COMMITTEES
Ms JORDAN-BAIRD (Gorton) (11:05): For the past decade, deaths from overdose have been higher than road traffic deaths in Australia every year. Behind these deaths are thousands of Australians—individuals, families and communities—living with the consequences of alcohol and other drug harms. These harms are a complex web of challenges presenting across our health and welfare systems in our hospitals, in family and domestic violence cases, in mental health challenges, in homelessness, and in those lives who have been lost.
In those lives lost are the grieving families and communities they leave behind. They are also felt in less visible ways—in a parent worried about their child, in people struggling to keep their job or maintain a relationship, or in families trying to find that support. That's why this inquiry and this report is so incredibly important.
I'm really proud to be a member of the Standing Committee for Health, Aged Care and Disability, and I was a member on this committee throughout this federal inquiry. I'm really proud of the report that we're delivering to the Minister for Health and Ageing. I'd like to thank the committee's chair, the member for Macarthur, and our deputy chair, the member for Kooyong, for their tireless work on this report and steadfast leadership, along with the other committee members.
The presentation of this report follows an extensive inquiry spanning two parliaments, receiving more than 300 written submissions and holding 15 public hearings across Australia. I want to acknowledge those who shared those experiences with us. Speaking openly about addiction, treatment and recovery isn't always easy.
People often revisit really painful moments, and it takes a certain courage to share these experiences with a parliamentary inquiry. The contribution of individuals and communities have been invaluable to the work of this committee. They remind us that the people experiencing these difficulties must have a voice in the shaping of our response.
I also want to recognise the organisations supporting people and families every single day, like those at Cyrenian House in Western Australia, where we visited alongside our public committee hearings in Perth earlier this year. Cyrenian House has been providing alcohol and other drug treatment services since 1981 and providing services including counselling, community based support, withdrawal services, residential therapeutic communities, and aftercare and transitional support.
They showed us what a continuum of care can look like, because there's no single pathway into or out of alcohol and other drug dependence. Recovery can mean building relationships, finding stable housing, processing trauma, treating mental health conditions and reconnecting with education or employment. Support needs to recognise these circumstances, and it needs to continue as people move between services.
Cyrenian House demonstrates the value of a person centred approach, focusing not on just abstinence but the broader social, psychological and behavioural factors often involved in substance abuse and recovery. It's approaches like Cyrenian House which have informed the concepts which underpin our report, including that alcohol and other drug dependence doesn't occur in isolation.
It can intersect with mental health, trauma, housing insecurity, family and domestic violence, and involvement with the justice system as well. This report recognises the overlaps between these issues and recommends a multipronged approach to reform, which brings me to the many recommendations for reform presented in the report. On alcohol, the report recommends a new mandatory advertising and marketing framework, national standards for online alcohol sales and delivery and further work on alcohol taxation and point-of-sale data.
On prevention and early intervention, the report recommends evidence based alcohol and other drug education in secondary schools, better support for parents, routine alcohol screening in primary and antenatal care, and continued action on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. On overdose and illicit drugs, the report recommends a nationally coordinated early warning system, continued expansion of Take Home Naloxone and the use of drug checking and testing to support harm minimisation.
These recommendations matter nationally, but the submissions that have been made to this inquiry from stakeholders all over the country show the deep impacts they can have in local communities. In my own community in Melbourne's western suburbs, over the past decade in Brimbank, emergency ambulance call out rates for heroin use have been consistently far higher than the state average.
Meanwhile, in the Melton local government area, Melton hospital's admission rate for illicit drugs is nearly double the Greater Melbourne average. My community is made up of young people, with those aged between 25 and 30 accounting for the highest proportion of drug related ambulance attendances, hospital admissions and treatment episodes. When local rates of drug related ambulance call-outs and hospital admissions are substantially higher than metropolitan and state averages, we need prevention, treatment and harm-reduction services that are capable of responding to that need.
We need people to be able to access support early, before substance use becomes a crisis, before a family reaches breaking point and before an ambulance or emergency department becomes the first point of intervention, because behind every one of those statistics is a person and a family and a community who feel the consequences. This report gives us a clear opportunity to do better, to intervene earlier, to make treatment more accessible and to ensure that our response to alcohol and other drug harm reflects the complexity of the lives of the people experiencing it.
Most importantly, it recognises that alcohol and other drug harm is not inevitable and that, with practical evidence based action, we can prevent harm, support recovery and save lives. On that note, I commend this report to the House. Debate adjourned.