Australians are getting bigger.
Senator LUNDY (Australian Capital Territory) (10.22 pm)-Tonight I rise to once again bring the Senate’s attention to one of the most glaring policy failures after nine long years of the Howard government: Australia’s general population is physically bigger. Current estimates suggest that 2.4 million Australian adults are obese and a further 4.9 million are overweight. Levels of obesity amongst women have doubled in the last 15 years. Well over 30 per cent of Australian children are overweight or obese with the most recent estimates of obese children being 12 per cent.
This is not a new story. TV current affairs programs have been doing stories on this issue for the last few years. The print press has also been quite diligent with barely a week going by without a major paper running a story about this crisis with regular reporting of the rising incidence of the diseases associated with the so-called obesity epidemic. Glossy lifestyle magazines have been focussed on health, weight and fitness for as long as I can remember. In short, this issue is well recognised and gets a great deal of media attention.
What is alarming is that in spite of the widespread public discussion of the national population’s weight problems the situation continues to get worse. There are a range of potential health problems raised by a larger proportion of the adult population being overweight, and this has a dramatic impact on overall public health. There will be a related rise in debilitating and life threatening conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, cancer rates and a range of other health problems.
CSIRO research suggests that 11 per cent of cancers are attributable to low consumption of vegetables and fruit. In terms of health care costs, it is estimated that low vegetable intake-that is, less than four average sized serves per day-accounts for 17 per cent of the cost of bowel cancer, 2 per cent of the cost of breast cancer and 9 per cent of the cost of both lung and prostate cancer. Twenty-one percent of the cost of lung cancer and 4 per cent of the cost of breast cancer is attributable to low fruit intake-that is, less than three serves per day. The protective effects of vegetables and fruit against cancers as well as other diseases such as coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes should led to the promotion of vegetables and fruit consumption as a national public health priority.
Australians are aware of the problem. They read about the problem, they discuss the problem but nevertheless continue to add to the problem. What is fundamentally missing is leadership. The Howard government has not provided enough leadership to make a difference to turn this trend around. Only last month the health minister, Mr Abbott, released a longitudinal study on women’s health, which has been collecting data since 1996. This study proved what had long been suspected: adult women’s weight levels are increasing across the board. The study proved that younger and mid-age women’s levels of obesity have increased since the study’s first survey in 1996. In 1996, 5.9 per cent of younger women were classified as obese, and this had increased by the most recent survey to 13.9 per cent. The corresponding figures for mid-age women are 17.7 per cent obese in 1996 and 22.8 per cent today. These figures only include the obese category and, if one factors in the figures in the overweight category and above from the study, we find that 34.3 per cent of young women today are overweight or above and 54.3 per cent of mid-age women today are overweight or above.
The causes of this trend are changes in our diet and levels of exercise. Figures show that the Australian population has increased its overall energy intake over the last couple of decades. The National Nutrition Survey has shown that this increase has mainly derived from a 20 per cent increase in total consumption of carbohydrates. This includes but is not limited to things like pizza, chips, cakes, biscuits, bread and a 20 per cent increase in sugar intake. There is evidence that rates of participation in physical activity are declining. Three surveys undertaken by the National Public Health Partnership for the Getting Australia active report showed the rates of the proportion of the adult population that met the criterion for sufficient physical activity for health benefit had declined from 62 per cent in 1997 to 57 per cent by the year 2000.
So we are eating more high energy foods and doing less physical exercise. There are many reasons for this trend. The hectic pace of modern life and longer work hours has left adults less time to exercise and with a greater reliance on convenience foods with pre-prepared food ingredients. At the same time, the nature of people’s pastimes are becoming more sedentary. I know from experience that for people exhausted from long hours at work and hectic, domestic responsibilities pastimes such as watching TV start to grow in appeal.
Many other factors come into play-for example, the general perception of it being less safe in urban environments has contributed to fewer people, particularly children, exercising in public places and parks. Also, there is the propensity for people to drive shorter distances where previously they may have walked or ridden their bikes-again, usually because of time pressures or perceptions about decreased safety in the community.
Regardless of the barriers that are preventing Australians from being more physically active and eating well whether it is isolation, affordability, busy lives, poor attitude or the need for nutrition education, the results are now plainly obvious: we are less active and weigh more than at any time in our history. This crisis has not suddenly ambushed the government. This data has been demonstrable for some period of time. All of this has been well documented as happening since 1996-over the last nine years; over these long nine years of the Howard government. For once the Howard government cannot point the finger at somebody else-this crisis has developed on their watch. There has been a massive policy failure on behalf of the Howard government to encourage and support a fit and healthy Australian society. It is not right when you think that our whole ethos in Australia is about getting into the outdoors, getting physical and playing lots of sport. It does not fit, and the Howard government is to blame for this trend.
Under the Howard government, Active Australia, the former Sports Commission Division responsible for the delivery of physical activity participation programs to all Australians, was effectively axed. The policies put forward by the Howard government have been farcical and inept such as the short-lived ‘fat grants plan’, under which it was proposed that members of parliament would lobby for funds to support healthy living projects in their electorate regardless of need.
The Howard government also completely ignored the findings and recommendations of its own National Obesity Taskforce which were handed down in November 2003. It was after Labor introduced innovative plans on obesity in 2003 that the Howard government were finally forced to move and in the following budget and again in June we had the Building a Healthy Active Australia initiative. It is important to note that the targeted sports program was a dismal failure and there are emerging problems with their after-school sports program. There is certainly no sign that these programs are changing the obesity and overweight profiles of Australia’s kids.
The major limitations with their policies to date are that they have been entirely focused on obesity in children. That is a critical area, but it is not sensible to ignore the issue confronting many adult Australians as well. The Howard government seems intent on ignoring this aspect of the problem-adult obesity-and perhaps just hoping it will go away. Well, it won’t, and the figures on women’s health I quoted earlier from the longitudinal study which were released last month demonstrate that. What was Mr Abbott’s response to the release of these catastrophic results? One would have assumed Mr Abbott would have outlined a major government initiative to try and turn around this trend, but no. Mr Abbott merely rehashed adult health and fitness initiatives that had already been announced some years before-dietary guidelines, the food selection guide, the Australian Guide Healthy Eating and national physical guidelines.
There are many good initiatives around the country, such as in school canteens. Many adults are getting together and finding their own solutions, but I cannot give the Howard government any credit for this. This is happening because of champions in those committees: the teachers, the principals, the sports and recreation leaders who are doing it themselves. But the Howard government cannot hide behind the efforts of the community. If the current trends continue unchecked, the authors of the most recent women’s health study have estimated that women who are in the 20- to 30-year age bracket today will be on average 13 kilos heavier when they reach 50.
It is notable today that the CSIRO, as under-resourced as they are, are helping to fill the policy void with the release of their new book the Total Welbeing Diet. I congratulate Dr Manny Noakes and Dr Peter Clifton and their team. This book is a bestseller and fulfils a dire need to inform Australians in layman’s terms and through practical advice about the basics of good nutrition. Most importantly, it promotes the dual strategy for healthy living with nutritious eating on one side and more physical exercise on the other. (Time expired)
