Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to note the really outstanding contributions that have preceded me in this debate. We all come at the question of childhood vaccinations from a slightly different perspective. We've heard some really powerful stories from the member for Lalor in her capacity both as a mum of some wonderful boys, but also as a school principal who has had to deal with communicable diseases in that context. The experience of having to call families and tell them that such a disease is present in their community must have been utterly terrifying, and I really appreciate you sharing that story with us. Thank you so much.

The member for Lalor was preceded by the member for Macarthur, who we know is a paediatrician with decades of experience. I know that particularly for doctors in the medical community it's incredibly painful to participate in the current debate about the effectiveness of vaccinations, especially for doctors who have been around for a long time and have seen some of the horrific diseases that we have been able to virtually eradicate from our country through vaccinations. I will speak a little bit about the broader context for the discussion here today, but I do want to make mention of some of the specifics of the legislation before us.

Labor is very pleased to support the Australian Immunisation Register and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. I might note that it's part of a relatively consistent legislative history of both major political parties in Australia trying to push this incredibly important issue forward. The bill before us makes two relatively minor changes to what are called the No Jab, No Pay arrangements. These are arrangements that, as I say, successive governments have pushed forward which restrict the entitlement of families in this country to certain government payments unless they can show that their children have been appropriately immunised. When those provisions were first put in place—they started around 1998—they included a number of exemptions. Families could say they were conscientious objectors to vaccinations, and of course there are some medical reasons why children can't be vaccinated. But over time governments have removed the various exemptions, because we are trying to make a very clear statement as community leaders—as the nation's parliament—that the expectation is that Australian families will vaccinate their children. That is incredibly important for the health of their child and for the health of the community more generally.

The legislation before us continues that history. It makes some requirements about the types of medical professionals who can provide evidence of vaccinations, and, indeed, it restricts the types of medical professionals who can provide evidence that exemptions have been allowed for various reasons on a medical basis. As I mentioned, the bill makes these relatively minor changes, but it does so in the context of a much broader and incredibly important community health issue to Australia. What we know is that despite incredibly voluminous amounts of evidence that tell us vaccinations are not only safe for use but also essential for the safety of our population here in Australia, immunisation rates in our country are lower than they need to be. It's a difficult conversation for those of us who have some perspective on what a powerful thing immunisations have been in improving the health of the community around the globe to have. Most people think that immunisations were, in fact, probably the biggest medical advance that we made in the 20th century. One of the studies that looked at the impact this has had on the lives of people around the world estimates that vaccinations save 2½ million lives every single year.

Now, in countries like Australia, we have seen horrible diseases affect, in particular, children. I know that people who are my parents' age and my grandparents' age can remember a time when, if a child started to contract flu-like symptoms—getting fevers and lethargy and other symptoms like this—parents would be awake all night wondering if their children had polio. And if they did have polio, they would know that a lot of the children who contracted this disease ended up without the use of their legs. Many of them died.

When we look to countries similar to Australia, in the US it was a peak—polio was contracted by something like 55,000 children a year. Many of those children died. And here, after years and years of research, brilliant medical scientists found a way to prevent this horrible illness from occurring. Now we are having a debate in the community about whether people should take access to that medicine. As a parent—I am sure you feel the same, Deputy Speaker—it's very hard to understand why it is that there are communities of people who are turning against such an extraordinary advancement, such a huge step forward, for us.

It's not just polio, it's things like diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, which we have seen virtually wiped out. In some instances it has been completely wiped out but in others we see the odd case here or there. This is incredibly important. Nothing matters more than the health of the young people in a community. We need to continue to explain this to the Australian people; we need to continue to enforce this message. In part, it's legislation like that before us today which helps us do this.

Another critical point to understand about vaccinations— and I do hope that Australians are spreading the word about this—is that it is not just about the children who are vaccinated. When we vaccinate all of the children or the vast majority of children in a community we develop something called herd immunity in a population. That means that when the diseases we are working so hard to eradicate do pop up, from time-to-time, they are not able to spread very far. So if there is a case, just one case, it does not immediately fan out, as it used to, in the thirties, forties and fifties.

We know that to get herd immunity rates—this is the great goal of public health professionals in Australia—we need something like 95 per cent of the population immunised. We are not seeing that today. We see relatively high rates when we look at the nation as a whole. It is something like 93 per cent. But in some communities immunisation rates are quite a bit lower. Unfortunately, there are sections of my community which fit into this category. I represent areas like Springvale, in south-east Melbourne, which has something around an 88 per cent immunisation rate. It does not sound like a terribly big difference between 88 and 95 per cent, but it is. We need to hit this herd immunity rate. That shows me as a community leader, as a local representative, I need to be working harder to explain to my constituents why it is so crucially important that they go through this process of properly immunising their children.

