Transcript ABC 774 Melbourne Mornings with Jon Faine 27 September 2012
View by date:
Previous MinistersPDF printable version of Transcript ABC 774 Melbourne Mornings with Jon Faine 27 September 2012 (PDF 93 KB)
27 September 2012
E&OE Only
Topics: dementia, ageing
Jon Faine: As you heard in the news this morning, there's a new report that's just been released from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare predicting a substantial increase in the number of people who are going to be living with dementia in Australia, which poses significant challenges for the community, the medical profession, and of course, also the Government. Mark Butler is the Minister in the Gillard Government with responsibilities for mental health and ageing, which means it ticks both the boxes of his portfolio.
Mark Butler, good morning to you.
Mark Butler: Morning, Jon.
Jon Faine: The report is startling, what do we do?
Mark Butler: Well, it is startling, but it's not the first report that we've received that gives this sort of picture over the next decade, out to 2050. We've received a number of these reports, mainly generated by the excellent work of Alzheimer's Australia.
So, this has been on our agenda for some time, and certainly I've been saying over the last couple of years that I've been in this portfolio that I think dementia will be the major health challenge for Australia in the 21st century. It follows a number of major phases in public health policy over the last 100 years, and I think we are in the process of trying to re-gear our system to deal with what is going to be a tsunami of dementia cases over the coming decades.
Jon Faine: Why are there so many more?
Mark Butler: Well, we're living a lot longer, really. I mean, that's the major reason.
Jon Faine: Is it as simple as that?
Mark Butler: Well, it is as simple as that in some ways. I'm not a researcher, but I've been taking advice on these issues for a couple of years.
We still don't have a great understanding of what causes dementia, and this is a major research challenge, particularly in the western world but increasingly, as countries like China and others age, for the whole of the world as well. To understand what is happening to the brain as dementia develops and how are we able, if not to cure it completely, then at least to defer or delay the onset of dementia by a number of years that would dramatically reduce the incidence of the disease.
Now, we've been doing excellent research here in Australia. Actually Colin Masters who's a researcher down in Melbourne revealed in the 1980s one of the most important discoveries about what happens to the brain with dementia, with a particular protein - the beta amyloid protein - appearing on the brain. But frankly, in the last 30 years, our understanding of why that protein develops on the brain and what might be done to arrest the development of that protein has been too little.
Jon Faine: So we need to spend more on research, we need to look - do we need to look at diet and lifestyle and all of those sorts of factors as well?
Mark Butler: Well, what we're understanding more and more is that the causes of other major chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease and cancer, heart disease and things like that are probably significant risk factors in dementia. So smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol and poor levels of physical activity and poor diet. We also know that increasingly that…
Jon Faine: Yeah, but you can get people who are teetotallers, non-smokers and they still get dementia.
Mark Butler: Well, they do. It's a risk factor, it's not a direct cause. But we're increasingly understanding that for Alzheimer's, which is the major form of dementia, that those three risk factors are probably at play as well.
But there's no question we need to do more research. Frankly, our capacity to research what is happening in the brain has been limited up until recently because we could only do much of that research post-mortem, after someone had died, when we were able to look at their brain.
Mark Butler: Now, we can do much more because of the revolution in imaging technology with PET scanners and things.
Jon Faine: What happens in other countries with equivalent economies and lifestyles? Is the same increase in dementia being experienced in Canada? In France? In England?
Mark Butler: Yes, frankly. Yes is the short answer.
Jon Faine: So, it's not something unique to us?
Mark Butler: Not it's not. Alzheimer's Australia is part of an international organisation. They collaborate very, very well. And researchers like Colin Masters and other researchers in Australia do work with their colleagues in North America and Western Europe and Japan in particular.
So, this is really something that doesn't seem to be dramatically different from country to country. Certainly western countries have a very fast growing number of people in their 70s and 80s who are experiencing this, but it’s also something that countries like China with a fast ageing population behind us are going to experience in the near future as well.
