Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. Tomorrow is Teal Ribbon Day and this month is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. They acknowledge the thousands of women, their families and their friends impacted by ovarian cancer this year. I acknowledge the members of parliament who attended Ovarian Cancer Australia's Teal Ribbon Day breakfast this morning.

Ovarian cancer is estimated to be the 10th most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australian women, with 1,532 cases projected this year, and it's the sixth most common cause of death from cancer in Australian women, with 1,068 deaths estimated this year. The five-year relative survival rate for ovarian cancer is 45.7 per cent. This compares with 68.9 per cent for all cancers combined, and with 90.8 per cent and 95.2 per cent for breast and prostate cancer respectively.

We are committed to improving outcomes for women affected by ovarian cancer, and I want to acknowledge the commitment of the Minister for Health and, in particular, former Minister for Women Kelly O'Dwyer, who continues to serve as an ambassador for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation, fighting, as she did in this place, for better health outcomes for women.

We've come a long way in the last 20 years, notwithstanding we have a lot further to go. One of our first ovarian cancer advocates was Sheila Lee. After receiving her shocking diagnosis in February 1999, she was appalled by the lack of awareness of the disease, the lack of its profile compared with other cancers and the lack of research. Sheila and her husband, Simon, started speaking out, raising awareness—determined to make ovarian cancer silent no more. She spoke of symptom awareness holding the key to hundreds of lives and research holding the key to thousands. In the just 20 months before we lost her after that tragic diagnosis, Sheila and her team set the Ovarian Cancer Australia organisation on the trajectory where we see it today.

We have available now $20 million in funding for ovarian cancer research through the Medical Research Future Fund, and a further $15 million for clinical trial funding in reproductive cancers. Since 2013, more than $40 million has been provided for ovarian cancer research through the National Health and Medical Research Council. We're continuing subsidising proven treatments on the PBS, adding two new MBS items for genetic testing for hereditary mutations predisposing to breast or ovarian cancer. And in 2019, the government committed funding for the ovarian cancer case management pilot. We're particularly focussing on reaching out to rural Australian women as we continue as a nation to battle this horrific disease.

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