Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As one of the co-sponsors of the Close the gap exhibition that was held recently, showing the positive outcomes that have been achieved in recent years, I am very pleased to take part in this debate. Although I appreciate and share with Senator Siewert an understanding of the enormity of the task facing us as a community, I do not for an instant want to downplay the extent of progress in this area and the way in which Australians have, in a very real way in recent years, come to grapple with this issue in a much more tangible and effective way than has been the case in the past. I will spend some time, in my remarks today, talking about the progress that has been made in dealing with the significant disadvantage of Aboriginal Australians with respect to health.

The first thing to put on record, of course, is that the challenge in closing the gap between the standards of health of Aboriginal Australians and other Australians is a truly enormous one. Health outcomes for Aboriginal Australians are, frankly, unacceptable. They are far behind those of other Australians, and it remains a major national challenge to deal with the difference between those two sets of statistics. For example, in 2003 babies born to Indigenous women weighed, on average, 219 grams less than babies born to non-Indigenous women. Babies born to Indigenous women were more than twice as likely to be of low birth weight—less than 2½ kilos—than were those born to non-Indigenous women. Indigenous babies are more likely to die in their first year than non-Indigenous babies. For example, in 2002-04 the infant mortality rate for Indigenous babies was highest in the Northern Territory, where 15 babies died out of 1,000 births, and in Western Australia, where 14 babies died out of 1,000 births. The rate for the total Australian population is only five deaths per 1,000 births.

It is possible to quote a very large number of areas where those sorts of depressing statistics are replicated—in areas like cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic kidney disease. It will not be difficult for anyone in this debate to quote at great length such statistics, which have been very carefully compiled by a variety of health bodies in this country. Australia needs to confront those statistics with great energy and commitment—with the same kind of energy and commitment that would behove any major national challenge of these dimensions. Our response has to be well informed by the life experience of Aboriginal people and the cultural environment in which those people live.

We must accept that the answers to these problems will be extremely expensive. We must also accept that the solutions go beyond simply putting in place a variety of services which either are not there at the moment or are there at grossly inadequate levels. We must act with the knowledge of the background to the failings of existing services—a background which is very complex and needs to be well understood. There are issues to do with: the remote locations where many Indigenous Australians live; the lack of suitable infrastructure for other social services such as housing and education, which are very much part of the total picture with respect to Indigenous Australians; the low literacy levels that Indigenous Australians experience; the lack of a pattern over several generations of interaction with health services; and lifestyle issues such as high levels of alcohol and substance abuse. Most importantly, in examining the solutions to these problems we have to accept that there have been many generations of dispossession and disadvantage which have severely damaged the capacity of Aboriginal families to address endemic health problems in their communities.

But it is vital for an informed and a fair debate on this subject that we present a balanced view of the health issues facing Indigenous Australians. An approach which emphasises only the distance that we as a nation have yet to go, and does not note and record the progress that we have made on these subjects, runs the risk of persuading many people that the problem is indeed insoluble. The endless trotting out of these statistics about poor results in Aboriginal health will tend to lead people to the conclusion that we simply cannot win. We can sustain better outcomes, and indeed the truth is that we have done just that in a number of key areas in recent years.

Senator Siewert said that we are making no progress. With great respect, that is untrue. The available information about health outcomes for Indigenous people, while still far from acceptable, does point to some real progress in a number of key areas. The all-cause Indigenous mortality rate, for example, in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia, where such a large proportion of our Indigenous community lives, decreased by 16 per cent over the period from 1991 to 2003. I mentioned the Indigenous infant mortality rate. Again, it is an unacceptably high rate of infant mortality but that same rate has declined by 44 per cent over the period 1991 to 2003. With great respect, to suggest that because the life expectancy of Indigenous Australians is lower than it is for people in Bangladesh does not establish the proposition that we are therefore not making any progress against that benchmark. In fact, we are improving the position of many Indigenous people, and in many respects we are able to point to ways in which all Aboriginal people have had better outcomes in a variety of areas.

Death caused by circulatory disease declined at a faster rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than for other Australians, and the gap between outcomes for them and for the rest of us have narrowed. New figures from the Menzies School of Health Research show a marked improvement in the life expectancy of Indigenous people born in the Northern Territory. The report, released in April, compares figures from the 1960s with data collected in 2004. That study shows some very interesting things with respect to the life expectancy of Indigenous men and women in the Northern Territory. Life expectancy of Indigenous men in that period has increased by eight years—from 52 years of age to 60 years of age. I do not deny for one instant that 60 years compared with other Australians is still completely unacceptable, but it is real progress and we should note that in a balanced debate about these issues. The increase in life expectancy for Indigenous women in the Northern Territory has increased even more dramatically from 54 years of age to 68 years of age. That is important to note in a debate like this.

Part of the reason for that has been a very substantial additional investment, particularly in the last few years, by the Australian government. In fact, there has been a real increase in spending on Indigenous health of 210 per cent since the 1996-97 financial year. At that time we were spending federally $110 million on Indigenous health; today we are spending $440 million each year on Indigenous health. Even that benchmark is being greatly overshadowed by very significant new announcements with respect to health spending in this area. The most recent budget announced new funding of $112.5 million over four years for three new measures to increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s access to primary health care, to improve child and maternal health outcomes and to improve the quality of Indigenous health services through accreditation mechanisms and support.

The last four budgets—and there were processes such as the budget itself, COAG and the Intergovernmental Summit on Violence And Child Abuse in Indigenous Communities—committed over $470 million to improve Indigenous Australians’ health. Those are real benchmarks of progress. Although I accept that inputs are not the same as outcomes, it is very important that when we talk about these things we look at the ways in which these issues have changed over the last few years. Senator Siewert, it is not true to say that we are going backwards; it is not true to say that we are making no progress. (Time expired)