David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to acknowledge the work of local residents from the Lindsay electorate involved in the Make Poverty History campaign. I had the pleasure of attending a Survive Past Five event at St Marys Baptist church recently. I would like to acknowledge the organisers of this event, Carolyn Greenhalgh, Anna Dohnt and Rhonda Lever; World Vision guest speaker Peter Archer; Pastor Ken Hall; and the more than 120 people who attended, including representatives from the St Marys Baptist, Hillsong St Marys, Emu Plains Baptist, ImagineNations, Westview Baptist and Penrith Baptist churches.

The event celebrated the birthdays of all of the children in developing countries who have lived to the age of five. To those of us living in Australia, this might not seem all that remarkable; but the reality for children in the poorest nations of the world is starkly different. In 2008, 8.8 million children throughout the world died before reaching their fifth birthday. Many of these children—400,000 of them, in fact—were from countries within our own region. This figure is all the more staggering because most of these deaths were from diseases that could have been prevented by things we take for granted here in Australia: immunisation, nutritious food and clean water. The most common causes of child deaths globally are tetanus, diarrhoea, pneumonia and measles.

The sheer size of the global poverty challenge often makes it seem insurmountable, but the Millennium Development Goals, which Australia signed up to in 2000, represent collective global action to halve poverty by 2015. Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 set out the commitment to reduce infant and maternal mortality. According to a report into the progress of the MDGs published last year by UNICEF, we can see how infant mortality rates have dropped—in many cases halved—over the past 20 years. In 1990, 12.6 million children died before celebrating their fifth birthday. In our region in 1990, Indonesia had 86 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births. This rate dropped to 41 in every 1,000 in 2008. While there are improvements, we are obviously still seeing the worst rates in Africa, with a country like Sierra Leone going from 278 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births in 1990 to 194 in 2008. To put all of these figures in perspective, Australia had nine infant deaths for every 1,000 live births in 1990 and six in 2008. Along with other nations in the world, Australia has put its shoulder to the wheel. Australia has committed to increase its aid contribution to 0.5 per cent of our gross national income by 2015.

But there is still much to do to achieve the MDGs, and we seek to do it with the support of the Australian people. I would like to pay particular tribute to the local residents who are involved in the Micah Challenge and the Make Poverty History campaign, with whom I have now had a long association. I would like to congratulate all of these people for their dedication to a worthy cause and for their commitment to the principle that no-one, especially children, should have to live in abject poverty.