House debates
Wednesday, 4 March 2020
Statements by Members
Prostate Cancer
1:42 pm
Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I'd like to acknowledge an important person in my community who recently led a team that has made a world-first medical breakthrough. Associate Professor Tom Shakespeare is a radiation oncologist working in the Mid North Coast and northern New South Wales local health districts. His team has published a world-first evaluation of a revolutionary radiation therapy that has left patients cancer free after two years. This evaluation looked at the effectiveness of a new prostate cancer treatment using a scan to detect tiny deposits of cancer in patients' lymph nodes.
In the past, the diagnosis of prostate cancer which had spread to the lymph glands was not good. However, modern advances in radiation therapy and PET scan imaging mean that men can now be offered targeted, curative radiation therapy. Professor Shakespeare said:
For the first time, men can be treated with the aim of totally eradicating the prostate cancer within both lymph nodes and the prostate.
The evaluation followed the first 46 patients from the Lismore, Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour areas treated using this new technique and found that, two years following radiation therapy, all patients were cancer free. This is fantastic work. I congratulate and thank Tom Shakespeare and all of his team.
1:44 pm
Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The free marketeers: now see what happens when you want to buy everything from overseas. We're buying 30 per cent of everything we consume, just about, from China. If we bring something in from China now, it can have coronavirus bacteria on it. Even if it's a steel cabinet, it may have coronavirus on it. It comes in in ships manned by Chinese people or put on the wharf by Chinese people in China. So suddenly you can't get all this cornucopia of largesse that you were going to get through your free market system.
Let me be very specific: 80 per cent of petrol comes from overseas—not necessarily from China—so you're going to have to walk everywhere because you're not going be able to get any petrol; 30 per cent of toilet rolls come from overseas, so too bad about that problem; don't play cricket in the backyard if you're in Melbourne during winter or in Townsville during summer, because 90 per cent of your glass comes from overseas, maybe more; and 70 per cent of your soap and toothpaste comes from overseas. Surely these commodities, that are so essential for the functioning of any proper 21st-century society, should be made— (Time expired)