Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation and Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Congratulations on your election to the Speaker’s panel, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott. I am very pleased to speak on the motion which has been moved by the member for Herbert. The first limb of the motion supports the provision of the highest quality health services to Australians. That is an aspiration that all members of this House would hold. Australia enjoys one of the best health systems in the world by any measure. We have amongst the highest life expectancy in the world. We are comparable with Sweden and Switzerland and ahead of comparable countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Our survival rates for many cancers are comparable with world’s best practice. We have specialised centres for the treatment of things like colorectal cancer and breast cancer, and our survival rates are extremely high there. We enjoy low child mortality, low infant mortality and low maternal mortality. Again, these are indicators of a very strong health system.

As the member for Herbert has correctly pointed out, our health is unequal. It was highlighted last week that we have a whole range of measures for Indigenous health and that this group has much lower health outcomes than the rest of the population. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in a report in 2005, made the well-known point that people who live away from major cities and for whom access to health services is restricted may be disadvantaged as a result of different access to specialist surgery and medical care services. This has long been noted by organisations such as the Australian Medical Association and the National Rural Health Alliance.

PET technology is not applicable everywhere. Queensland is the most decentralised state and there are major population centres all up the coast in Queensland. There are very good arguments that can be made for the extension of PET technology. As previous members—most notably the member for Moore—have said, there is a whole range of applications for this technology. It is useful in diagnosis, it is valuable in treatment and it can be used to monitor the effect of surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. So it is only going to be applicable in a larger centre. MSAC, the Medical Services Advisory Committee, is looking at the application of PET technology in a whole range of new areas stage by stage. It is looking at whether it can be extended to ovarian, melanoma and colorectal cancer, the second stages of oesophageal, gastric, head and neck cancer, third-stage lymphoma and fourth-stage sarcoma and glioma.

We do have evidence based medicine. We do have the Medical Services Advisory Committee. I believe we need to maintain the rigour of those bodies. Having said that, there has been quite a debate in the Medical Journal of Australia, most notably in 2004, that Australia does not have enough positron emission tomography machines. We need a much larger number. There are currently only eight eligible centres in Australia. As the member for Lyons said, there is not one in Tasmania, but I understand the Labor Party has committed to introducing one in Hobart.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. PET technology is a useful technology and, if supported by the evidence, it should be more widely available and should be available for a much greater number of indications.

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