Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few years ago I lost my mum to motor neurone disease. It is a really insidious disease that affects your motor neurones that send signals to the rest of your body and, over a period of time, you lose the ability to walk, to speak and ultimately to breathe. Motor neurone disease is much more prevalent than people realise. Every day two people are diagnosed and every day two people die, and the time to death from diagnosis is roughly two to three years.

Today the Prime Minister welcomed Warren 'Woz' Acott to parliament. He has been diagnosed with MND and he rode his lawnmower 800 kilometres from his home in Victoria to raise awareness of MND. One of the things that I've learned being a family member of someone with MND is that everyone in the MND community, including those people who are diagnosed, work really hard to educate the rest of the community and to fund raise to assist people who have it.

If you are over 65 and you get MND, you do not have access to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and, if you are diagnosed with MND, the likelihood that your care package will get approved before you die is very slim. My mother was certainly one of those who knew that she was going to need one but never got it. Kelly and Kylie have organised a walk to defeat MND on Saturday in Gladstone. It is the first one to be held in our community. They are raising money for MND Queensland, the only state based MND support organisation that does not get recurrent funding. I would like to commend them for organising the walk and I really look forward to joining them along with other members of the MND community to raise awareness and money.