Page 5464 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 November 2010
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useful and practical products that can help others in their communities. Through this work and the interaction it creates, Men’s Shed is able to help men face their challenges and talk about them in a non-threatening environment.
Movember is a special month for the men in our community. Movember helps us to talk about the many elephants in the room: the threats to the health and wellbeing of our men. Movember helps us to raise money for research into the issues that are faced by our men. Most important of all, Movember gives our men permission to talk, to cry, to go to the doctor and to hug. I urge all to embrace the lighter side of Movember but also to realise and recognise the significant contribution it makes to making life just that little bit better for the men in our community.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella) (4.03): My first thought when rising here today was about where this month of Movember might end. It is not such a harebrained or harelip idea at all. I actually welcome this matter of public importance because men’s health is an important issue. If we talk about it, perhaps men will think about it. If we talk about it in this chamber, perhaps, in fact, men generally will talk about it, and they will just talk about it with their doctor.
I had cause to wonder, however, knowing that the Liberal party room approves all items for MPI discussion, what was it that Mrs Dunne used to ensure that she could put her name on such an MPI? Was it a race to raise the importance of such an issue? Was it a race to prove that the removal of a subnasal hirsute lip and a subsequent publication might be controversial? Or was it just a case of who had the bigger moustache? I do not know. I still wonder.
I welcome this MPI, and I thank our “mo sista” over here, Mrs Dunne, for bringing it to the Assembly. I am reminded of where we finished off last year at that famous Canberra bastion and defender of men’s health, King O’Malley’s, here in Civic. You might remember that last year I made the supreme sacrifice and offered up my hirsute lip, my sub-proboscis forest, in support of Movember and what it supports—men’s health and particularly the focus on depression, that black dog, and prostate cancer.
I must again thank the tremendous effort by Peter Barclay OAM, the managing director of King O’Malley’s Irish pub. Peter has been at the forefront of the push to firmly establish Movember as the men’s premier health promotion in Canberra over the past five years. I am sure that I can say on behalf of all members that we thank Peter for his tremendous efforts in hosting Movember at King O’Malley’s and raising tens of thousands of dollars to support men’s health issues. Members might like to know, in fact, that each of the last two years has been a record in terms of the amount of money collected. The ACT has had, for the last three or four years, the greatest amount collected per capita in support of men’s health issues and, in particular, the fight against prostate cancer. A lot of it is down to Peter Barclay and his infectious commitment.
Importantly, when we arrive at the time of the month at the end of Movember when the ’tasche, the little forest, is felled, the message, Madam Deputy Speaker, remains clear and it still stands: get your act together, fellas, and talk about your health. Although some of the efforts at the end of Movember can best be described as
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