Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know the National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill isn't a controversial bill, but I just want to make a very brief contribution to the second reading debate. I'd like to offer some perspectives on this as someone who has been a longstanding advocate for patients of cancers with low survival rates and as the chair of the select committee that inquired into cancers with low survival rates.

According to Cancer Australia, the five-year survival rate for lung cancer between 2015 and 2019 was only 24 per cent. In 2023 lung cancer accounted for 17 per cent, or about one in six, of all cancer deaths. Lung cancer has the unfortunate distinction of having both a high incidence and a low survival rate compared with other cancers, and this deadly combination gives lung cancer the highest mortality rate of any cancer in Australia. In 2023 this was an age-standardised rate of 33 deaths per 100,000 people.

One of the issues the committee looked at was how the incidence and mortality of cancers compared to the funding they received from the NHMRC. The committee's report was tabled in 2017. At the time, lung cancer, which caused more deaths than any other cancer in Australia, was ranked ninth for NHMRC research funding. A number of submitters and witnesses to that inquiry highlighted the difficulties cancers with low survival rates have in attracting research funding. Among these difficulties is having a more limited research base, which makes it more difficult to design a study that will lead to a successful research grant proposal. More prominent cancers, which may have higher survival rates, typically attract more philanthropic funding and fundraising revenue because there are more patients and, obviously, more families and carers with a personal experience of those cancers. They are also more likely to attract commercial interest in treatment. These sources of funding—philanthropy, fundraising and commercial investment—help to establish the research base on which proposals for public funding can be put forward with the likelihood of success.

Another observation of submitters and witnesses to the inquiry was the correlation between early detection, screening and diagnosis and increased rates of survival. An example put forward was that since 1990 the survival rate for breast cancer has increased from 60 per cent to over 90 per cent thanks, in large part, to screening.

I know we will hit a hard marker fairly soon, so the key message I want to get across is that, if we're going to improve outcomes for cancer patients overall, there needs to be a greater focus on the cancers that have the greatest impacts on the community, and lung cancer is definitely one of those. That is why I'm proud to be part of a government that is making this vital investment in lung cancer screening and expanding the National Cancer Screening Register to include lung cancer. The five-year year survival rate for lung cancer is 24 per cent, which means that a little over three in four patients will die five years after their diagnosis. We know that early detection means early intervention, and the screening program this bill enables is expected to save over 500 lives a year.

I'd like to finish by thanking the Minister for Health and Aged Care and his representative in this chamber, Senator Gallagher, for this initiative. I also thank Lung Foundation Australia for their hard work and advocacy, in particular their CEO, Mark Brooke, who's passionate about improving outcomes for lung cancer patients, their families and their carers.