Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) leads the world's efforts to end polio, bringing together Rotary International, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and many others including in the private sector with a common objective to eradicate polio;

(b) when the GPEI commenced, more than 350,000 cases of polio paralysed and killed children in 125 countries annually;

(c) in 2021, polio is 99 per cent eradicated and wild polio remains in only two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the entire African continent certified as polio-free on 25 August 2020;

(d) this success has been driven by the GPEl's extensive worldwide community-driven vaccination program, the largest of its kind in the world, to safeguard children from polio worldwide;

(e) safe and effective polio vaccines have been the single most important factor in achieving 99 per cent eradication of polio so far;

(f) Australia has been a strong supporter of polio eradication for more than three decades and has invested more than $135 million in polio eradication over that time;

(g) 2022 will be a critical year for polio eradication as the GPEI sets out its strategy to achieve polio eradication by 2026, and that this will be a key opportunity for Australian leadership; and

(h) Australian organisations lead the effort to see continued support for polio eradication from Australia, including Rotary International Australia, UNICEF Australia, Global Citizen and Results Australia;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) the work of the GPEI is a testament to the great power of vaccines and that the equitable and timely access to those vaccines is critical to the program's success;

(b) progress made toward polio eradication is facing new challenges with the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan impeding vaccination efforts and increasing the risk of new polio outbreaks;

(c) additional measures will be required to manage the risk of polio in Afghanistan in an effort to ensure that no widespread polio outbreaks occur;

(d) Australia is a long-term champion of polio eradication along with many other Commonwealth nations including the United Kingdom and Canada, who all share an interest in ensuring the success of the polio program and its important contribution to global health security; and

(e) the current parliaments of Australia and other countries have the opportunity to be recognised as the elected representatives who ensured that polio was completely eradicated; and

(3) calls on the Government to continue its strong ongoing support for the GPEI.

Battling a pandemic is not an easy task. We're learning this more every day as we deal with yet another variant of concern in the form of omicron in COVID. But this is not the first time that a coordinated global health effort has successfully responded to a highly infectious disease in the community. For a masterclass in an extraordinary global response to a significant health threat, we need only look to the story of polio.

In the early 20th century polio cases surged in the United States, leading to widespread outbreaks which quickly spread around the world. Australia was no exception; more than 1,000 people died of polio in Australia during the first half of the 1950s alone. It has haunted the childhood of many, and left as many as 40,000 Australians with lifelong paralysis. In 1952, a successful vaccine was finally found but a global response was needed to bring polio under control. To that effect, in 1988 the World Health Organization founded the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The newly founded organisation took on the ambitious aim of eradicating polio worldwide. Excellent vaccine uptake did well to control the spread of polio in developed countries, and in 1994 polio was declared eradicated from the Americas. Australia achieved the same milestone at the turn of the century in 2000. However, a greater challenge remained. The world's most vulnerable people were still exposed to the ravages of polio.

Australia has been there from the beginning, stepping up to provide financial and technical support to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative as it set out on the largest community driven vaccination program in history. The initiative developed a strategy and implemented vaccination drives across the world. A broad coalition of community members took up the task of immunising the world's children against polio. As a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International, I am particularly proud of the hundreds of thousands of Rotarians worldwide who have raised money and contributed more than $1 billion to the effort so far. As co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of UNICEF, I know firsthand the extraordinary contribution UNICEF has made to polio eradication. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative leads the world's efforts to end polio, bringing together not just Rotary International and UNICEF, but the World Health Organization, Global Citizen and, here in Australia, Results Australia. Of course, there are many others, including in the private sector, with the common objective of eradicating polio. When the Global Polio Eradication Initiative commenced, more than 350,000 cases of polio paralysed and killed children in 125 countries annually. Fast-forward to today, and in 2021 polio is 99 per cent eradicated. Polio remains in only two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the entire African continent certified as polio-free just last year on 25 August. It is an amazing achievement.

