Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the face of Sally Anne Edwards, who died on 14 February of the scourge that is ovarian cancer. She was 54 years of age. This is a beautiful photo of her as a child. She is one of a thousand who will succumb to this disease over the next 12 months. Fifteen hundred women or more will be diagnosed with this shocking disease that hides its symptoms away until it's too late. One of the stories told in the upper chamber a few moments ago mentioned the fact that one woman who died, who was very important to a particular community, had one symptom of all the symptoms. This disease hides itself away.

We punch above our weight in health. We're one per cent of the world's community, and we punch above our weight in gene therapy and all other forms of medicine, but we can't find a way to rid ourselves of this disease through early detection. All we need is research that clearly delivers us early detection for ovarian cancer to save the women of Australia and therefore the women of the world. We have an enormous amount of work to. We've put an extra $20 million in, and I thank Greg Hunt for that, but we've got to start somewhere, and it's got to start today.