Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Recently I met with Adam Costantini, a Hillbank local like myself and a tireless community advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, an organisation many of us know very well. JDRF have had a hand in every breakthrough in the care of type 1 diabetes globally over the past 50 years. But it is individuals like Adam that put a human face on the benefits of acting to find a cure. The cost of sitting out of the fight is a cost paid in health outcomes as well as financially.

In Spence alone the cost of type 1 diabetes equates to $20 million annually, with the lifetime costs bordering on half a billion dollars. Adam and his wife, Stacey, advocate for a cure not just for the 130,000 Australians with type 1 diabetes but also for their daughter, Georgie, who was diagnosed at just 10 months old, which inspired Stacey to write a number of children's books on living with type 1 diabetes in an engaging and understandable format. I look forward to speaking with the Costantini family many more times in the future. More importantly, just like Adam, Stacey and Georgie, we look forward to a day when type 1 diabetes can be relegated to the distant past, and I applaud the work that the JDRF are doing to make this a reality.

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