Some had considered the challenge of polio eradication, particularly in India, insurmountable. Nonetheless, with the extraordinary dedication of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and its partners, vaccination drives continued. In fact, in a single day in 1998, more than 134 million children in India were immunised against polio. The pay-off wasn't instant. In fact, it wasn't until 2014 that India and the rest of South-East Asia were finally declared polio-free. But now, in 2021, we have almost completely eradicated polio. What's more, we are seeing only a handful of cases in those two countries where it remains, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are remarkably close to finally ending polio forever.

Australia has much to be proud of in the fight for polio eradication. We stood side-by-side with global health organisations. Come next year, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative will set out the final stages in this great journey to achieve complete eradication of polio by 2026. It means a major opportunity for Australia to reaffirm its commitment to polio eradication. As much of an achievement as polio eradication will be, it is also a rare chance to affirm the power vaccines have to change the world. As parliamentarians, we can all support this.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I rise to speak in support of the motion moved by the member for Higgins relating to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. We are honoured to be co-chairs of the Parliamentary Friends of UNICEF and advocates committed to the GPEI. We are also very fortunate to be living in a country where polio is eradicated and a world in which polio is 99 per cent eradicated. It is a remarkable achievement. Today the disease is almost forgotten except by the few whose lives were and remain directly affected.

It was once hard to imagine that 70 years ago polio was rife across the globe. But over the past 18 months we all got a taste of what a worldwide pandemic actually looks like and feels like: cities shut down, borders closed, isolation from friends and family, spending most of our days online—they didn't have that luxury 70 years ago—working from home, watching Netflix. The only possible domestic travel was to the edge of your five-kilometre radius, as some of the lockdowns in Melbourne restricted us to. We've gone through the Rolodex, through many kinds of public health interventions, in our struggle to stop COVID-19 spreading. Now, just like with the polio epidemic, vaccination is the primary means by which we're aiming to end the pandemic for good.

Thanks to vaccines, the prevalence of polio has been reduced to a small sliver of what it once was. At its worst, in the late 1940s, it infected hundreds of thousands and paralysed more than 35,000 people a year. Polio remains in only two countries—Pakistan and Afghanistan—with the entire African continent certified as polio free on 25 August 2020. This is a testament to science and what it can achieve and to vaccinations. It is a historical legacy of achievement, and it also speaks volumes as to what can be achieved when the international community works together. Much of this is thanks to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The GPEI leads the world's efforts to end polio, bringing together the World Health Organization and many stakeholders with the core objective of ending polio once and for all. And we're almost there.

It's fitting that we're talking on this motion today, given the new strain of COVID-19—omicron. This new variant, which was first identified in South Africa, has shed light on the low vaccination rates in developing countries. Despite the repeated warnings of health leaders around the world, our failure to put jabs in the arms of people in the developing world is the reason the virus has come back to haunt us with this variant. We were forewarned, yet we are here. Vaccine equity was critically important. The WHO asked every country to vaccinate at least 10 per cent of their population by September. More than 50 countries have missed this target. Most of these are in Africa. Our neighbour in the Pacific, Papua New Guinea, has achieved only 1.7 per cent coverage of the vaccine.

Why are we forgetting that we are part of a global community? Why have we forgotten this, from the very beginning of the pandemic? Why are we forgetting that Australia has to play a role in protecting our region, supporting our friends and partners and stepping up to support that part of the developing world? We have delivered only 18 per cent of the COVID vaccinations that we promised to developing nations—just 18 per cent. This is not a partisan point here. I'm imploring the government to do better, because it affects all of us into the future. Until we vaccinate enough people, we will see this happen over and over again. We are literally in an arms race to vaccinate the world.

I call on the Morrison government to step up. They talk about the Step-up policy in the Pacific. Well, they're not stepping up. It's time now that they do so, because it's in our interests in Australia and it's in our common global interests to actually vaccinate the parts of the world that have such low vaccination rates. I implore the government to do what is necessary to get those vaccines to our friends and partners, particularly in the Pacific as well as in other parts of the world. We are a wealthy nation. We are privileged in many respects. We could do so much better in helping our friends around the world with vaccination, and, by doing so, we would be helping ourselves as well.

Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's very timely to be talking today about global polio eradication. Polio, of course, was one of the great scourges of humanity in the early part of the 20th century and one of the most dangerous communicable diseases that we laboured under. It did not discriminate between victims or countries, from children in the Third World to people such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and an uncle of mine, in fact, in Trinidad and Tobago. Many new people were afflicted by polio, even until the 1950s and 1960s, in Australia.

What we've been able to achieve as a global community since the development of a polio vaccine has been little short of remarkable. Polio today is endemic in only two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are outbreaks from time to time in other countries, usually countries that are suffering from a degree of state failure or have highly fragile institutions, and we need to remain vigilant about that. But since 1988, when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative began, 2½ billion of the world's children have been immunised and polio cases worldwide have gone down by 99 per cent. It's a remarkable achievement, and initiatives such as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and global governance bodies like the World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, have played an incredibly important role. In August 2020 the WHO announced that transmission of wild poliovirus had stopped in all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, so we're now focused on quite a small number of countries.

What this shows us is that, until we eradicate any communicable disease, it poses a risk to all of us and that the developed world has an obligation and an interest in helping developing or less developed countries to deal with this problem, not only because it's the right thing for our shared humanity, our shared values and our ideals but because ultimately we will not be safe from any communicable disease until it's eradicated everywhere. We are seeing that now with COVID-19 and the emergence of a new variant. It's no surprise that the deeper the disease reservoirs that exist for COVID-19, the greater the chance of new mutations forming and the greater the prospect of new variants emerging. These new variants can then quickly outcompete other variants and may well be more lethal or more transmissible or more likely to evade the protections of our immune system or protections afforded by vaccines.

This is really the struggle we're dealing with now with COVID. The developed world, especially Australia but not only Australia, has done a very good job of rolling out vaccines quickly, and our scientific community has done a remarkable job in developing vaccines for a new disease in record time by using new technology, using messenger RNA technology, commercialising these vaccines, scaling them and distributing them. But, as we're reminded, we need to make sure that these vaccines are not only in the arms of our own population but in the arms of our neighbouring populations. The member for Wills mentioned Papua New Guinea. The low vaccination rate there does concern me. Papua New Guinea is a difficult country in which to vaccinate people because the terrain is very forbidding, transport infrastructure is not great, public health infrastructure is not well developed and there is a degree of scepticism and suspicion about vaccines. Vaccination programs generally struggle in Papua New Guinea, but we saw an outbreak of polio in Papua New Guinea in 2018, which Australia helped them get to grips with, and it's equally important now that we help them get to grips with COVID-19 as well.

I think this omicron variant will only have strengthened our will to show that the world has the capacity and the means but also the political will to make sure this vaccination program reaches our neighbours. We've had great success in other parts of the Pacific, small islands, small estates, where the geography is a little more permissive and where public attitudes towards vaccination are perhaps a little less hostile—places like Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Samoa. But it's very important that, just as we had success with polio due to a persistent and well resourced campaign over many years, we bring the same attitude and resourcefulness and will to bear in the fight against COVID-19.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like many of my generation, my first exposure to polio was reading Alan Marshall's I Can Jump Puddles. I have since met people who survived polio and I note that some of those survivors are now experiencing post-polio syndrome in their later years. But, essentially, we've worked together to completely eradicate polio in the developed world and we're close to getting rid of it everywhere. Vaccination is the only effective preventative measure against polio, and Australia began mass vaccination in 1956. The country's last polio epidemic was in 1961-62, and that was after a second wave took hold because the vaccination rates weren't high enough to achieve herd immunity. So for Australia, this is largely history.

Australians have been at the forefront of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which has been a joint effort led by Rotary International, the World Health Organization, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund—UNICEF—and many others. When the eradication program began, more than 350,000 cases of polio paralysed and killed children in 125 countries each year. In 2021, it is 99 per cent eradicated. The entire African continent was certified as polio free on 25 August 2020. Wild polio remains in only two countries—Pakistan and Afghanistan. Safe and effective polio vaccines have been the single most important factor in achieving that eradication.