Jon Faine: It's going to cost a fortune then, isn't it?
Mark Butler: Well, it will, but it won't be the first major health challenge that Australia has had to deal with. I mean, in the post-war period we had to deal with an explosion of heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases, and you've seen over the last four decades a reduction in cardiovascular disease-related deaths by about three-quarters in adult males for example because of things like a reduction in smoking, and improved diet and things like that.
Before World War II, the premature death was significantly caused by infectious diseases that we researched and we beat through good public health policies, and I'm confident we're smart enough to do the same here in Australia again.
Jon Faine: So there are major challenges here and we will have to address them.
While I have you, and you knew this was coming, Lindsay Tanner yesterday was on this programme as he was on other media also saying that the party you're a member of and a minister in the Government of, your party's in deep trouble. Which side of the ledger do you fall on? Do you agree or disagree with him?
Mark Butler: Well, I think there's a tendency of former politicians to do a couple of things unfortunately. One is to reach for the rose-tinted glasses that say that everything was great when I was up-and-coming as a Labor MP, and everything's pretty bad now. I mean - and I think there's a bit of that in Lindsay's analysis.
But also, there's a tendency to over-dramatise things. I mean, Bob Carr got it right, I can't count the number of times I've read analyses over the last several years that there's some existential threat to the Labor Party because it's all focused on machine politics and not on reform. Well, if you really analyse what we're doing - what we've done over the last few years and we're planning to do in areas like disability and education, there is a very strong reform agenda.
Now, that doesn't mean the party's perfect. The party, since I've been associated with it, for 20 years has had its gnarly edges, and I think it will always be that way. But I think Lindsay's over-dramatising what's happening.
Jon Faine: Well, he's certainly shedding light on the inner-sanctum of Kevin Rudd and says that the Government that Kevin Rudd was in charge of was not as dysfunctional as is portrayed by those who these days have an interest in talking down the legacy that he and others contributed to.
Mark Butler: Well, I wasn't a member of Cabinet at that time, I certainly wasn't a member of the inner-sanctum, the gang of four so-called, so Lindsay brings a particular perspective to that which I can't argue with one way or the other.
Jon Faine: No, but you're immersed in the life of a Labor politician at the very highest level. This is, as was remarked upon by Chris Uhlman last night on 7:30, just as you're starting to put some of this behind you, Maxine McKew's book is about to be published; it's all come back and bouncing around again.
Mark Butler: Yeah but I just don't think there's a way of avoiding these retrospectives, and unfortunately people do tend to focus on them, particularly as they've moved out of politics. You know, I and the rest of us in Cabinet, have too many important issues to focus on today and challenges of the future like the one we've been talking about to really pour over the entrails of what was happening two or three years ago.
Jon Faine: So, you'd rule out ever doing it yourself?
Mark Butler: I think people would have many views about that but I'm not sure there's a great deal to be gained in debating it at length.
Jon Faine: Do you keep a diary?
Mark Butler: No, I don't. Well, I keep a diary in terms of my appointments but not a diary or retrospective of what happened in my day.
Jon Faine: No, a memoir diary.
Mark Butler: I never have. No, I never have.
Jon Faine: Not going to write a book?
Mark Butler: Well, I might. I'd love to write a book one day but I'd like it to be about a policy challenge like ageing and dementia and things like that, not about, who said what to whom.
Jon Faine: Thank you for your time.
Mark Butler: Thanks Jon.
Jon Faine: Mark Butler, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing in the Gillard Government. He's from South Australia.
Help with accessing large documents
When accessing large documents (over 500 KB in size), it is recommended that the following procedure be used:
- Click the link with the RIGHT mouse button
- Choose "Save Target As.../Save Link As..." depending on your browser
- Select an appropriate folder on a local drive to place the downloaded file
Attempting to open large documents within the browser window (by left-clicking)
may inhibit your ability to continue browsing while the document is
opening and/or lead to system problems.
Help with accessing PDF documents
To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. A number of PDF readers are available through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Web Guide website.