Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Let me start by agreeing with the member for Riverina: everyone who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated. If you are eligible, get vaccinated. If you have concerns, speak to your GP. The problem for too many Australians is that for too long they haven't been eligible to get vaccinated and they haven't been able to access the vaccine. This is because we have a Prime Minister who insisted that the vaccine rollout was not a race. It was a race, and now, as my community in Dunkley and communities across Victoria and New South Wales are living through yet another lockdown, we see the consequences of the fact that we are failing in that race.

We were never in the front of the queue for the vaccine. Australia's rollout was ranked as the worst in the OECD as we approached the end of June this year. It was 113th in the world. We still have one of the slowest rollouts in the developed world. It's great that it's gathering pace now, but why did it have to take this devastating delta outbreak for the Prime Minister to finally approach the vaccine rollout as if it were a race. And now he wants Australians to believe him when he says that it's not how you start the race; it's how you finish it. What he fails to consider in that analogy is that between the start and the finish is everything that happens in the middle. It's what happens during the race—the one that we are still in.

Of course, what happens during the race is that the people who weren't vaccinated and have been exposed and have caught COVID have got sick. Some have tragically died. Businesses have collapsed. Families are struggling under the burdens of remote learning, losing jobs and everyone seeming to be in the same house 24/7. What is also happening, and what I want to focus on in my brief remarks today, is that people's other health issues aren't being addressed in the way that they absolutely should be. Some of the decisions that are being made to try to deal with the delta outbreak, which we wouldn't have needed to deal with by lockdown had we actually been vaccinated, are exacerbating people's inclination to let other health conditions go untreated during COVID. The Australian newspaper published today what it called a 'COVID-19 national poll'. It was a YouGov poll. What it published in response to the question: 'Do you personally know anyone who has postponed or cancelled health checks—for example, mammograms—due to lockdowns?' was that 38 per cent of respondents apparently answered yes. Almost 40 per cent of people who were asked if they knew anyone who had postponed or cancelled a health check because of lockdowns said yes. In New South Wales and Victoria, perhaps not surprisingly, it was 43 per cent. And apparently, of the respondents who were women, 43 per cent said yes and 46 per cent who are parents of a child in school said yes.

Those figures, no matter what the postponed or cancelled health check is, are disturbing. But I suspect, without knowing, that the pollsters put the example of mammograms in that question because we know that, during the pandemic, the instances of women going and having mammograms, having their breasts checked for cancer, has declined. And we know, from the experience last year in Victoria, that it can—and it does—have quite serious and devastating consequences for too many women and for the people who love them. Sometimes women haven't gone and had a mammogram during this pandemic, because, with all of the things that they've had to deal with, all of the extra burdens of family and loss of work and mental health and financial stress, they just haven't prioritised themselves. Sometimes they haven't gone and had their mammograms because they haven't been able to.

Why is this so important? Because for Australian women, breast cancer is the most common cancer and it's the second most common cause of cancer related death. Women, trans and gender diverse people are urged to get routine screenings once they reach 40, because chances of breast cancer increase with age. One in seven women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, the statistics now tell us. The Radiation Therapy Advisory Group released a report recently that said there were 145,000 fewer mammograms in Australia in the first half of 2020, compared to the same period in 2018—145,000!

Most people in this chamber know that I speak from real and deep personal experience about how important mammograms are. Director of the Breast Cancer Network Australia Vicki Durston told ABC's RNBreakfast recently that 2,500 cancers were either missed or had a delayed diagnosis last year due to screening disruptions and fears of leaving home—2,500 cancers were missed. That is a profound number, because we know that, basically, the earlier you detect breast cancer, the better your five-year and 10-year chances of living are. There were missed and delayed diagnoses of more than 300 breast cancer cases in Victoria last year alone—300! If we don't detect it early, it progresses and, with later stage diagnosis, chances of five- and 10-year success rates diminish. The total number of breast cancers diagnosed fell by 10 per cent and early diagnosis by 38 per cent last year in Victoria, and we can't see that as a figure that continues or that spreads across the country. And when you link that to the poll that was in the Australian today, it should be ringing alarm bells for governments and policymakers across the country.

Breast cancers detected by breast screening through BreastScreen, which is Australia's national breast screening program, have a 54 to 63 per cent lower risk of causing death compared to breast cancer diagnosed in women who have never been screened. A screening mammogram can detect very small cancers, as small as a grain of rice, before symptoms are felt or even noticed by a woman or her doctor. It is the best method for early detection of breast cancer for women over 50, and yet we know that right now, as I give this speech, routine breast screening has been suspended in New South Wales as a consequence of this delta outbreak, as a consequence of the lockdown and not enough vaccines getting into arms. BreastScreen New South Wales said it's because of the increasing risk posed by the delta strain, significant cancellations and 'a need to redeploy staff to support the pandemic response'.

Whilst I understand the crisis that's facing New South Wales at the moment and that it's all hands to the wheel to deal with the outbreak, this is a short-term measure which could have seriously negative long-term consequences. I'm not alone in saying this; I acknowledge state and federal Liberal and Labor members of parliament who have all called on the New South Wales government to step in and change this situation. I looked at the New South Wales BreastScreen website today, and there's nothing to indicate that it's changed. I urge the New South Wales government to do something about it. I also ask that the federal minister and the Prime Minister look at this, and, if the New South Wales government needs help to have extra staff so that BreastScreen can stay open, do something about it. We've had a debate in this chamber today about some $13 billion worth of JobKeeper that was paid to businesses who actually increased their profits. Imagine what we could do with that $13 billion in the health system? We certainly don't need all of it to keep BreastScreen going, but some of it would be very, very welcome.

This is not the time for anyone to neglect anything to do with their health. Get the vaccine. Do it for yourself and your family and the community. But don't put off your regular checks and your regular screening, and don't put off your treatment. At some time we will get vaccines into enough arms and we will get out of this, and we don't want to then be dealing with another pandemic and another enormous burden on our health system of all those other illnesses, particularly cancers, which haven't been treated.

I will finish by quoting Professor Boyle, a medical oncologist at the University of Sydney, who also noted that women were presenting with larger breast cancers late last year after the suspension of national screening services. Women didn't want to go to BreastScreen after it was closed and were scared, but then had a higher rate of lymph node involvement needing chemotherapy treatment. If BreastScreen is shut down again for extended periods, her prediction is:

… what we will find is that we will have another wave by Christmastime of people with delayed diagnosis.

Don't delay your diagnosis if BreastScreen isn't open; go to your GP.

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