Australia has been a very strong supporter for more than three decades, and has invested more than $135 million in polio eradication over that time. And Rotary was at the forefront, working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. In 1988, when the joint project with the World Health Organization was launched—that was the official start, but Rotary started a project to vaccinate children against polio in the Philippines in 1979. Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly three billion children from this paralysing disease.

Rotary's advocacy efforts have played a role in decisions made by governments to contribute more than $10 billion to the effort, and my own local Rotary clubs have been involved in this initiative for many years. In 2013, I stood with Katoomba Rotarian Amanda Woods as she helped lobby the then Gillard government to recommit to funding the polio eradication program for another four years. Amanda acknowledged that Australia's contribution to the effort was a game changer when Prime Minister Gillard showed leadership at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2011 and restored polio eradication to priority status on the international agenda.

This year in the Mid Mountains, which Central Blue Mountains Rotary Club calls home, local businesses helped the club raise money through its End Polio fundraiser, where members walked, ran or rolled 10, 20 or 50 kilometres during the month. The support they received included sponsorship from local businesses like Wentworth Falls Podiatry and LoveBites Coffee company. In previous years and decades, every club in my electorate has contributed. They've walked, they've caught trains, they've worn their red 'end polio now' T-shirts to raise awareness. They haven't got sick of the challenge. They've kept going. Next year, 2022, will be a critical year for polio eradication as the program sets out its strategy to achieve eradication by 2026. Progress has been made, but the new challenges in the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan are certainly impeding efforts and risk the outbreak of new polio cases. Additional measures will be required to manage that risk so that we can ensure no widespread polio outbreak occurs.

Now, this has been a vital global effort, and Rotary has been there. It is so easy to see the parallels that we have with the current pandemic, and I'm sure that people around the country would like to see the same level of commitment to Australia helping other countries deal with the COVID pandemic. We need to step up beyond what we are doing. Words are not enough. We have to make sure we do everything we can to help our neighbours, particularly in the Pacific, have the supplies they need and the education program needed to be able to increase their levels of vaccination. We can see what is happening. If we fail, we will be failing all those nations.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Higgins for bringing forward this motion on the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. I have spoken a few times lately on medical treatments that are bringing an end to debilitating conditions. It might be a COVID thing with this endlessly ongoing disease, but it's nice to look around and see that we aren't victims to diseases and we have some agency against them. It takes time and effort, but eventually, with enough people focusing on one condition, we can consign it to the history books.

Polio is one such story. Less than 100 years ago it was so prevalent that the president of the most powerful industrialised country in the world could have it. In prewar generations, polio was rife in Australia, with thousands of children suffering. Even when I was at school, one of my mates, Barry Mulligan, had polio and could only get around with the help of calipers and crutches. But while it was endemic in the thirties, in Australia our final case of polio was caught in 1972. Since then it has hardly been visible.

Australia was declared polio free in 2000, at the same time as the whole of the western Pacific. The western Pacific point is important. As a rich country, we often have health outcomes that are better than the poorer countries around us, but eradicating polio is not about eradicating it in rich countries; it is about ensuring that it is consigned to history everywhere. That Australia was declared polio free at the same time as the western Pacific is very important. This excellent news has been continued across the world. As this motion says, in August 2020 the entire African continent was declared polio free and, around the world, polio is 99 per cent eradicated.

How have we got there? Together. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has brought together organisations like Rotary International, the World Health Organization and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund as well as the private sector to bring polio to heel. When it started, there were more than 350,000 cases of polio annually. Each of these cases resulted in a child being paralysed or killed. The program has been incredibly successful.

The other key ingredient has been vaccination. The polio vaccine has been one of the more efficient vaccines, proving to be easily distributed and highly effective. The National Immunisation Program in Australia still operates a polio vaccine for newborns and infants, and, by this method, we will keep Australia free of this terrible condition. Just as we talk of smallpox being eradicated by a vaccine, soon this narrative may be taken over by the polio shot.

