Tonight I rise to help raise public awareness about the value of complementary and preventative health care.

This is certainly not a new phenomenon, but nevertheless health costs in Australia are leapfrogging inflation. By 2006-07 Australian Government outlays on health will reach an estimated $36 billion a year—this works out at $1,800 a year for every Australian. It is time we as a community invested more time, research and expense in preventing disease—at least comparable to what we invest in treating disease.

It is fair to say, that while governments have invested most admirably in health care such as the PBS, public hospitals and the Medicare reforms, subsidised health alone is not the panacea for all the health care problems we have.

Last Wednesday I co-hosted a “Wellness Dinner” at Parliament House put on by the Complementary Health Care Council, and I want to congratulate the council's Executive Director Val Johanson and Chair, Christopher Dean for their invaluable involvement and contribution to health care. I also acknowledge the speakers at the dinner and their important contributions: Professor Stephen Myers, Professor Marc Cohen, Dr Mark Donohoe, and indeed the sponsorship support of Michael Saba of Swisse and Marcus Blackmore of Blackmores.

Also yesterday I officially opened the annual conference of the Nutrition Society of Australia in Hobart, and I want to thank Jennie Brand-Miller for the work of her society in promoting healthy diets. The work required of these people and their organisations is symptomatic of the need to encourage consumers to take more responsibility for their health.

We all want to live well and live longer. We all want to maintain the lifestyle of our youth for as long as possible into middle and old age. If we aspire to this we have to work at it for years in advance, and this is why I hail the people involved in the front line of preventative health.

According to the Complementary Healthcare Council of Australia there are 14 million Australians, or 70% of the population who use a natural health care product at least once a year. As well 80% of Australian GPs are referring patients for complementary treatments, while Australians spend about $1.5 billion a year on natural health care products.

The challenge for governments at all levels is to boost consumer confidence in natural health care products as well as increasing research into natural and complementary health care. We are all well aware of the Pan Pharmaceuticals crisis and the difficult challenges the industry has faced.

In addition, I am advised that in 2000 this discipline attracted only $65,000 in research grants, while pharmaceuticals research attracted an estimated $230 million.

Last year research at Harvard University in the United States found that most people do not obtain an optimal amount of disease-fighting vitamins for their diet alone. The study recommended that all adults should take a daily multivitamin. Such multivitamins are safe, readily available and they are a cost effective way of helping to prevent chronic disease such as heart disease and some cancers.

Indeed the study by national healthcare consulting company, The Lewin Group, in the US has concluded that daily use of multivitamins by older adults could save the US health system $1.6 billion over the next five years.

The United States Government has established a National Centre for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine with a budget this year of about $A180 million.

The objectives of the centre are support for research into Complementary and Alternative Medicine, sponsoring conferences and education programmes and integrating this science into conventional medicine, and in my view has great merit if a similar type of centre, and the relevant research could be established in Australia.

I can also see benefits in the establishment of a natural Healthcare Advisory Council in Australia with the purpose of ensuring consultation and interchange with the key stakeholder groups such as the Complementary Health Care Council, the Australian Self Medication Industry, consumers, and government.

In addition I can see merit in an on-line consumer information service to provide consumers with balanced, factual information on natural healthcare. The establishment of this service would need to be acceptable to the Australian Government.

I hope the Australian Government will consider the merits, in a cost benefit analysis into the potential savings from a greater use of natural health. The benefits of glucosamine for osteo-arthritis is one such example.

Over the past two years I have been heavily involved as a Senator in promoting a healthy lifestyle in our community, both through forums in my home State on childhood obesity, and helping the advertising industry develop a pilot awareness TV advertising campaign aimed at educating our children to eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly.

The aim generally has been to increase the proportion of children and young people who participate in and maintain healthy eating and adequate physical activity.

Why? Because there are 9 million Australians either overweight or obese, and this includes 3.3 million in the high-risk obese group. Obesity is costing Australia about $1.3 billion a year, and according to the latest National Obesity Taskforce report this figure is rising fast.

Australians are getting fatter. 67% of Australian men and 57% Australian women are obese or overweight. Childhood obesity has more than doubled in the past 10 years.

There are a staggering 8000 deaths in Australia annually related to weight problems. I find that statistic extraordinary!

Obese people are six times more likely to get coronary heart disease and 10 times likely to get diabetes.

Obesity leads to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, amputations and the vicious circle of a sedentary lifestyle. We have seriously unhealthy habits and refuse to change.

As a nation we must tackle this crisis with all means available.

In the case of Australia and the USA at least, nearly half of all deaths can be prevented or postponed by effective public health practices. This is the real tragedy—these deaths are preventable long before a personal health crisis looms.

All the research confirms that obesity is the 21st Century tobacco. We now have an epidemic and the diabetes community knows it, nutritionists and doctors know it, fast food chains and processors know it, and lawyers know it. Companies that engage in advertising and marketing that encourages poor lifestyle habits are at risk of litigation.

The world's fast food companies are in danger of becoming the tobacco industry defendants of tomorrow.

I have suggested a range of initiatives which are not prescriptive or exhaustive, but which I believe deserve our consideration and development into a national strategic plan.

Last Friday the Australian Soft Drinks Association advised me they would support the regulation of soft drinks in primary schools, based on science and nutrition. The industry would need to work with State Governments, the Australian Government, and with nutritionists to determine an appropriate set of regulations and guidelines. I congratulate the Association on their efforts.

There should be legislated compulsory physical education in all primary schools throughout Australia. Some States do. Tasmania does not. Maths and English are compulsory subjects in schools, so why not physical education.

Schools and colleges need to be encouraged to provide both the venue and the time for a healthier lifestyle, integrated into the curriculum. We could do this by a series of incentives. I like to regard them as the introduction of “fitness credits” where a school would be rewarded for promoting sport and physical activity. Financial and other incentives should be provided to those schools that are pro-active in encouraging physical activity above minimum recommended levels.

I support Tuck shop Smart Cards, to empower parents to be able to determine and know what their children buy from the school canteen or tuck shop. I know school canteen auxiliary bodies support this measure, because it becomes another way of involving the parent in the student's well-being and development. I support the accreditation of school canteens and believe we can do more to promote a balanced healthy diet for children.

Doctors should be encouraged to make lifestyle prescriptions for patients, such as a timetable and guidelines for walking, jogging, or other physical activity. GPs should work more closely with the health and fitness industry to achieve this objective.

Government, business and community groups and families should work together to encourage Internet, video games and video television-free weekends. As my colleague, Youth Affairs Minister Larry Anthony, says—get off the Play Station and get out into the Playground.

In summary there is much being done and much to be done, for the sake of our children.

Within a few decades I trust and pray that we will look back and say—that fixing the obesity epidemic was a triumph, and as vital and historic as changing attitudes and behaviour towards smoking.

Finally, but not least of all, I want to congratulate Dr Peter Little of the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, for his appointment last Sunday as National President of Diabetes Australia.

Dr Little is highly regarded and will do an excellent job. I also acknowledge the outstanding contribution of Graham Harris, his predecessor, and thank him for this.

Diabetes is a mass killer which can be both contained from spreading and controlled among those with diabetes. In this regard Dr Little takes on an enormous but vital task, and for the sake of those one million Australians who have diabetes I commit myself to his success and that of Diabetes Australia in helping people with diabetes.

I am aware that one of his key objectives will be to identify the 500,000 Australians who have diabetes but as yet don't know they have it.

In addition I can assure all Australians with diabetes that the Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group chaired by Judi Moylan MHR, will be working to meet this objective also.