Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

This is an important question, not only because it is Hearing Awareness Week but because Australian Hearing is celebrating its 60th anniversary. It is a Commonwealth agency which has operated since the last war to deliver benefits to those Australians who suffer hearing impairments. When they look across the community, not many people would realise that there are about 160,000 Australians who cannot work because of hearing disabilities. Importantly, the Australian Hearing agency has a community service obligation under which it delivers great benefits to the Indigenous community, young Australians, veterans and Australian pensioners. Funding by this government in last year’s budget and this year’s budget has seen increased services being made available to those sectors.

Importantly, in relation to Indigenous health I can tell the Senate that there are about 185 sites servicing the Indigenous sector on hearing disabilities. In fact, as a result of the increased funding Indigenous adults and children have experienced an increase of about 48 per cent on the previous year in the services delivered to them. Hearing is a very important part of Indigenous health. In addition to that, we have seen the fantastic innovation of 552 cochlear implant speech processors going to children under the cochlear implant speech processor upgrade program. This has changed the lives of young Australians who otherwise would have been severely hampered in relation to the hearing disability that they had. The ability to hear is one of the most important learning tools that we have. What this has done for these children is to open up a completely new world of learning which they otherwise would not have experienced.

In addition to that, we are servicing older members of the community. About half of the Australians who are over 60 have hearing disabilities. I would suggest that there are many senators here who would have a bit of a vested interest in this. The service delivery by Australian Hearing is quite exceptional. When you look at the way it grew from just one office at the Rocks in Sydney to over 90 service centres around Australia today, that is a testament to Australian Hearing and what it is delivering to people in Australia.

The Hearing Awareness Week that Senator Boyce mentioned is hosted by the Deafness Forum of Australia, and we acknowledge the great work that that forum has done in assisting people with hearing disabilities. It is important that we highlight the issue of hearing impairment. As a community service Australian Hearing is providing free testing during Hearing Awareness Week; 131797 is a number that is available to people if they want to be tested. Here in Parliament House, Australian Hearing is providing testing for members of parliament to demonstrate the great work that Australian Hearing has done.

It is important that the Australian government continue to resource Australian Hearing. We have been doing that with an increase of just under $70 million in the last two budgets. We will continue to resource Australian Hearing to do research which is at the cutting edge of hearing research throughout the world. Our National Acoustic Laboratories are a testament to that, because not only should we deliver those services to the people who need it but we should have the research available to provide people with the best technology, and we are doing that. (Time expired)