But we are not fully there yet. Polio continues to spread in two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both of these countries have challenging health networks and very isolated, if not autonomous, regions. Lawlessness is as endemic as polio, and this makes treatment difficult. There have only been two cases this year, one in Pakistan and one in Afghanistan. However, 2021 has not been a good year for health reporting in either jurisdiction, and it is safe to assume that polio remains widespread, with continuing transmission throughout the community in these countries.

Furthermore, COVID restrictions have caused massive disruptions to the eradication goals compared to 2019. In 2020, there were reports of increasing cases of circulating vaccine-derived polio virus globally and continued reports of wild polio virus cases in endemic countries. Polio vaccines were briefly stopped at the beginning of the pandemic as health care was diverted to more pressing areas. However, that has since been reinstated. So, although we don't know the extent of the COVID impacts, it is likely that there is underreporting of cases globally, particularly in resource-poor settings.

That said, ultimately, polio is a good story. Hundreds of thousands of children who would have suffered from polio will now live full lives, thanks to modern medicine and the efforts of the international community. There is still more to do in a small number of countries, but we have the tools and the willpower to make this happen. Then, soon, the world will be able to look back at polio, knowing that we will never have to fear it again.

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Bennelong and his fine words on this motion. I also rise to speak on the motion moved by the member for Higgins. Clearly there is fierce agreement across both sides of this chamber, the House and the parliament that Australia's efforts in eradicating polio are crucial, and they are supported, regardless of our political inclinations.

My personal connection to this motion is on behalf of the electorate that I proudly represent. Dame Jean Macnamara, who the Australian Electoral Commission honoured with the naming of the electorate of Macnamara—formerly Melbourne Ports—was a pioneer in the treatment of polio. She was a pioneer in the treatment of people and children with polio. I will go into some of the scientific breakthroughs that she was famous for and managed to lead. But one of the things that does not get spoken about in relation to Dame Jean Macnamara, and which should be spoken about in any conversation about polio, is just how frightening it is for a young person or a child who is crippled by this disease. Dame Jean Macnamara was not just known for her brilliance and her sharp mind but also for her bedside manner and her ability to make young children feel calm and supported and to help treat them through this really difficult and awful disease.

Dame Jean also helped lead some of the scientific development that eventually led to the development of a vaccine. While she began the experimental treatments around immune serum, it was widely acknowledged that the work she did in collaboration with Macfarlane Burnet, who is also a famous name in the medical research world of Australia. The Burnet Institute which currently resides in Macnamara, does some outstanding work on malaria vaccines and a range of other bits of research. They have done some outstanding work on COVID. These two fine Australian scientists paved the way for Dr Jonas Salk to develop the polio vaccine. So I pay tribute to Dame Jean, especially her early works in this fight against polio.

Funnily enough, Dame Jean's granddaughter still lives in the seat. She is a dear friend of mine. I know her daughter as well. Dame Jean's granddaughter is actually a doctor, and we were speaking to each other about the outbreak of the coronavirus. I, at the time, had made some firm remarks about the need for vaccination and the need for people to get vaccinated. Dame Jean Macnamara's granddaughter has been running a vaccination clinic locally in my electorate and has literally vaccinated thousands of locals in the effort to combat coronavirus. We were discussing that the stance that I took as a member of parliament but, more importantly, that she took as a doctor is exactly the same stance that Dame Jean Macnamara would have taken had she been here during this pandemic. She would have insisted that vaccinations are the way through this and she would have insisted that people have confidence in taking the vaccine to prevent this disease from spreading. Obviously, this virus is not over. And, obviously, this virus is still running its course through humanity and through the globe. Just like with polio, until COVID is eradicated everywhere, it is eradicated nowhere. We must commit ourselves to the global eradication, not just of polio but also of this awful, novel coronavirus.

