Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to pay tribute to someone who I believe was a fine Western Australian and someone I greatly admired and respected. Western Australia has lost a true friend and advocate. I knew Judith as someone who concentrated much of her time on issues affecting rural and regional Western Australia. Indeed, my last interaction with Judith was something along these lines. She was expressing her concern to me that she may not make it to the Liberal council meeting being held somewhere in country Western Australia. My colleagues opposite will be able to tell me where. She was expressing her distress that she might be too unwell to go. I do not know if she made it to that meeting or not, but I did encourage her to take some time to look after herself.

But, as we have all paid tribute to today, she always portrayed amazing resilience in her cancer treatment, and no more so than when she was diagnosed with secondary cancer within weeks of her husband dying. Her resilience as a person was quite extraordinary. When she spoke of how she coped with that situation, she spoke about how she focused on her treatment and on her work. So I would like to pay tribute to the many important issues that Senator Adams pursued in her career—things that are not necessarily the cut and thrust of day to day partisan politics but the kinds of issues that we as senators all like to get into the nitty-gritty of and make progress on through things like parliamentary committees. These include everything from gene patents to petrol sniffing, as we have heard today, and access to quality midwifery services. She also focused on hearing services, rural and remote communities and the situation of Indigenous communities. There were so many really important issues that she was deeply involved in.

I have to say that it is really important in public life to have people who are prepared to share their personal journeys with others, particularly others who are in the same boat. Judith certainly had a lot to share in terms of her very interesting and diverse life. Importantly, she also did this with her experience of breast cancer. I know she undertook the Breast Cancer Network Australia's Advocacy and Science Training course, and I think that is a tribute to her dedication to doing public advocacy around an issue that had also affected her so personally. She spoke about the importance of talking to people in the same boat as her. She also spoke of the incredible importance of women living with breast cancer being able to continue to work. That was an important way of managing the disease. I think this is an important lesson for everyone as we deal with adversity in life. Judith said, and I think these are words that truly deserve to be on the record in this chamber and that served as an inspiration to people with cancer and served as an inspiration to people I know who have also lived with cancer:

I live with cancer but I do not let it control my life.