Northern sting

Northern Australia is much closer to Australia’s neighbours than we are down south. Papua New Guinea is only 3km from Queensland’s outer islands. Sydney is a three-hour flight from our only southern neighbour. The expansive Tasman Sea is less a “ditch” than the narrow Torres Strait or Timor Gap.

Not only is the north much closer to many more of Australia’s neighbours, these countries face many more grave problems that can spill over into Australia. We have seen this with tuberculosis in far north Queensland.

Climate change could well aggravate these geographical realities, place greater demands on local public health services and require deeper co-ordination between the Commonwealth and the northern states.

While climate change may sink Tuvalu and Kiribati, it is making larger parts of the Pacific Islands, Indonesia and the Philippines more hospitable to mosquitoes bearing malaria and dengue fever.

Within Australia, the effects of climate change are bad for mosquitoes in southern Australia, but good for them in the north. Conditions may improve for malaria-carrying mosquitoes as far south as Gladstone, while dengue-carrying mosquitoes could migrate downwards to Rockhampton.

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