Speaking in Canberra on 27 November, Abbott said HIV/AIDS is “a public health issue, not a moral issue” and “we should not make judgments about HIV/AIDS just because in this country, at least, it has been associated with particular behaviours or lifestyles.”
“People with AIDS are our brothers and sisters,” he said. “They deserve to be treated with respect and compassion and if they are diminished, everyone is diminished.”
Abbott’s comments seemed to contrast with those he made a few days earlier on Channel Ten’s Meet the Press program. Responding to questions about increasing hepatitis C and HIV diagnoses in Australia, the health minister described them as “a function of personal behaviour.” Attributing the fall in heroin overdose deaths in recent years to the government’s widely criticised ‘tough on drugs’ policy, Abbott insisted that ‘just say no’ was “a pretty good message” in regard to illegal drug use.
Abbott pledged that the federal government would “continue and strengthen” its fight against AIDS in Australia and internationally.
The AIDS Awareness Week launch also heard from Ian Rankin, who has been HIV-positive for almost 17 years. Despite improvements in treatments which have extended people’s lives, Rankin said that many of the attitudes of the 1980s remain embedded in community attitudes.
People with HIV still have to deal with discrimination in obtaining insurance, many face long-term disadvantage after years out of the workforce, and are still portrayed in the media as “sufferers and the highly sensationalised AIDS carriers,” not as survivors, Rankin said.
“AIDS is still a bugger of a condition; HIV is a nasty virus to have,” said. “But this does not mean that people with HIV/AIDS are nasty buggers.”
Don Baxter, head of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), said that AIDS Awareness Week 2003 had special importance, for several reasons. Rising HIV diagnoses in 2002 and 2003 present new challenges to Australia’s response to the epidemic, and complacency among the general public and the bureaucracy signal that “HIV has slid down the public’s agenda,” he said.
The involvement of positive people in the response to HIV/AIDS was a key part of Australia’s success in containing the epidemic, Baxter said, but many countries in the Asia-Pacific “are repeating the exactly the same mistakes the US did in the 1980s.”
