Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to pay tribute to a wonderful Australian woman, Annie Donaldson. She was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer—a death sentence for a lot of people—about 15 or more years ago but Annie has fought that disease. In particular, over the years she has not simply gone into remission; she has worked out how to deal with the disease on a personal level and in a way that she hopes has kept her—as a mother, as a daughter and as a sister—just as supportive as she has always been. But Annie has not been content simply to deal with her disease on a personal level. She has set about raising funds for the whole business of cancer research, particularly stem cell research. She has been most concerned about the fact that people from rural areas, as Annie is, have great difficulties with accommodation when they go for long stints to metropolitan hospitals.

Annie has a very particular skill with art and craft. She makes the most superb porcelain dolls. She dresses them and makes their hair. These are real works of art. Annie has made doll after doll for raffle after raffle to raise money to help not her personally but those coming after her who have this dreaded disease. Annie was one of the founding members of Relay for Life in Shepparton. The Relay for Life, as we all know, is a major fundraising activity for state and territory cancer councils. It remembers those who have been lost to cancer and the carers who have been left, those who tried to ease the days when their loved ones were alive. Every year I have been the patron of the Relay for Life and I have walked with Annie in the opening ceremony, and we have raised the biggest number of dollars for every Relay for Life held in Victoria year after year. This year Annie is not likely to be with us, but I know that she will be with us in spirit and I know that she has served as an icon for both the sufferers of cancer and their carers. As she has strode out with her short hair with its radiation curls, with a smile on her face and wearing her sash, she has been a living embodiment of the spirit of struggle. I have to say that Annie has for so many of us been a person larger than life. I am sorry; I need a moment.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We understand. Keep going.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She is a young woman just in her 50s and she has come home to palliative care. Perhaps she has only weeks to live but her whole thinking and concerns are about the justice that needs to be found more and more in our world and about what she can still do in her last few weeks. She is concerned about and interested in rural and regional issues such as the drought and the lack of rain and she is trying to think what we might do for our farmers who are in great distress. I just want to make sure that Annie understands that I—on behalf of her family and the Mooroopna community, and she is a proud woman of Mooroopna—have put her life on the record of the parliament of Australia so that for literally generations to come people can read about the life of Annie and understand that she did not simply live and then die of cancer, that she actually lived a fantastic life of caring, of volunteering and of using her skills to help others.

Annie had and still has an extraordinary love of life and love for others. When she comes in, her smile lights up the room. When she lost her hair during each of her treatments she laughed—and then, when it grew back, she donated herself to Shave for a Cure, shaved it all off again and raised money for cancer. She joked about having purple hair and then she decided to write a little pamphlet for other women who were losing their hair to tell them what to expect, not to worry, and that they would feel the tingling and the loss of hair during one stage. Her advice was: shave it all off, get it over quickly and get on with it. She is that sort of woman.

I want to pay a special tribute to Annie tonight—to remember her husband, Allan, her son, her daughter and the joy of her grandson, and to say to her that she is a great Australian woman. I wish that there were more like Annie. She might only have lived a short time compared to many others but she has lived a very full life. She is one of those people who are perhaps born carers. As a trained nurse, she has spent much time in hospitals looking after others who have terrible afflictions and diseases. Now Annie is going to receive very loving palliative care in our community, knowing that a lot of the fundraising she did has gone into the services that will finally help her too.

I pay my loving regards to Annie Donaldson. May this record in parliament serve as a real tribute to her and to others like her who struggle with cancer. And let me say, Annie, that we love you very dearly. You are a great Australian woman, a Mooroopna woman, a great Liberal and you will be sadly missed.