Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last month I had the absolute delight of hosting the Biggest Morning Tea on Thursday 28 May at my office in Clontarf to raise funds for the Australian Cancer Council. Australia's Biggest Morning Tea is a community that raises funds and makes a big difference to those impacted by cancer, and we all have people that we know, family or friends, who have been impacted by cancer. My grandfather passed from cancer. It was a great day, especially at a time like this, during restrictions that were in full force during May. Because of the restrictions we decided to theme the event as a takeaway morning tea, where locals were invited to join me for a quick five-minute socially distanced chat and grab a coffee and something to eat. There was a great turnout from local people, and I want to thank our local businesses for coming on board to support the Cancer Council and support the community morning tea.

Banjo's Redcliffe donated some of the morning tea, some of the pastries, so please get down and support Banjo's Redcliffe. Also a lovely local woman is starting her own business. The name of that business is Von Beggs Pies. These are all homemade pies which were donated for the morning tea. I want to thank Citipointe Church and Citipointe Care, their care arm, at Redcliffe, who hosted the takeaway coffee cart and provided all the coffee and the service of four young people who came down to serve at the morning tea, all at no charge, to help raise funds for the Cancer Council. The Biggest Morning Tea was very well received, and the local people that attended were generous. Thank you for that. We raised $931.50 just through donations on the day.

It's a great addition to the measures that the Government has put in place to help Australians that are going through cancer or suffering with this horrible disease. There was an announcement recently by the honourable Greg Hunt for some $13.6 million to support 10 clinical trials to find innovative cancer treatments for melanoma, reproductive cancers and childhood brain cancer. Expanded medicines listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from 1 June to help people with multiple types of cancer also include multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that develops from plasma cells in the bone marrow. This listing alone is estimated to help ease the cost of living for more than 2,300 Australians every year. The Morrison Government also invested $400 million in world-leading research to improve the lives of all Australians, with $87.1 million for cancer research.

It was a brilliant day. Thank you to all the researchers for what you do in helping Australians.