Senator the Hon Helen Coonan

Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts

Address to the Deloitte Foundation in Recognition of the Fred Hollows Foundation

Sydney

3 August 2005

Introduction

Thank you for those kind words Nigel. Nigel, you are a man of many responsibilities – not least of which is of course the Managing Director of SBS.

It is a real pleasure to be here this evening, on the invitation of John Azarias, to help promote the legacy of Fred Hollows and the ongoing work of the Fred Hollows Foundation.

I would like to acknowledge my colleague, Senator Bill Heffernan, Gabbi Hollows, Founding Director of the Fred Hollows Foundation, Patricia Azarias the Director of the Internal Audit Division of the United Nations, who joins us tonight all the way from New York. I would also like to acknowledge Giam Swiegers, Chief Executive Officer of Deloitte and Patron of the Deloitte Foundation.

Tonight I wish to acknowledge and honour the significant work of the Fred Hollows Foundation. I also want to make a few remarks about philanthropy more broadly and touch on the important relationship between Charities, Government and the Corporate sector.

Politics is a funny game. A little over a year ago I was the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Revenue and was responsible for collecting tax. That can be daunting and unrewarding at times.

As I look back on my time as the Minister responsible for collecting tax, it was refreshing to be involved with an initiative called Workplace Giving that harnessed the taxation system to facilitate giving by Australian workers to charitable causes.

As everyone here tonight is no doubt aware, workplace giving allows employees to elect to give a portion of their salary to selected charities through payroll reductions. It might only be $2 or $5 per week: the cost of a cup of coffee or a magazine and some employers make matching contributions.

It is good to see that the employees of Citigroup, Sydney Water and Westpac are involved with the Workplace Giving program and that the Fred Hollows Foundation is a direct recipient of this generosity.

The Charitable Government

This is an illustration of Government and Charities working together to improve the lifestyles of those in need.

The recent incredible generosity from both the Australian public and the corporate sector in response to the Asian Tsunami, in which collectively over $300 million was donated, indicates that as a nation we gladly support those less fortunate than ourselves. The current tax deductibility arrangement simply provides an incentive for that inherent goodness in most of us to go that extra yard.

When thinking about people in need, no national government can successfully pursue its economic priorities in isolation from its social policy concerns. There is a clear interdependence between the two. A nation’s economic progress depends ultimately on the condition of its society – its stability/ its cohesiveness/ its fairness and its avenues for individual self-fulfilment and equality of opportunity.

In turn, the strength of any society depends critically on the capacity of its economy to provide growth, incentives and jobs, and to fund assistance programs for those in need.

From a global perspective, Australia provides assistance because it reduces poverty and makes a real difference to people’s lives. The Government’s regular contribution to overseas aid is in excess of $2.1 billion per year. The Fred Hollows Foundation is also a beneficiary of this program having received over six million dollars since 1997.

Fred Hollows Foundation

The Fred Hollows Foundation was created in 1992 to realize a grand vision where no one, around the world, is needlessly blind and where Indigenous Australians are subject to the same health outcomes as all Australians.

The work of the Hollows Foundation is based on a well quoted phrase by Fred,

“I believe that the basic attribute of mankind is to look after each other.”

We all crave immortality, few achieve it. It is a tribute to Fred Hollows the man, that his work and his vision are now immortalised in the activities of the Foundation.

The Fred Hollows Foundation has undertaken health projects throughout 30 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The foundation does not simply seek to cure blindness in these regions, it seeks to train local doctors and provide infrastructure that allows ongoing treatment of patients in their own locality.

During its 10 th anniversary, the Fred Hollows Foundation was involved in its one millionth sight restoring operation, changing the life of Zubaida (ZOO-BY-DA) Bibi and her family in Pakistan.

Prior to losing her sight, Zubaida was the main bread winner for her family living in a remote rural village in Pakistan. Zubaida’s loss of sight, and independence, caused significant financial strain on her family. Zubaida’s loss of sight would have gone untreated if not for the work of the Fred Hollows Foundation.

Through the Foundation, with support from the Australian Government through AusAid, the one millionth intraocular lens was inserted into Zubaida’s eye. It is not necessary for me to paint a picture of the impact that Zubaida’s operation had not only for her personally but also for her family.

But the story gets more profound. The one millionth intraocular lens was manufactured in a locally owned and operated laboratory and the surgery was performed by a Fred Hollows Foundation trained doctor.

This principle of integrated service and self reliance is also a guiding principle for the Australian Government’s contribution to foreign aid as well. The concept all comes together and finds expression in an old Chinese proverb:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Both the Australian government and the Fred Hollows Foundation are strongly committed to this ideal.