The final thing I will say on this is that I think we have heard the best of this parliament in this debate contribute to our efforts on polio. I think it is incumbent on all of us to be giving the same commitment to vaccinations and the treatment of this disease as we have to polio. I think it is fair to say that some members of the government have been outstanding and some members of the government who have been absolutely appalling. Some have put vaccine misinformation out there and actively encouraged civil disobedience against health authorities. I want to call that out in this instance and say that that is not the best of this parliament. It is not acceptable. We commit ourselves on both sides of this House to actually treating people and getting over these two awful diseases.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the words spoken by the member for Macnamara and I agree with him. Certainly, given the fact that he has put a challenge out there, I do distance myself from the remarks of people who are calling for social and civil disobedience. I felt the gallows that were erected and taken to the Melbourne protests were absolutely despicable. The people who do that sort of thing as part of protests, particularly on a health issue, should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Any person who is a community and political leader who wants to spread misinformation and fear amongst their communities should also think long and hard about the role that they are playing in their communities, because people listen, people look at their Facebook posts, people observe and follow. Older Australians in particular don't need to have this sort of misinformation before them, because it makes them worried, it makes them anxious, and it leads to a lower vaccination rate in those communities.

But we're talking about polio, which is so important. I acknowledge my good friend the member for Macarthur. I also acknowledge the member for Higgins, who brought this important motion to the floor of this chamber.

John Winterbottom, a mate of mine in Wagga Wagga, contracted polio in 1948. He was only three years old. He, along with three other people in a very small area of Wagga Wagga, which was not a very large town then, all contracted polio at around the same time. John spent 2½ years in the Wagga Wagga hospital. Thereafter, every six months, until he was 14 years old, he would go to the Far West home in Manly for treatment. Yet John, through his perseverance and resilience and through the great medical assistance he received, managed to survive, managed to live—and continues to do so—and managed to contribute to his community. But he had an awful limp.

I remember John telling me, with amusement, about how one day he had gone into a hardware store, dragging one of his legs behind him. The fellow in the hardware store had similarly been afflicted by polio. John had asked for some sort of hardware implement, and the fellow had gone to get it and limped away. It was almost like one of those bad British comedies—although it's certainly no laughing matter in the Federation Chamber. But John said that the fellow had turned around, limping, and he thought he was taking him off. He had turned back to get the screw or the nail or the hammer or whatever it was. John had limped forward towards him, and the fellow had turned around again and asked: 'Are you taking me off? Are you mocking me?' He said, 'No, I have polio.' They became firm friends after that, both sharing an affliction that, sadly, so many in Australia had contracted.

Thankfully, due to the great work of a number of philanthropic organisations, not least of which is Rotary, we are now polio free in Australia. As the member for Macnamara so eloquently put it, hopefully we will be coronavirus free with a similar determination to roll up our sleeves and get jabbed. It is not that hard.

Polio remains endemic in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that is very unfortunate. I know that the African continent has so many countries which go without so much, but so much work has been done in Africa, thankfully, because of the philanthropic efforts of people such as Bill Gates and Rotary International. I have to say that in my home district, 9705, in and around the Riverina and Central West, Rotary clubs have dug deep for so many years to provide so many funds for this so important a cause. I commend all the efforts aimed at making sure that one day the world will be polio free, just like I hope that one day we will be coronavirus free. I commend every medical professional for taking the time in this space to do what they can to make a healthier society and a healthier world.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Riverina for his wonderful speech and also the member for Macnamara for reminding us about the work of Dame Jean Macnamara, who became world famous for her treatment of children who had been severely impacted by polio. The member for Higgins is to be congratulated for moving this motion and commended for congratulating Rotary International, the global fund, Results Australia and the work they're doing to support the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

I'll happily speak to this motion, of course, for a few reasons. First of all, I consider myself a very lucky man: my generation of Australians were the first to receive polio immunisation. I have a cousin about three years younger than me who, unfortunately, developed polio before she could be immunised and she was severely impacted. I can remember talking to my mother about how terrified people were of catching polio, or of their children succumbing to polio. When I started working in the children's hospital in Sydney, when it was at Camperdown, they still had the mechanical ventilator in the basement. It was like a big metal piston which used negative pressure to breathe for children whose respiratory muscles were paralysed by polio. Some of those children didn't survive and some that did were severely damaged. Even if they survived, in the present time many of them are suffering from post-polio syndrome.

