Thursday, 28 August 2025
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari gamarruwa, Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

I greet you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of this land, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging, as well as to Elders across New South Wales.

Members of the Royal Society of NSW, distinguished guests all, whether here or online,

My introduction to the world of hearing loss came through Brendan Lonergan, President of Hearing Matters Australia. I had met Brendan some years earlier as the CEO of another Patronage organisation, whose work I admired. I was thus honoured to receive his invitation to speak at the World Hearing Day Celebrations at Macquarie University in March this year.

There was much to hear and learn on that occasion.

It was nearly 20 years ago that Access Economics released their landmark Listen Hear! report into the economic cost of hearing loss in Australia.^[1] Commissioned by CRC HEAR^[2] and the Victorian Deaf Society, the report used modelling and reported data^[3] to estimate that, at that time, around 3.6 million Australians—about 1-in-6—were affected by hearing loss.^[4]

That report, and all subsequent attempts to enumerate the prevalence of hearing loss in Australia, most of which draw on the 2006 findings,^[5] include a clear caveat—these are likely conservative estimates.^[6]

Moreover, citing Australia’s ageing population,^[7] the 2006 report expected the 1-in-6 prevalence to rise to 1-in-4 by 2050.^[8] As a recent article on the Better Hearing Australia website points out, applying such a progression would imply we reached a 1-in-5 prevalence last year.^[9]

Alarmingly, the 2006 report also found that, although most hearing loss can be attributed to ageing, a third of Australians who acquire hearing loss do so through preventable causes.^[10] The increased use of personal listening devices and associated unsafe listening habits is likely to swell this proportion. Indeed, a 2011 study estimated that 17% of US teenagers already have signs of noise induced hearing loss.^[11]

More contemporary data is thus needed not only to gauge the true extent of hearing loss in Australia, but also to calibrate public health responses accordingly.

Acquiring such data, however, is notoriously complex. Self-reporting is hampered by stigma, denial, or even lack of awareness, and people often avoid formal testing—particularly if their hearing loss is mild, gradual, or dismissed as a normal part of ageing.^[12]

Such attitudes also flow into the uptake of technologies that might assist those with hearing loss; four-in-five Australians who would benefit from using a hearing aid apparently don’t.^[13]

The impact of hearing loss, no matter its degree, is dramatic. It is also usually irreversible and often progressive.

To paraphrase Helen Keller: losing your sight cuts you off from things, losing your hearing cuts you off from people.^[14]

Undiagnosed, untreated, or unsupported, hearing loss leads to social isolation, frustration, and a loss of confidence. The consequences ripple outwards—affecting mental health, employability, and even accelerating cognitive decline.

Hence, this is not just a health issue, albeit often unrecognised, but a matter of human rights, an issue deserving of our fullest attention and action.

Encouragingly, there is growing momentum to tackle these challenges—not only through advances in hearing technology, but also through adopting people-centred approaches that put dignity, equity, and accessibility at the heart of care.

It is particularly inspiring to see the strong collaboration among researchers, clinicians, service providers, consumer advocates, and community organisations. Such partnerships both advance the science and understanding of hearing loss, as well as transforming and shaping the systems and policies through which people with hearing loss might be supported and empowered, leading to immeasurable improvements in lives.

There is no better person to guide us through the complex intersections of hearing loss, public health responses, and the current research state of play than tonight’s presenter at this, the 14^th iteration of Ideas@theHouse.

As inaugural Cochlear Chair in Hearing and Health at Macquarie University, she leads the University’s Public Health and Policy Pillar. She has co-authored over 275 peer-reviewed papers and her research studies have provided novel community-based evidence on the health determinants and outcomes associated with sensory loss and disability. She is also co-lead of the Australian Eye and Ear Health Survey (AEEHS),^[15] some results of which she will share tonight.

Please welcome to the stage to give her presentation Busting Myths, Bridging Gaps: Public Health Approaches to Hearing Loss in Adults…

Professor Bamini Gopinath

[1] Access Economics, Listen Here!: The Economic Impact and Cost of Hearing Loss in Australia, February 2006, available here

[2] Cooperative Research Centre for Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Innovation

[3] Mostly derived from David Wilson, Sun Xibin, Pamela Read, Paul Walsh, Adrian Esterman, ‘Hearing Loss—An Underestimated Public Health Problem’, Australian Journal of Public Health, vol.16 no.3, September 1992, pp.282-286, available here. Survey results from that report estimated hearing loss, depending on definition, among Australians aged 15 and over of between 15% and 19%: ibid, p.282.

[4] Listen Here! op. cit., pp.5, 33.

[5] For instance: Deloitte Access Economics, The Social and Economic Cost of Hearing Loss in Australia, August 2017, available here; Deloitte Access Economics, Hearing for Life: The Value of Hearing Services for Vulnerable Australians, March 2020, available here; Kim M Kiely and Kaarin J Anstey, ‘Putting Age-Related Hearing Loss on the Public Health Agenda in Australia’, Public Health Research & Practice, vo.31 no.5, December 2021, available here

[6] This is not only by virtue of data collection limitations, but also by the economic lens through which the commissioning of the report, and its successors, including the 2017 update, where expressly articulated. For instance, from the 2006 report, “In this study, the approach has thus been to report hearing loss prevalence for both the better and worse ear, but conservatively to use hearing loss prevalence in the better ear to attribute costs and disease burden. […] This aligns with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) approach, to avoid overstating the burden of disease on the community and adopt a minimum cost burden position”: Listen Here! op. cit., p.23; Deloitte Access Economics, The Social and Economic Cost of Hearing Loss in Australia, op. cit., p.10

[7] For instance, in 2005, 13.1% of Australians were over 65; in 2026, people over 65 are expected to account for 22% of Australia’s population: ‘Population by Age and Sex, Australian—Electronic Delivery, June 2005’, Australian Bureau of Statistics website, available here; Professor Lee-Fay Low, ‘Confronting Ageing:the Talk Australia Has to Have’, University of Sydney website, 9 October 2023, available here

[8] Listen Here! op. cit., p.5.

[9] ‘Still 1 in 6? Rethinking Hearing Loss in Australia’, 28 May 2025, Better Hearing Australia website, available here

[10] House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care, and Wellbeing of Australia, Still Waiting to be Heard…, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2017, available here, p.72, citing Access Economics, Listen Hear!, op. cit., p.7

[11] ‘Prevalence of Noise-Induced Hearing-Threshold Shifts and Hearing Loss Among US Youths’, Pediatrics, vol.127, no.1, January 2011, available here. A 2022 study warns that around 1 billion young people worldwide are at risk of hearing loss due to unsafe listening practices, primarily through using headphones, earphones and earbuds at high volumes: Lauren K Dillard, ‘Prevalence and Global Estimates of Unsafe Listening Practices in Adolescents and Young Adults: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis’, BMJ Global Health, vol.7, no.11, 15 November 2022, available here

[12] ‘Still 1 in 6? Rethinking Hearing Loss in Australia’, 28 May 2025, Better Hearing Australia website, available here

[13] ‘Hearing Loss in Australia’, Connect Hearing! website, available here

[14] “Blindness cuts us off from things; deafness cuts us off from people:” J. Christie, ‘Helen Keller’, Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf People and Deafness, vol.2, McGraw-Hill; 1987, p.125, cited in Max Stanley Chartrand, ‘What Helen Keller Knew; What Popular Thought Overlooks’, 2 May 2008, Hearing Review website, available here

[15] See: ‘Addressing the Impacts of Adult-Onset Hearing Loss’, Macquarie University website, available  here