Technology as an Enabler

Since becoming Minister for Communications and Information Technology I have been exposed to some of the truly mind-blowing technical innovations that are simply transforming the way we live, work and care for each other, and get better health delivery, especially in regional and remote Australia.

The lines everywhere are blurring – a car is now more computer than family sedan/ our traditional copper wire phone network now carries more data than voice / and virtual surgery over broadband is now a practical and effective option for many procedures.

But the technology, as fascinating as it is, is not an end in itself.

What matters is how our community can pick it up, adapt it, and use it to improve their lives. For instance, a high speed data network is an impressive piece of technology/ but when that network is used to beam an ultrasound from a pregnant woman in outback Queensland to her specialist in Brisbane, we can begin to see the potential for technology to address some of the tyrannies of distance in health delivery.

For instance, in my portfolio we are committed to the rollout of broadband, not just because it is a good technology, but because it simply has the potential to change the way we live and work and even in some cases, to save lives.

I’ll use an example of an incident that occurred recently in regional Victoria where technology provided an immediate benefit in cutting delays in treating and transferring a patient.

Malcolm Bennett from a small Victorian town had the unfortunate circumstance of driving a stick one inch into his eyelid after colliding with a tree whilst riding his motorbike.

He was immediately taken to the local health clinic which is serviced by one nurse.

Via a broadband connection the nurse contacted the emergency ward of Melbourne Royal’s Eye and Ear Hospital and was able to have an eye specialist assess Mr Bennett’s injury and recommend that he be transferred immediately to Melbourne, rather than waste the hour-long trip to the nearest hospital in Warnambool.

Our portfolio has funded a number of telemedicine and e-Health projects since 1997, providing about $65 million across programs such as Networking the Nation, the National Communications Funds and the Coordinated Communications Infrastructure Fund for broadband infrastructure and services to support the delivery of healthcare.

I am particulary interested in looking into how improved broadband infrastructure in remote indigenous communities can improve the delivery of health care services and provide much needed support for remote nursing staff in what can often be a very isolated environment.

Clearly, synergies exist between the great work of the Fred Hollows Foundation for indigenous Australia and the improvement of broadband infrastructure in regional and remote areas.

For example, the Outbacknet project in Queensland has provided broadband communications to the indigenous community at Cherbourg in central Queensland, with a population around 2,500. The Australian Government provided $8 million for this project through the National Communications Fund.

The broadband connection is being used for e-health services at the community hospital/ including teleradiology, ophthalmology and other services, such as remote monitoring of renal dialysis patients and hospital pre-admission clinics, through videoconferencing links. Use of the e-health facilities provides considerable savings for the local community, in time and cost of travelling to larger medical centres – Brisbane or Toowoomba – for the equivalent services. The same broadband infrastructure is also being used for improved education services at the local school and for the delivery of TAFE courses in the community.

Corporate Philanthropy

While the Government works together with many Not for Profit Organisations to achieve important social goals, these goals would remain unrealized if it was not for the help of corporate Australia.

The Fred Hollows Foundation is aided by a list of 41 corporate sponsors that help to make the goals of the foundation a reality.

Corporations such as the Macquarie Bank have enabled the delivery of programs such as the Money $tory/ a program which depicts financial reports pictorially and is especially helpful for people who do not have a high level of literacy and numeracy skills.

The Money $tory is used by Indigenous organisations across Northern Australia to improve indigenous people's abilities to participate in decision making and management.

The Fred Hollows Foundation is also supported by corporations such as Phillips Fox, Gilbert & Tobin, Woolworths, Coca Cola and News Limited Corporation. All these corporations contribute in a unique and important way towards realising the vision of the Fred Hollows Foundation.

I commend each corporate sponsor for your generous support of the Fred Hollows Foundation.

Conclusion

The Fred Hollows Foundation has an important mission to eradicate the world of avoidable blindness and improve the health outcomes of Indigenous Australians in a sustainable way.

This mission is one for which the foundation seeks and receives much support.

I thank each and everyone of you personally for your commitment in being here tonight and I would encourage you to continue to support the Fred Hollows Foundation

Renowned physicist, Francis Maitland Balfour may well have had Fred Hollows in mind when he said:

“The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness/ to an opponent, tolerence/ to a friend, your heart/ to your child a good example/ to a father deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself/ respect; to all men, charity.”

I can’t help but feel that Fred would be pleased to see us gathered here tonight in aid of his charity life’s work.

I have tried to encapsulate the life’s work of Fred Hollows, eye doctor, in this way:

In his case it was seeing what everyone has seen and doing what no one else has done so somebody else may see.

Thank you.