Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I am really delighted to be able to give bipartisan support to the motion from the member for Shortland on bowel cancer. This parliament is at its best when we find common ground. I think this is an important recognition of a critical issue, and the search is always to find constructive ways forward across the parliament. So, I want to acknowledge and thank the member for her work and note that there are people on both sides who have had family experience, electorate experience and medical experience in working in this space.

Having said that, let me put this in a broader context. I want to talk about the magnitude of the issue, the steps forward and then a little bit about what we can perhaps do beyond the standard. The magnitude of the issue, as the motion notes, is that more than 14,000 Australians are diagnosed with bowel cancer each year. Of those, we lose, tragically, about 77 a week, on average. I think most of us in this House will have known directly or indirectly people who have been lost to the condition, and I can certainly speak to that myself. Against that background, recognising that there is something that will take each of us inevitably, the question is: are there avoidable things that can be done to improve the quality of life and improve patient care?

The answer is: of course. The progressive extension of life over the last century and over the last half-century is testimony to that.

In this particular space there is a series of initiatives which can and should be taken, in my view. Firstly, and most importantly, there is the educative work. That education comes from funding and it comes from people who are willing to speak out. And that means there should be regular screening every two years for people aged 50 and over. This can reduce the loss of life to bowel cancer by up to 33 per cent. Each of us needs to have a role in our communities, through our newsletters, through our community fora—particularly the males. It is something that males are more likely to ignore. In a classic Australian family the men are not great at acknowledging their own health challenges. Often these things are diagnosed too late. The message is that you do not have to wait until you are 50. Starting at 40, there should be encouragement for regular screenings and there should be clear incentives for screenings every two years for those who are over 50. But the voice has to go out through people in the media, in sport or in parliamentary life. I think we need to do that.

In the same way that it has become standard practice for women to have searches and tests done for breast cancer, early intervention is exactly the same sort of culture we need to establish. What it can do is prolong life, give people a real shot and can also lead to avoiding the extraordinary human suffering which comes when people are taken early, both in a physical sense and in a familial sense.

Looking to the long-term, I would like to talk briefly about medical research. One of my great friends in life is Dr Michael Burnet. He is the grandson of Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, one of Australia's Nobel laureates, and a great immunologist. Michael's work, based in Europe, is on delivery therapy for, amongst other things, cancer treatments. He is not doing the work in creating the cancer treatment but he is creating the express train to get it to the parts of the body without the side effects. That is the sort of thing Australia should be sponsoring and supporting on a bipartisan basis. This medical research is the thing which allows us to act with extreme speed, to act with effectiveness. I commend the work of people around the world but I say to the Australian government, whoever it may be after September, more medical research in this space. (Time expired)

See this speech in context