Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week the Senate select committee investigating low-survival-rate cancers tabled its report. It called for more government action to improve the outcomes of cancer patients, including those with brain cancer, an insidious illness that kills more young Australians aged 18 to 40 than any other cancer and more Australian children than any other disease. These are facts I didn't know and probably would not even have turned my mind to at this time last year, but the human experience behind them is now one of which I'm acutely aware. I believe it's the saddest story I will ever tell. It is of a fit and strapping young man named Elias Hkeik, a car fanatic, especially for BMWs. Fascinated by mechanical engineering, he aspired to work for a race team. In his early 20s he met the love of his life, a young woman as beautiful on the inside as on the outside, from the most generous family, Natalie D'Alessandro. Their wedding at St Mary's Cathedral Sydney on 4 July 2015 was a fairytale, especially poignant since it was where Natalie's parents, my cousins Nohad and Fab, were themselves married. They were young, in love and full of life.

Towards the end of last year, Natalie and I were both pregnant and hanging out with a group of our cousins eagerly awaiting our new arrivals. But something else arrived first. It was a diagnosis for Elias on 28 February 2017 of stage IV glioblastoma multiforme. GBM is the most aggressive of cancers. It begins with the brain. The symptoms are non-specific and can include conditions as common as headaches and nausea. Elias immediately began treatment, but the ruthlessness of GBM made itself known in a very short space of time. Meanwhile, beautiful baby Mila was born on 7 April. Mila would only know her father for less than five months.

Natalie and her family were beside Elias's side throughout his rapid decline. I pay tribute to Elias's family and to Natalie's parents, Fab and Nohad, to whom Elias was just as much their son. I acknowledge their heartbreak. They put their lives and their business on hold, supporting Natalie as a new mother and trying everything to improve Elias's life in every aspect, from his treatment to the food they prepared for him. Throughout all the pain and the sorrow at the prospect of being separated from his wife and daughter, Elias sought solace in his faith and never once complained about the hand he had been dealt. He slipped away on 19 September, not long after Mila was brought to his hospital bedside and baptised.

It is Lebanese custom to gather for prayers and pay respects to the family of the departed before their funeral. Elias's gathering was held in the Blouza Hall in Granville, the same place where he and Natalie had celebrated their engagement only a few years prior. More than 200 of Elias's family and friends joined in the Walk4BrainCancer on 5 November as Team Elias. Their message mirrors that of the Senate report and its chair, Senator Catryna Bilyk, whom I acknowledge as a survivor of brain cancer herself, for more action to be taken on funding and research into low-survival-rate cancers. As Senator Bilyk said, families such as those of Elias Hkeik want hope for our future. It is our obligation to give it.