Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I endorse the comments of the chair, Senator Gallacher. While the government did not agree with all of the recommendations—there were 18 in the main report; they were noted or agreed to—there was not one recommendation that the government rejected. But, as Senator Gallacher said, if you look at the criteria, such as maternal health, there has been no improvement since independence. If you look at childhood mortality, if you look at the growth rate of children, if you look at early education there really is a long, long way to go—especially with domestic violence, particularly in the highlands.

One of the areas of real concern to the committee—and I applaud the secretariat as well as those who made submissions and appeared before the committee—is that issues relating to multidrug-resistant TB are increasing dramatically; they are not stable. Some of the recommendations talked about some of the funding, which we know is going into that space. It is important to Australia, of course, because the distance between Papua New Guinea and the northern reaches of Australia is such that an aluminium dinghy carrying someone with multidrug-resistant TB is a possibility of coming here, into our population of people. It is a high risk.

As Senator Gallacher said, in addition to the main report the coalition senators made three further recommendations, all of which were agreed to by the government, including: (1) a continuation to recognise and support the important role played by churches, NGOs and other civil society organisations, because they certainly do seem to be the ones that are largely kicking goals; and (2) the government continues to encourage the building of new partnership between these organisations and the PNG government by way of building local capacity to tackle development challenges, and that seems to be a spot where that work needs to be undertaken.

But in the few minutes available to me, I do want to place on record the work of YWAM—Youth With A Mission. They have two medical ships that they operate. Their home base is in Townsville, where we visited them. An earlier vessel, which they still have in use, was a Japanese longline fishing boat. It is largely now being supported by a vessel built by Austal shipping in Fremantle—a fact that Senators Cash and Smith will be interested in and pleased to learn. It had been a cruise vessel. The interesting thing is it spends about 10 months of the year in the waters around the coastline and up the rivers of Papua New Guinea. It is funded partially by the Australian government through DFAT, by the Papua New Guinea government and by some regional governments. Either the vessel itself or a fleet of rigid inflatables go up the river systems and bring people down onto those vessels, particularly the big catamaran. The catamaran houses about 60 personnel, the vast majority of whom are actually volunteers: doctors, specialists, dentists, nurses, those with expertise in gynaecology and in obstetrics.

Many of these people come from remote villages and remote areas. Often they will come three or four days in canoes before they are put onto rigid inflatable vessels and they can be treated on one of these medical ships by YWAM It is one of the most successful and innovative programs, and of course the volunteers pay their own way to Townsville, to Moresby or to Lae, where they board the vessel. The vessel also has on board senior medical students from either Australian or, I think, one Papua New Guinea university.

I will leave you with one story. A 17-year-old boy with bilateral cataracts was facing blindness at 17 for the rest of whatever length of life that young fellow was to have. He was brought down by canoe onto one of the rigid inflatables and onto the medical vessel. There are tremendous surgical facilities. Both cataracts were replaced. He will now have a fully sighted, fully useful life, hopefully well into his sixties or seventies. It is a very practical process, obviously supported by Australians, supported by philanthropists—in fact, I am proud to say another Western Australian based fuel company, Puma, is providing much of the fuel—and they are even looking forward to the prospect of having a helicopter on board that vessel so they can go even further.

So I support the comments of Senator Gallagher, who chaired this committee. There is a long way to go. In my view, we are not achieving what we need to be. There needs to be greater engagement by government officials from Australia working with government officials in Papua New Guinea—although I know it is happening now in police and in other areas like customs, immigration and health. But there is a long way to go, and I think we are going to be supporting Papua New Guinea for a long time into the future.

I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.