So polio is a dreadful disease. I myself have seen children with polio—not in this country, but in the subcontinent—in my early years of training. It's a dreadful disease and we must not ever become complacent about it. Many generations of medicos have now in fact never seen the childhood illnesses of polio, tetanus or diphtheria, or even measles, because of our immunisation programs. Those are really transformative: they've transformed the medical landscape in the developed world and are doing so in the present pandemic also.

However, in the Third World, in developing countries, polio still has the potential to explode in unimmunised populations. The work of Rotary International over many decades has been trying to eradicate polio around the world, and that work continues. We're still seeing cases of polio reported in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the potential still exists for polio to occur in other countries which have low immunisation rates. We've spoken about the present pandemic; some countries in sub-Saharan Africa still have immunisation rates for COVID-19 under two per cent of the eligible population. We will not eradicate COVID and we will not reduce the health impacts of COVID around the world until our immunisation rates increase.

Immunisation is vital. I've remarked previously on Australia's role in this. Australia must step up its efforts to increase immunisation rates around the world. And it's not just in Australia; it's to our north in Papua New Guinea and in the Pacific Islands, the subcontinent and around the world where we must try to increase our COVID immunisation rates. We owe it to our neighbours and to ourselves in general to get the world population immunised for COVID. We must reaffirm our commitment to eradicating it around the world. If COVID has taught us anything, it's that we're living in a connected world and that it doesn't take long before an outbreak of disease in somewhere like South Africa comes to our shores.

Health care has come a long way since I first started studying medicine but, tragically, there are still far too many deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases—not just polio but diseases like measles. We saw an outbreak of measles in Samoa recently that killed a number of children. It's always important that we recognise the human effect of these diseases not just on our population but on populations around the world.

Unfortunately, there are people in this parliament who are actively trying to undermine our immunisation program for COVID-19, and this must stop. I welcome any steps that governments take to further our cause in eradicating not just polio but other infectious diseases around the world.

Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Macarthur, whose contributions on this and other matters are always so well considered and well thought out. I particularly want to reiterate, before I get into my speech, his point about immunisation and vaccines because it is well made and timely. Importantly, in this debate it is worth reminding people of what the member for Macarthur just said, which is that we now live in a world largely free of polio, and we are very lucky in Australia, but that this didn't just happen; this happened because public health officials globally—not just in one country but globally—made a concerted effort to eliminate polio from their countries so that we could live free of it. That's something that was achieved through vaccines that led to immunisations.

Even though it doesn't naturally flow, I also at this point want to thank Rotary International, because this was a program—and I stand to be corrected—in which they decided in the 1960s to eliminate polio from the face of the world, and they are so very close. They are incredibly close to achieving that. I came across that point when I was watching, during the recent pandemic lockdown we had—so some good came of it—Inside Bill's Brain,which is about how Bill Gates, with Rotary, has used the power of data to drive polio from so many countries. We got so very close to eliminating polio from the face of this planet, but, unfortunately, we were not successful at that time because there were hard-to-reach regions on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. We've had the withdrawal of the security forces in Afghanistan; that will now complicate matters more. Of course, the pandemic also made it very difficult for us to reach those people that needed to be reached. But we have learnt so much and we should not give up, because we are so close.

It is for that reason that Australia is committed to the global eradication of polio, and we have supported not just as a government but as a nation the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, otherwise known as GPEI. Australia itself was declared polio free in 2000, and I think it's important to remember that that was only very recent. The other day I was watching something with my 12-year-old and a thing came up saying, 'Imagine if you were transported back to a time long ago,' and it was 1994. I thought, I remember 1994 very well, so it wasn't that long ago, hopefully! But 2000 is very recent, and it was only then that we could officially say that we were polio free. It remains endemic in two countries, though there are suspicions that it is also endemic in a number of African nations. But the two that we know of are Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until poliovirus transmission is interrupted in these countries, other countries remain at risk of importation of polio. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges to polio eradication goals, through disruptions to immunisation programs and surveillance, making 2022 a critical year for polio eradication activities.

