Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to pay tribute to the terrific work of the individuals behind the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. I wish them very well for their 150th anniversary. Founded in 1870 as the Free Hospital for Sick Children and through moves to Carlton and Parkville and again in 2011 to the new state-of-the-art facility housed on Flemington Road, what is known affectionately in Melbourne as the RCH has always been at the forefront of medical care, education and research. In just the last few years alone, the RCH has performed tasks that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, let alone 150 years ago. We have witnessed modern medical miracles that have been saving the lives of children across the country and, indeed, across the world.

You may well recall the separation of conjoined twins, Trishna and Krishna, in 2009. Those girls, brought to the RCH from Bangladesh by the incredible Moira Kelly, were given a 25 per cent chance of survival. Today, with the help of Leo Donnan, Wirginia Maixner and the team, they are now 13 years old and living happily in Australia with their birth and adoptive families. A little under a decade later, Bhutanese twins Dawa and Nima were also successfully separated with the care and skill of 25 surgeons and medical professionals, anaesthetists and nurses, led by paediatric surgeon Joe Crameri. While all the staff are world-class, the cardiac team have always been universally admired for their globally leading work on hypoplastic left heart syndrome and, more recently, the extraordinarily complex ectopic heart procedures. Whether the medical care is complex or simple, the quality of care is what is really exceptional.

Like for all Melburnians—indeed, I think, for almost all Victorians—the RCH has played a very personal role in my life.

One of my staff, the irrepressible and very talented Zach, started his life there in the NICU weighing just 912 grams as a premature baby. Now he causes us all sorts of grief in the office and gives us great joy! My uncle Justin Kelly was a renowned paediatric urologist. He was also the director of surgery at the RCH for many years. My middle son, Charlie, now 16, was born on time but had troublesome lungs and spent a few very worry-filled nights under the care of the team at the RCH. My dear friend and local member Dr Katie Allen was a paediatrician at the RCH and a respected paediatric immunologist.

In 2011 I joined the board of the Royal Children's Hospital for five years, where I learned firsthand of the skill, the care and indeed the love and devotion that all the RCH team—the medical team, the staff and the volunteers—demonstrate every single day. I want to tip my hat with enormous respect and admiration to the CEOs with whom I served: Christine Kilpatrick, who is a neurologist by training and is now the CEO of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the adult hospital just down the road in the Parkville precinct; and the then COO and now CEO John Stanway, who is a dedicated and tireless health professional and a very kind man.

It's not just the medical staff who are amazing though at the RCH. Through its partner organisations, the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the RCH Foundation, I have met some very talented and altruistic Melburnians. I particularly want to acknowledge on this anniversary people like Peter Yates, who is the longstanding chairman of the RCH Foundation and one of Melbourne's most dedicated philanthropists. I also want to acknowledge Rob Knowles, the former politician and health minister in the Kennett government and chairman of the RCH for the past eight years.

In particular I want to mention my first chairman there, Mr Tony Beddison AO, who was a successful Melbourne businessman, a passionate philanthropist and a very kind and gentle man—a great mentor as a chairman there. Tony sadly passed away just a month ago. He would have been so proud to see the institution he loved so dearly reach this 150 year milestone.

To all the staff, the medical professionals, the thousands of volunteers, the auxiliary, anyone who has raised money in the Good Friday Appeal: thank you all and congratulations. To the countless Melburnians who have been patients for the last 150 years and to the children and families who are currently there—the worried but grateful families—how lucky we are to have an institution like the Royal Children's Hospital in our great city of Melbourne.