky enough to contract polio. I think that the generation of Australians, of which I am very much at the tail end, who lived through those episodes bring to their experience a very different mindset to a modern generation who have not experienced what it must have been like. The reason why Jonas Salk's wonderful contribution to medicine that he pioneered at the University of Pittsburgh was so welcome in Australia and why that man was, frankly, such a hero to many Australians is that, between 1946 and 1955, there were several catastrophic polio epidemics in Australia which caused 1,000 deaths. In the context of Australia between 1946 and 1955, that was an enormous number of people to die, in a particularly unpleasant way, from a disease which we later found was completely preventable. Of course, not merely did those deaths occur in that decade but the disease itself left thousands of survivors handicapped, in many cases very seriously, including many who became ventilator dependent for the rest of their lives.

So, having grown up with a cousin who suffered at the very tail end of that time, the notion that we have a range of people in Australia who have formed the view on vaccinations that they have is a very strange thing, I think. The extent that this legislation can offer some ongoing educative component, both historically and by raising the issue in the minds and consciousness of the Australian people, is a very important aspect of what we are doing this evening.

Immunisation is, of course, an important health measure for children and their families. That it is the safest and most effective way of providing protection against disease has been verified statistically and historically for many decades now. From 1 January 2016, the government will extend current immunisation requirements to include all children of all ages. At present, a child's immunisation status is only checked at ages one, two and five for the family tax benefit part A supplement, and up to age seven for childcare payments. Parents of course have the right to decide to not vaccinate their children. However, the government considers that, if they are making such a decision as a vaccine objector, this decision can no longer be supported with government financial assistance provided through the effort of the taxpayer. Much has been said in very valuable and decent contributions this evening. Perhaps those contributions can be fairly summarised by noting that it is the view of the House that the choice made by some families not to vaccinate their children is their own choice, but it can no longer be supported, indirectly or directly, or tacitly, by public policy decisions of this House. Public policy, medical research and all other best available information does not support a decision to fail to vaccinate children, and that action, if it is taken by parents in question, can no longer be supported by taxpayers in the form of family assistance and childcare payments.

Critical for the government is that ending vaccine objections through this bill will have an ongoing positive effect for the nation's health and that of, particularly, the nation's children. This means that families who do object to vaccination will no longer be able to access the relevant family assistance payments. As has been noted, there are appropriate exceptions to the policy, which have been carefully designed. They will apply as exceptions for valid medical reasons such as when a general practitioner certifies that a child has a medical contraindication or vaccination is not required as the child has a natural immunity to any particular disease in question. Families with children participating in an approved vaccine study will be taken to meet the immunisation requirements for the duration of the study. Similar rules will apply where a vaccine is temporarily unavailable. The requirements will also be met if a recognised immunisation provider certifies that the child has an equivalent level of immunisation through an overseas vaccination program.

Finally, the secretary of the department will be able to determine that a child meets the immunisation requirements, in very limited circumstances, after considering decision making principles set out in a legislative instrument made by the minister. Such decisions of the secretary will be made on a case-by-case basis, and they are strictly to address unusual situations—for example, where a grandparent or non-parent carer does not have the requisite legal authority to require or compel the vaccination of a child or effect the vaccination of a child in their care. In those circumstances, it cannot be used to give effect to exemptions on the ground of vaccine objection. The example we are giving is a circumstance in which a parent who has the legal authority to prevent vaccination does so but the child is nevertheless in the care of another person.

This policy, as it has been presented and articulated in the bill before the parliament tonight, will tighten up the rules and reinforce the importance of vaccination in protecting public health, especially for children, and perhaps it will do something to bring to the forefront of the Australian consciousness issues that in the 1940s, 1950s and, very sadly, still in the 1960s left physical scars across the nation that were eventually cured by widespread use of relevant vaccinations. I commend the bill to the House.

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