Page 815 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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from speaking to the people at the unit I got a good understanding of how much he was respected by the staff, who considered him to be a friend.
Peter Field was born in Adelaide and completed an economics degree before working for a time as a jackaroo in Victoria. Peter was recruited to the Department of Trade in Canberra in 1965 and it was not long before he was recognised for his intellect and hard work. Within two years, he was sent to Washington DC for a time. In 1972, Peter returned to Australia and was a head negotiator on uranium policy and nuclear safeguard agreements. Prior to his retirement from the public service, he had reached the position of deputy secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and was Australia’s chief negotiator in the GATT rounds of the 1980s and 1990s. Under his leadership, Australian officials began to work on imaginative new approaches to multilateral trade negotiations.
In 1992, Peter Field’s world as he knew it came to a sudden and abrupt end. Peter was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. All of a sudden, instead of being a man that was in complete control of major policy negotiations, he had to leave matters in the hands of others. After being diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Peter saw the need for the development of an autologous transplant service and he set about using his resources to finance the unit. His experience in the public service, energy and lobbying skills, and 10 years, made the unit a reality. Ten years on, the unit has provided approximately 25 autologous transplants and numerous therapeutic aphaeresis procedures annually. It is the only such unit between Sydney and Melbourne and services the whole of the south-east of New South Wales.
Peter Field was the type of person that makes a community strong. When something has to be done, they do it. Peter Field saw that the financing of this unit was going to take longer than anticipated, so he formed a support group to work towards the creation of the unit. Peter was also interested in seeing the clinical research efforts of the haematology unit develop and expand, so he and his family have been generous financial supporters of the research fund. The research, supported by the fund, is increasingly successful, with up to 20 trials being worked on at any one time. Peter Field was an incredible man, both in his professional work and in his community work. The haematology unit and the Canberra Hospital are better places because of him.
At the unveiling of the plaque, I had the chance to meet many of the staff that had helped look after Peter in the time he spent at the unit. These staff I too had a kinship with. I had the misfortune of spending far too many hours and days at the chemotherapy unit supporting my brother in his battle with cancer. It was those staff that helped me keep my brother’s spirits high, as well as my own and those of my family.
Mr Speaker, I spoke briefly with Peter’s wife, Anne De Salis, whom I had met many years before when we both worked in Prime Minister Keating’s office. She too agreed with my sentiments on how the staff at these units, and for that matter in all wards of the Canberra Hospital, are true angels. Peter remained a patient of the unit until his death in 2004 at the age of 64. His legacy lives on now in survivors in Canberra living a better, longer and healthier life.
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