There are a lot of reasons for people not going through this proper process of immunising their children. I know in the case by Springvale, which, by some authorities, is the most multicultural suburb in the whole of Australia, a lot of this is about parents who bring children from overseas as migrants and, perhaps, in the country they came from there were not clear requirements to immunise children from a very early age. We need to do more work to help migrant families understand the benefits of immunisation and to practically help those families bring their children back up to a catch-up schedule, as they say, when we immunise children later in life.

There is a lack of focus sometimes for parents. As we heard from some of the previous speakers, among older Australians there's a very clear recollection of children they know who contracted horrible diseases that, generally, don't exist in our country anymore. That's the generation of people who do not need to be educated about the benefits of vaccinations. But there are younger people in this country who have not observed that type of illness before and who do not have crystallised, in their minds, the crucial importance of protecting their children in the way we know they can. So, we need to do some more work there.

There is also a section of the population who have not immunised their children because they are concerned about completely scurrilous claims that there are things to be worried about in immunising their children. One of the most commonly held beliefs—a total falsehood—is that there is a link between immunisation and autism among children. In fact, the Royal Children's Hospital did a poll recently that showed that one in 11 Australian parents still believe that vaccination is connected to autism and a further 30 per cent of Australian parents are unsure. I think those utterly terrifying statistics give us the push that we need in this parliament to be utterly clear about this.

Immunisations do not cause autism. Study after study has shown that the scurrilous claims that were initially made about this were wrong. They are wrong, and we need to be clear with Australian parents that they should not just jump onto Google and have a little look around and see what they can find, because, I can tell you, the first thing you will find when you google is that some of the common search terms about immunisations will land you on the pages of groups of antivaxxers, as they're called—people who are spreading this information about this crucial medical requirement to help our Australian population be safe and healthy. So we need to be absolutely clear that a lot of the claims that are being made on these sites, on these Facebook pages, are wrong. It is not appropriate, as Senator Pauline Hanson done, to suggest to parents that they do their own research about this. The medical community is united in saying that vaccinations are crucial, that they are important for the health of your child and that they are important for the children around them, and it's not appropriate to encourage doubts in the minds of Australians about the impacts of this.

So I think we, as community leaders, have a very clear role here in making sure that we're clear and united and we speak with one voice about the importance of this crucial aspect of our medical system. Part of that is continuing to strengthen legislation, as we are seeing in a bipartisan manner today. Part of it, though, is also standing up to people who are fomenting this sense of unease in the minds of some Australian parents about the impact of vaccinations. And that's why I was very disappointed to see that unfortunately the government was unwilling to come out and make a very strong statement against Senator Hanson's very damaging comments. The last thing we need in this country is to have members of parliament coming out and stoking the fears of Australian parents in regard to something as crucial as vaccinations.

We know vaccinations work. We know they do not lead to autism. We don't want people in this parliament who are community leaders creating confusion and concern among Australian parents. And I think it is also incumbent on people who perhaps take a more sensible approach, take a more evidence based approach to these things, to make a strong statement when other people are stoking those fears. So, I would like to see the government be stronger in its stance against silly comments that might lead to a less-healthy community. I think that's a very basic test of leadership that was a big missed opportunity for the government.

It's also important that we continue the crucial work that's been done on national health campaigns around vaccinations. I say that again as a member of parliament representing a community in which pockets of that community are clearly not hearing the message about how crucial it is that we continue to vaccinate our children. We've seen some pretty concerning things recently. We have to remember in this chamber that we are, in a sense, fighting with this group of people online who are trying to spread misinformation. It was not long ago that there was a major screening of another scurrilous anti-immunisation film in Melbourne. We have to fight back against that with a strong public health campaign, and that's something we want to see properly funded. It's important that we take the legislative approach but that we also take this education approach, because we want Australian parents to be as fulsomely supportive and pleased to take their children to a vaccination session as those of us are who can understand what a world where we did not have vaccinations at all could look like.

In closing, I will say that we want to see some more action on the No Jab, No Play policy. That's one that restricts access to child care for young people who have not been vaccinated—again, making this very clear statement on behalf of this parliament that our expectation is that Australian parents will take this incredible gift of vaccination and make sure that their children around them are safe.

The member for Lalor closed her comments by talking about how none of us get excited about taking our kids for a vaccination. That's true. I wrote some of this speech while I had an 11-month-old baby on my lap. I don't enjoy taking him to the doctor, because he does get upset when he gets those needless. But I am so grateful that I live in a country where my child has the opportunity to protect himself and to protect the children around him. I want other parents to understand that it is a great gift that we have the opportunity to protect our children from diseases that have wreaked havoc on previous generations.

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