Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government's measures in relation to health and mental health are helping to close the gap?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I particularly want to thank the member for Fisher for his passion for Indigenous affairs but, more generally, for his deep focus on mental health across all communities but especially in Indigenous Australia. Today, very sadly, the world past passed 200 million cases of COVID. It passed 4¼ million lives lost. Around the world indigenous communities have been devastated by the impacts of COVID—in Brazil, in the United States, in Canada and in so many other countries. Whilst our Indigenous community here has not escaped, perhaps no Indigenous community in any major country has been able to manage and to achieve the results in saving lives and protecting lives in any way comparable to that which has occurred in Australia's Indigenous communities. We have had 183 cases on the latest advice that we have but no lives lost. There is no case of coronavirus in any remote Indigenous community in Australia. That is an almost unimaginable outcome. It is a national achievement, in terms of Closing the Gap, of the highest order. There is a rate of COVID amongst Indigenous Australians of one-sixth of that of the national average. The efforts—in terms of placing biosecurity bubbles, in terms of rapid point-of-care testing using the GeneXpert kits, in terms of the Aboriginal community controlled health services, in terms of all of the programs that were put in place—have made a profound difference.

These are part of a much broader plan not just related to COVID. In terms of mental health we know the challenges. We know that the suicide rate is unacceptably high. Any suicide rate is unacceptable, but to have a rate in Indigenous communities that is double the national average is a tragedy. In order to close that gap we invested $134 million on top of the $700 million per annum as part of this most recent budget. In particular, the focus on Gayaa Dhuwi and Lifeline working together with over $16 million, the focus on Indigenous suicide prevention trials—all of these things are coming together. More broadly, the work we are doing on Indigenous health is closing that gap. It's not done yet. There's more to do. Extraordinarily Indigenous children's vaccination rates for five-year-olds, on the figures available just today, are higher than the national average. Ninety-seven point one per cent of five-year-old Indigenous kids are vaccinated and 95.2 per cent of Australian kids more generally are vaccinated. What that means is that we're saving lives and protecting lives. Perhaps most importantly of all, over the last seven years we've seen a 25 per cent drop in Indigenous children's mortality rates.