Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Each year around one in 30 people give blood across the country, providing whole blood, plasma and platelets, to support Australians with conditions like cancer and blood diseases, trauma patients, pregnant women and new mothers, to live full and healthy lives. Every blood donation helps to save three lives. However, with just three per cent of Australians donating blood, we must look at encouraging more Australians to donate blood where possible. Through the height of the pandemic, countries across the world were struggling to maintain blood supplies, as COVID lockdowns created a change in people's movements and lifestyles, and a wariness about being out and about led to many regular donors cancelling their donations when the omicron wave took hold late last year and into the first half of this year. The Australian Red Cross estimated that 100,000 donors were sidelined by coronavirus strains in the past few months when infection surged around the country. The number equates to around 20 per cent of the nation's public donors who either caught COVID-19 or were feeling too sick to walk into a donation centre.

In late May, Red Cross Lifeblood put out an urgent call for more than 17,000 donors to help raise supply, as the stocks plummeted to a few days supply due to a surge of the flu. In the northern Tasmanian electorate of Bass, which I represent, there are everyday members for our community who roll up their sleeves to save lives, people like 26 year old Hayden Hill, who reached a milestone of 100 donations last year. Inspired by his aunt and nurse at the Launceston General Hospital, Hayden first began donating blood age of 20, seeing blood donations as a quick and easy way to help somebody in need. He said, 'I wanted to try it but I was initially a bit nervous. Then, once I did the first time, I realised it was easy. You just roll up your sleeve and you are saving three lives every donation. Across the world we know there are a lot of people who need blood transfusions.'

There is a demonstrable need to increase the number of Australians giving blood, and I applaud the Red Cross Lifeblood for the life-saving work that they undertake every day and for their commitment to encouraging more Australians to donate. Earlier this year Australia lifted the ban on blood donations for anyone who had lived in the UK from 1980 to 1996. The ban was originally introduced in the year 2000 due to the potential risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD, commonly known as mad cow disease. New modelling has shown that the risk is incredibly low, allowing for the ban to be lifted, giving over 700,000 more people living in Australia the opportunity to donate blood.

In recent years Lifeblood Teams, a social responsibility program for workmates, friends, team mates and communities who want to make a difference together, has helped more Australians donate blood. In Tasmania alone, donors who are part of a Lifeblood Team made up about 43 per cent of the donations made across the state in 2020, with more than 900 teams contributing in that year alone.

However, today I want to shine a spotlight on an issue that still exists as an obstacle to both increasing blood donations and to overcoming discrimination faced by our LGBT community. That is the barrier to gay, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming Australians who have sex with men donating blood unless abstinent. A lifetime ban was placed on sexually active gay men in 1983. This ban was put in place at a time when HIV technology was relatively new and largely unreliable due to the window period—a term referring to the time, between someone contracting HIV and antibodies showing up in a blood test. By 2000 the regulations were revised allowing a deferral period of 12 months, and in 2012 this was reduced further to six months. Under current regulations, men and the trans community are unable to donate if they have engaged in sexual activity with men within the previous three months, essentially requiring a section of the community to practise abstinence before being able to donate.

I would like to be very clear that I certainly understand and support necessary and appropriate blood screening regulations to ensure the safety of blood supply in our country. However, constituents within my own community and across Tasmania have expressed to me that the current ban on blood donation unless practising abstinence for a period of three months sends a message that member for the LGBTIQ plus community, in particular gay men, are a threat to public health, which, particularly in this day and age, is an archaic and inappropriate message to put out to the Australian public.

Australia actually led the world when we removed the lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men, with other countries soon following. However, we are now falling behind other countries, including the UK, which have moved away from the policy of a deferral period, instead introducing a more equitable approach which is that anyone, irrespective of their sexual orientation, their gender or their partner's gender, is asked to complete an individual assessment. This approach looks at the risk based on sexual behaviour rather than the so-called group that an individual may be assigned to, meaning that the distinction applies equally to heterosexual people who may also be at risk of contracting and passing on HIV as well as other bloodborne diseases.

Dr Sharon Dane is the author of a report commissioned by Just.Equal Australia that reviewed current data and modelling and compared bans on gay blood donation, like Australia's, with a policy to screen donors for their individual risk. The report found that the latest international research shows that there is no meaningful risk attached to lifting the current abstinence requirement for blood donation by men and trans women who have sex with men and replacing it with a new policy of screening donors for their individual sexual safety. Dr Dane said:

Modelling suggests this would actually increase the amount of safe blood available to those in need of blood products.

Australian researcher Jennifer Power said in 2016 that the difference in how the gay community are treated compared to the heterosexual community, regardless of sexual behaviour, speaks to the 'trust that reveals the subtle (and not so subtle) ways in which homophobia discrimination plays out.' Power continues:

Understanding discrimination in the context of blood donation can be complicated because it is not clearly about human rights. One may not necessarily have a 'right' to donate blood. It is on these grounds that gay advocacy organisations have been criticised for calling out blood donation bans as discriminatory.

But it is discriminatory to the extent that restricting men who have sex with men from donating blood reflects and reinforces the perspective that gay and bisexual men are unreliable and require strict laws to regulate their actions—laws that are not applied to other groups.

Just a few months ago, a wonderful man in the northern Tasmanian region which I represent left a comment on my Facebook page after I published a post on the importance of organ donation. Rick, a gay man who advocated heavily for marriage equality during the plebiscite a few years ago, and a registered organ donor, commented on my page, saying:

Here's an interesting thought. Why are my organs ok to donate but not my blood?

He told me:

When we're told it's about calculating risk, it reinforces to others that we are lesser than or that HIV is a gay-only disease. It completely misses the fact that 24% of new HIV cases were heterosexual and that most gay people living with HIV are undetectable.

My team at the office all wanted to give blood and make an it a regular team excursion—so they did their first one, and I stayed in the office. Because I couldn't, there was never a second one.

He went on to say:

Can we have a gay blood bank? One where you can accept that blood and share it with other gay people who would rather live.

I understand there are many reasons why people can't give blood however all of these reasons are based on circumstance not on identity.

Again, I want to make it clear that I'm in no way demonising the critical work of Lifeblood Australia, and I understand the need for precautions. However, there is now research available indicating that a move to implementing criteria based on sexual-behaviour-based screening for all donors, regardless of gender and orientation, would be considered safe.

The UK and Canada moved to this model very recently, and Australia should follow. I understand that the Therapeutic Goods Administration is reviewing the report submitted by Just.Equal Australia, and I'm hopeful for an outcome that will both protect the blood donation supply in Australia and remove unnecessary discrimination.