Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I am delighted to talk about Friends of Dementia. We had an event here at Parliament House this morning. It's hard to believe, but that friendship group has been going for 20 years. That's a significant amount of time during which Dementia Australia has been driving education and awareness programs through parliament. So I'm delighted to be the co-convener of that friendship group with Nola Marino. I want to give a big shout-out to Professor Graeme Samuel AC for his leadership as the chair and of course Maree McCabe as the CEO of Dementia Australia. To all the staff who helped put on this showcase around technology today, I say thank you very much. If every single day I get the opportunity to talk about dementia and to raise awareness around dementia, then I will continue to do that. It is quickly becoming the biggest killer of Australians. That's a reality. At the moment, it's the biggest killer of women in this country. It will overtake heart disease. So it's very significant. I've had the experience of having a family member with early-onset dementia. I know how that impacts family, how it impacts the economy and the support that is needed.

This week, I say thank you to Senator Marielle Smith. She brought some wonderful speakers to talk to us last night in relation to childhood dementia. There wasn't a dry eye in that room when we heard a mother talking about her two children, her daughter and her son. She showed us a beautiful video of the two children the day after they had received their diagnosis. Her daughter is now 14. She has the body and strength of a 14-year-old, but her mind and capacity are that of an 18-month-old child. She has lost her ability to speak. Then, having gone through this thus far—and she knows what the end will be, because life expectancy is normally only your late teens—this mother will watch her son go down that same path. So part of my responsibility as the co-convener of Friends of Dementia is to raise awareness. Technology is an additive that will help people on that journey to lead a better life. But we have to educate our nurses, our GPs, our ambos and people in accident and emergency services. They are all wonderful professionals, but the reality is that people who are going into residential aged care or providing that care in peoples' homes need to have a greater understanding of what that journey is all about and how confusing it can be.

I can tell you that this morning I tried out the new goggles that they have. They're always being updated. It's a wonderful experience to put those goggles and earphones on and to try and navigate a virtual reality of being in a bedroom and trying to find your way to the bathroom. You will see the impact that patterned carpet will have when you're looking through these goggles. This is what people who have dementia experience. You see the floor coming up at you and all these bugs crawling around. When you go into the bathroom—I did manage to get to the bathroom; or I thought I did, but I was actually in the laundry—you need to be able to distinguish between the handbasin and the toilet.

Some years ago, I went to Scotland and I went to Stirling University. Over there then, they had a room set up with all the additional things we should be providing to people with dementia who are still living at home. You need to have a glass door for the refrigerator so they can see that. You need to have proper lighting so you're not actually creating shadows. You need to be able to distinguish, as I said, between the toilet and the handbasin. And the colours that you use in that bathroom or mats on the floor—we would see something as a dark coloured mat, but in fact a person with dementia would see that as a hole. We have to continue to raise awareness. I encourage all those who are listening to this and are in the chamber to reach out to Dementia Australia, take that journey and have that experience. It will give you a greater understanding and, I am sure, more empathy. But we need more money in the budget as well.