Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased the member for Kennedy agrees with me! There are a number of obstructions to the development of a proper national bone marrow registry with large enough numbers because of our federated system. It is vital that our states and territories get together with our federal government—I know the health minister is very keen to do that, as he is with our organ donation system—to get a proper registry of bone marrow donors. I welcome the announcement by the minister for health that discussions with health ministers from around the country are about to begin to discuss how we can best cut through this jurisdictional and bureaucratic red tape and clear the way for donor recruitment. I congratulate all the members of parliament who were involved in getting this done, and I thank all the members for doing this.

It's been far too long—1981 was a long time ago, and I'm an old bloke now. For years we've been trying to get this together and we haven't done it—really, it's because of judicial and bureaucratic nonsense. That's all it is. We must proceed. We need to reverse the statistics. We need to have the vast majority of our donors coming from Australia to our Australian patients. I look forward to working with the minister for health and all the members of parliament to make sure this happens rapidly, because it's long past time. We should be doing this. Thank you.

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