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

This afternoon I would like to talk about the opportunities for biomedical research in my home city of Adelaide. But perhaps starting a little more broadly than that, I'm very proud to be part of a government that understands where the future job opportunities are in this country, particularly in the manufacturing sector. South Australia has had a very significant heritage in manufacturing, particularly dating back to the Playford era. It was Thomas Playford who, amongst many other things, established the combination of abundant housing and cheap electricity generation in South Australia, which led so much industry, particularly the car industry but many others as well, to establish in the post World War II period in Australia. That has been an underpinning of our economy for many, many decades. Sadly, the car industry is no longer in South Australia. But this is a government that's making sure that it understands and is identifying and investing in the future opportunities for South Australia's economy. One of those is clearly naval shipbuilding, and it's well known in this chamber that I regularly talk about the submarine and the frigate programs that are going to bring thousands and thousands of jobs into South Australia. The Space Agency and announcements around cybersecurity and smart satellite investments are also very significant in South Australia. These are jobs for the future. They are jobs in their thousands—in fact, they are jobs in their tens of thousands. Those investments are very important.

In the recent budget we announced our modern manufacturing fund, the $1.4 billion, and we identified six priority areas. I mentioned defence and space, but another one is medical and biomedical capability in this country—developing that sovereign manufacturing capability in the medical and biomedical sector. In South Australia we have on North Terrace what is now a thriving biomedical precinct which has been developed around the new Royal Adelaide Hospital.

I will give a little bit of context here. In 2009 the state government in South Australia decided that the Royal Adelaide Hospital would move from one end of the city, on North Terrace, to the other. They made that commitment and, in 2017, eight years later—it was about September 2017, from memory—the new Royal Adelaide Hospital was opened. That's the major tertiary hospital for the state of South Australia. When it was opened, it was certainly the most expensive hospital ever built—one of the most expensive buildings ever built on the planet, at $2.3 billion.

That, of course, has spurned other developments co-located with the Royal Adelaide Hospital. The state government recently announced that the Women's and Children's Hospital that is in North Adelaide is going to be relocated to be adjacent to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, which will be a very good thing that I'm supportive of. One of the major catalysts for biomedical research on the precinct was the investment into the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute. The Rudd government made the commitment to that. That was opened in late 2013. It's an excellent facility, and we are very, very proud and grateful to have it in South Australia. They do some very, very significant and valuable research. They have got a cyclotron in their basement. So, in fact, we have the ability to contribute to the domestic nuclear medicine needs for patients in South Australia and in the Northern Territory, and we are a fail safe for Western Australia as well. So we have that sovereign capability in the City of Adelaide to produce those inputs, which is excellent.

The next major milestone here is what was called SAHMRI 2, now to be called the Bragg Cancer Centre, which is a building to be built next door to SAHMRI 1—or what we can now just call SAHMRI. That is going to house the proton therapy unit, which will be the first ever built in Australia. This is going to be a fantastic asset for the entire nation. Proton therapy is a very sophisticated cancer treatment and it's particularly helpful in dealing with small tumours, say spinal tumours, where you might want to undertake radiation therapy but you clearly want to damage as little cell tissue around the tumour that you are targeting as possible. Proton therapy allows for a very concentrated radio therapy beam at that tumour, hopefully hitting only the tumour and as little as possible around that. It's excellent for spinal cord tumours, for example, and lots of tumours in young children, of course. By the very nature of the type of cancer that they can have, the more acute the treatment that is causing as little damage more broadly, the better.

At the moment, those that need proton therapy treatment have to go overseas. It's quite common to go to the United States, Japan and Western Europe, if needs be. It isn't right that that capability hasn't been available in this country—and thankfully it will be. I'm hopeful that, within the next two years, the building will be finished, the machine will be commissioned and certified and that they will be able to commence treatment. A little over $60 million to buy the actual machine is coming from the Commonwealth government. The building is being built by a consortium led by Commercial & General. The state government are putting a significant amount of money, around $40 million, into the actual building. It's being done as a commercial proposition, so other parts of the building will be leased out to other appropriate biomedical tenants.

So we are going to have in Adelaide the capability to provide that proton therapy treatment to any Australian that needs it and also, frankly, to a lot of people in the broader Asia-Pacific region who currently have to travel further than Australia to get that treatment. The unit itself is a very modern third-generation proton therapy unit. There's only one made by the manufacturer operating at the moment in the world and that's at the Massachusetts General Hospital, which is one of the most celebrated institutions for nuclear medicine and modern medicine, and we're getting the second one of that generation installed in Adelaide. I was there two weeks ago and was lucky enough to have a site tour by the management at SAHMRI and the team there. They're obviously very excited. It is next to the old rail yards. They're still digging the hole for the site. A proton therapy unit needs to be held in a very purpose-built building, with very specific concrete specifications around the bunker that the actual unit is held in, which obviously is understandable, given what is being produced in the process of developing the proton ray. They're digging the site out as we speak. They have been going for about 12 months, right through COVID. Despite the pressures of COVID, they haven't missed a beat. Thankfully, the state and federal governments have worked very well together to make sure that the deal, from a commercial point of view, held together so we didn't have delays because some of the financing parties and the contracted builder had uncertainties with COVID. We made sure that guarantees were in place so they could continue on schedule for construction. On the tour, the advice was that, later this year, probably around September or October, the excavation works will have finished.

They have had a few surprises along the way, given the site was the old railway signal station, dating back to the 19th century. There were some contamination issues with things like kerosene and other things that existed in the 19th century era railways that they have been able to gently and safely dispose of. They'll start coming out of the ground in October-November. There will be cranes on the skyline again in that precinct. When the building is completed, hopefully in mid-2023, and the proton therapy facility is commissioned and run by the state government's SA Health, it will be such a proud day for all Australians to have that nuclear medicine capability here in this country.

There have been some examples in local media in South Australia. In fact, a little girl living in Adelaide had to travel to Texas for proton therapy treatment because it wasn't available in Australia. It's a great relief to see that won't be the case for patients who might need this treatment into the future. It's obviously stressful and painful enough to need that treatment, but to have to travel to another country to get it is just not right for a First World country like Australia. I'm very proud of the government's commitment to that and I look forward to the centre opening in the next few years.