Senate debates

Thursday, 13 September 2012

Documents

Department of Health and Ageing

6:13 pm

Photo of Christopher BackChristopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I rise to speak to this report. Only today at lunchtime Senator Moore and I, amongst others, had the privilege of attending the Action in Melanoma luncheon here in Parliament House. Presented in the main by three people, the CEO of Melanoma Patients Australia, Mr Will Kerkhof; Professor Jonathan Cebon, who heads up the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre; and the most courageous woman, Mrs Anne Harper, who only this year faced and successfully beat melanoma. I think Senator Moore would agree with me there were not many people who were focused on anything other than Mrs Harper and her remarkable story As we know, the incidence of melanoma in this country is about four times that of the international average. As Professor Cebon quite eloquently said, this is a climate not for white-skinned people but for those with pigment in their skin. So here we are, and because of the exposure to ultraviolet light we have it; some 10,000 Australians every year are diagnosed with metastatic melanoma of whom some 1,400 die.

Senator Moore, a very close member of my family was diagnosed with the level III melanoma at the same time, and out of the same clinic, that the then Senator Peter Cook was diagnosed. As we know, Peter did not survive. My family member did. But when you are asked whether the family member has income insurance because, if they do, and the level of melanoma is sufficient that it would cause him or her to be able to cease working and call upon that insurance, it is a very humbling and sobering moment.

What was interesting, particularly in the case of Mrs Harper, was that she had been diagnosed with a lump in her back during 2011. It was excised. This was following, regrettably, an annual check-up because a member of her family had died of melanoma some years earlier. Regrettably her GP, when he first saw this lump in her back, said: 'No, it's nothing to be worried about; don't be concerned.' Fortunately, she had the common sense to go to a skin specialist who did excise it. It was in February this year, if my memory serves me correctly, Senator Moore, that she found a lump under her arm. She showed us graphic pictures of a scan of her body in February of this year and there was not much of her body that was not affected by melanoma.

She was then able to go into a course of treatment. The generic name of the drug I cannot remember but the term 'ippy' is one that is familiar to me. She had four courses within this program of treatment and there she was, having been near death's door—she has a three-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son who had been wondering why their mother could not be at home with them—standing before us telling her story with great bravery. The cost of this treatment, which the drug company has brought to market, is $118,000 per course of four treatments. They are unable to continue giving it free of charge. It is not an anti-cancer drug; it works on the immune system. It excites the immune system of the body. This is a whole new raft of methods of treatment in cancers. Rather than attack the cancer—often with medications, treatments and drugs which are, of themselves, poisonous to the body—this new approach is to try and excite the immune system so that the person's own immune system will fight the melanoma.

That decrease in the incidence of the melanomas around her body by June of this year was something almost miraculous to see. The point of all this—coming back to the report before us—is that at the moment the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme administration has not yet seen fit to add this treatment to its list of prescribed drugs. One hopes that the opportunity may be there for it to do so in the future—if not totally then at least partially. One of the privileges of being in this place, as we know, it is to interact with these people and to come away very much wiser for the experience.

Question agreed to.