HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK

Emerging diseases – Ready and waiting?

The Shine Dome, Canberra, 19 October 2004

Welcome

Dr Gerry FitzGerald
Chief Health Officer for Queensland

I would like to acknowledge Professor Julie Campbell. To all the other distinguished speakers: Frank Fenner, I think, deserves special mention. You always recognise him – he is the one with all the rabbits following him round, threatening violence to him! And to all of the High Flyers. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Queensland and to this day's work. Welcome to the Smart State, as I am sure the Premier would like me to say. I need to offer apologies for both the Premier and the Minister for Health. It is a sitting day in parliament today, and therefore both politicians are required to be there.

When I was asked to welcome you here today, the invitation got me thinking a bit about the term ‘think tank'. I was wondering what the origin of it was, and how the two terms got together. Unfortunately, I could only find a descriptive definition in my dictionary: ‘A group of highly qualified specialists, dedicated to solving particular problems and generation of productive ideas'. So you all can claim highly qualified specialist status.

I was intrigued by the origin of the term. After all, if you divide it up into the two terms, to think is ‘to form or conceive in the mind' and a tank is ‘a large receptacle or structure for holding water'. Thus the challenge before you today is to form or conceive in the mind a receptacle for holding water – or another liquid or gas, which I suppose brings in air heads, water heads, whatever other pejorative terms you like.

Yet the program seems to have wandered far from that literal task, and will confront you with the challenging prospect of considering the emerging diseases of human, plant, animal and aquatic health. How odd it is to realise that we appeared to have conquered many of the traditional diseases of our society, and Mother Nature just rose to the challenge and found some new ones to challenge us with.

I can only speak, obviously, for the human health challenges. When I graduated, we thought we had the infectious diseases licked, yet today new diseases are posing serious challenges to our society. We read with horror of the 20 million people who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic around the world. However, that is the same number as those who have died from AIDS. There are over 40 million people who are living with AIDS today – up to 40 per cent of some Central African countries.

Add to that SARS, avian flu and the lifestyle diseases of a rich culture, and it is clear that many of the new challenges will threaten our health and welfare in ways that we can only yet dream of or imagine. These diseases are posing incredible challenges to us, to our health system and, through that, to the economy of our country.

Your task is to identify the challenges and to also identify some lateral and creative solutions that may help governments around Australia. As you do so, may I take the liberty of posing an extra intellectual challenge: to come up with solutions that can be delivered. Often we think we can find solutions that are intellectually rigorous, but they cannot be delivered because of the impediments either of politics or of the economic impact or whatever. So being really creative is to come up with solutions that will actually work.

Perhaps your considerations could also attend to those diseases that may not be new in themselves but whose continuing presence challenges our health system. How long are we going to continue to tolerate that our indigenous Australians live an average of 20 years less than the remainder of Australia? And it has not changed really significantly in the last 10 to 20 years.

Our Premier, as you know, is personally and passionately committed to the Smart State agenda. What he is seeking to do is to convert the industrial base of Queensland from agriculture and mining to a knowledge-based economy. Those of us who share that vision understand the importance of that structural change, both to our economy and to the advantage that it will bring to our children and their children. The expression of that agenda is evident from the rapid development of our research facilities around the state, and the support of intellectual pursuits in almost all aspects of the Queensland political landscape.

So, ladies and gentlemen, you are most welcome to Queensland. I hope your endeavours prove both constructive and enjoyable. I do hope those of you who are visiting us will enjoy a little of our hospitality. We even turned some rain on in the last 24 hours to welcome you, to make things green up a bit. I offer you our best wishes and good luck to your proceedings. I certainly look forward to hearing back from Julie about all the wonderful discoveries or solutions that you have come up with.

It is certainly my pleasure to welcome you here today.