So Australia, along with the western Pacific region—and the member for Macarthur was making this very good point—was declared polio free in 2000, but there is still much work that we need to do and that we need to stay on top of in the South Pacific. We have an excellent record when it comes to polio control, with the last case of poliomyelitis caused by locally acquired wild polio virus in Australia reported in 1972 and the last imported case of WPV reported in 2007. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted public health globally through the disruptions to surveillance and immunisation activities, although we hope that this will change next year.

Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm really pleased to rise to join these important contributions from a number of colleagues this evening. This is an important topic, and it's good that it's being addressed in this chamber. I would echo the comments of many of my colleagues as I begin by saying how fortunate I am that I grew up in an environment where polio was certainly nothing I had to worry about contracting myself. My parents didn't have to worry about me contracting it, and now, with my children, I am certainly not worried about them contracting polio. I am not worried, because of the success of the vaccination program. This is truly a global success story. It shows us what happens when we, as an international community and as a nation, put the effort in—when we realise the benefits of what science has brought us and the safety that vaccines bring us from these diseases that, as many have talked about this evening, ravaged lives.

Polio left children in the position of carrying a lifelong disability or being in an iron lung, and, unfortunately, obviously, some children also died of polio. As I said, that is something that I have never had to experience in my lifetime—what a privilege. I very much hope that this is the direction that we, as a world, are heading in when it comes to COVID-19 and vaccinations. I know, when I have conversations with people in my community about vaccination, many of the stories that older people want to tell me are about their experience of the rollout of the polio vaccine in Australia—about just how important that time was and how people were anticipating and waiting for this vaccine because they'd seen the devastation that polio caused for too many families.

This is the potential that is within our grasp with the COVID vaccine now. We have excellent vaccine rates in our country. We can continue to push those higher and, of course, we can do the global work that has been happening with the polio vaccine. We can do this global work with the COVID vaccine. There is absolutely a role for Australia to play here as a good neighbour to our Pacific family and also as a good global citizen: to be a lead actor in making sure that we support countries around the world with their COVID vaccination efforts, both with vaccines and with information that combats the misinformation that is out there. There is too much misinformation, and we need people to understand the benefits that these vaccines bring. So I very much hope that is the next thing that Australia does in this space, because, as the past few days have shown us, we're not safe until the world is vaccinated, and that is really important.

As I said, this is a global success story—the effort to get polio eradicated in so many countries and also to have so many people vaccinated. I want to acknowledge the work of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, together with Rotary International, who have been such leaders in this space; the World Health Organization; other UN organisations; and the private sector, as well, who I know have been involved in this effort. I am such a supporter of this global polio initiative and I was delighted earlier this year to meet with representatives of Global Citizen, who are one of the Australian organisations who continually push us to be a supporter and an active participant in the push for global polio eradication.

Since 1988, when the World Health Assembly first resolved to attempt eradication, huge progress has been made around the world. It's estimated that 16 million people are able to walk today who otherwise would have been paralysed, some in iron lungs, and approximately 1.5 million people are now alive who might otherwise have been dead as a result of polio. This is a phenomenal achievement, and, as I said, as we face this global pandemic, it is something we can look to as to what we can achieve—as a nation, but also as a world—together.

We know that what is termed 'wild polio' is now only in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in fact Africa was certified as polio free in August 2020. This success really is a result of the GPEI's extensive worldwide community-driven vaccination program, which has been the largest of its kind in the world, to safeguard children from polio worldwide. We should be proud of Australia's efforts and the strong role we've played, investing $135 million over three decades into it. So it is important now that we don't give up—that we make that last push on polio and we continue to hunt out the inaccessible places and to battle the misinformation to eradicate polio across our world. We've shown so much can be achieved; there's just a bit more to be done.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.