James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's my pleasure today to update the Chamber on a great milestone in Australia but also in my home city of Adelaide. Today there was a sod-turning for the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute's second building, which is known as the Australian Bragg Centre for Proton Therapy. It was possibly named after Senator Andrew Bragg, although I suspect it was more likely named after the father-and-son Braggs—two of the many Nobel Prize winners from my electorate of Sturt—who, of course, were such great pioneers in developing, in particular, X-ray technology and the modern X-ray. This is going to be a proton therapy unit centre as well as being for other health and medical research and infrastructure. The proton therapy treatment capability is particularly exciting for all Australians, because this is the first time that we will have this capacity in our country. It's a very focused radiation beam that, obviously, is quite effective in treating cancerous tumours—in the spine, for example, and other places where you want to limit damage to non-tumorous tissue as much as you possibly can.

At the moment, Australians who need this sort of treatment have to go to Japan, the United States or Western Europe. I think it's a great testament to the government that we've said it's not acceptable for a First World country; we need to have this capability and capacity in our country. It was Minister Hunt, a few years ago now, who made the decision to underpin this new building by putting the money down to purchase the proton therapy unit and put it in place in Adelaide. Now Australians—people from around the region as well—will be able to get this treatment, funded by the Commonwealth government and other funding partners, in Adelaide.

The first sod was turned today by Lendlease, the builder, and Commercial & General, who will be the building's owners, with the state government. Unfortunately, it being a sitting day, I wasn't able to be there, but I would have loved to. My heart was certainly with them, because I've been very involved with the development of this project for a long time, wearing a number of different hats. More recently, as the federal member for Sturt, I've been working very closely with Commercial & General, the company, the state government and Minister Hunt's office in the federal government to make sure that we reached this milestone today.

It's a few years away. This is obviously very complex nuclear machinery. We're building a very big bunker. They're digging down about three storeys, and it will come to be 12 storeys above the ground when it's completed. It's exciting technology. This is the second machine that the company, ProTom, has installed. The first one that was commissioned is now at Massachusetts General Hospital, so we're in pretty good company as far as cutting-edge technology goes. I congratulate everyone involved. I'm very excited to see this health infrastructure being delivered in my state of South Australia.