Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Ageing, today representing the Minister for Health and Ageing. Would the minister inform the House how the government is adding to the immunisation register to further protect the health of our children?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Bass for his question. I can tell the House that immunisation rates in 1989-90 in this country were at 53 per cent, one of the worst outcomes in the Western world, and today they stand at over 90 per cent, one of the best outcomes in the Western world—directly because of the government’s national immunisation program, Immunise Australia. Spending in 1996 on immunisation was $13 million a year and this year it will be $207 million a year, 16 times the rate that the Labor Party left immunisation at when it left office.

I am very pleased to be able to announce today that the Minister for Health and Ageing has kept his promise to make an announcement on rotavirus vaccines by the end of March. I can tell the House that rotavirus vaccines will be listed on the national immunisation program from this year at a cost of $124 million over the next five years—a very good outcome. GSK’s Rotarix and CSL’s RotaTeq will be the two vaccines listed. This is very good news, particularly for families in Australia, who have been very well represented and looked after by the coalition government in the last 11 years.

In Australia, the rotavirus accounts for 10,000 hospitalisations of children a year. Half of those are cases of children aged under one year and almost all are children under five. Of course, amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations it is a particularly serious problem. The vaccine will commence from July 2007 and all babies born after 1 May 2007 will be eligible. This further strengthens the national immunisation program—and, in the absence of the Minister for Health and Ageing, I can say it is further evidence that the Howard government is the best friend that Medicare has ever had.