Jeannie Ferris (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I want to say how much I welcome the government’s response to this report and its careful consideration of our 34 recommendations. Right at the start I would like to say that this is a very clear example of Senate women coming together to work on an issue. All of us saw this issue as being above party politics, an issue important to all women in Australia and their families, including their husbands, their brothers, their fathers and their children. For the first time that I can remember, committee members, under the careful chairmanship of Senator Gary Humphries, were able to come together and, with the aid of some expert advice from some of our very highly trained gynaecological oncologists, put together a report which identified, perhaps for the very first time, some of the gaps in the opportunities for information to be given to the women suffering from breast cancer who have not had their own organisation to cope with the difficulties of gynaecological cancers.

I would also like to say at the outset that the work that Helen Zorbas and the National Breast Cancer Centre have done in taking care of this issue since the year 2000 has been absolutely fundamental to and instrumental in making sure that the work done in Australia has been done to the best effect possible. However, I was disturbed to see this week, Natural Ovarian Cancer Awareness Week, that in fact large numbers of women still do not understand that Pap smears will not identify ovarian cancer. There are many tests available for various forms of cancer but, unfortunately, research teams, both here and overseas, have still not found an early warning test for ovarian cancer and, as a result of that, more than a thousand women are diagnosed every year with it.

I think that more than anything this report is an indication that when there was a serious women’s health issue and all of us realised that all of our women—never mind what they might do every three years at the ballot box—wanted it dealt with and wanted expert advice and wanted to have a voice, we all got together. That is why we called our report Breaking the silence, because we believed that it was time to break the silence on this issue.

I would like to acknowledge the government’s commitment to establishing a national centre for gynaecological cancers under the governance of Cancer Australia. This is of course what the committee strongly recommended. We wanted to provide a national focus for gynaecological issues and, importantly, to increase the education and awareness of medical and allied health professionals. I think I also speak for other members of the committee when I say that we could not have done this work without people of the eminence of Professor Neville Hacker, the Director of the Gynaecological Cancer Centre at the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney, who gave freely of his time and acted as a mentor to all of us. Getting across this issue was not easy—it is quite technical; some of the medical material is quite difficult—but he was always available and always patient. I know he helped all of us, so I would like to acknowledge him and some of the members of his gynaecological oncology team.

The issue of education in this particular area, of both women and the broader community, was a recurring theme during the inquiry, with many submissions and witnesses telling the committee that a targeted approach was needed to deliver information. I also welcome the announcement that, as we recommended, the government will provide a million dollars in seed funding to support the establishment and initial operation of the centre. That is in addition to the nearly $13.6 million over the six years to 2009 that the government has invested in programs for women’s cancers, over half of which has been used to deliver breast and ovarian cancer programs through the National Breast Cancer Centre, through Helen Zorbas and her talented team.

The NBCC has a vital and highly regarded role that is being played in the absence of anything else that is available for us in the gynaecological cancer area. But increasingly we were consistently told in evidence that when women are looking for information on ovarian cancer or any of the other gynaecological cancers they do not automatically understand that they need to go to the NBCC. Now we will have a dedicated area and for the first time we will actually be able to direct them to a specific site. I know, from all the work that they have been doing, that Helen and her people will work closely with the new gynaecological cancer centre and Cancer Australia to make sure that we deliver the fantastic service that they already deliver on breast cancer.

I would also like to thank Tony Abbott. He can relax now; I will stop pestering him. I must say that, right from the start, Tony was receptive to our position. He was patient in understanding where we were coming from. I think that one of the issues that really swung it for us was the fact that every single gynaecological oncologist in Australia argued together as a body to implement this national centre. Not only were the women together; the gynaecological oncologists were together. I congratulate Tony and his department for the way in which they have been receptive to these recommendations.