Page 3511 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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make all the difference for people like Beth and for people like Amy. I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.47): I thank Ms Cheyne for bringing forward this very important issue today. I note that she has told a number of real-life stories of Canberra women, and some of those were reflected in the Canberra Times today. I think that this is a very significant issue amongst the large number of significant issues that confront people when they are confronted with a diagnosis of cancer. I put on record the Canberra Liberals’ support for what Ms Cheyne called clear pathways, but those clear pathways need to be not just in the space of fertility preservation but across the board.
I note the very sobering comments from Dr Steve Robson today in the Canberra Times, which were reflected in Ms Cheyne’s comments. They highlight that this is one of a number of areas in relation to cancer services and other serious illnesses which impact on the Canberra population.
The Canberra Liberals support the motion. I will speak only briefly because I think that the motion speaks for itself, and Ms Cheyne has spoken quite eloquently on the subject. My voice is not going to last the day if I keep on speaking. I commend Ms Cheyne for the motion. I have heartfelt sympathy for those Canberra women and their families who have encountered these difficulties and I applaud the work done by Dr Robson and others in this space. It would be good if we had a more seamless service than we currently have.
Whilst speaking in support of the motion I also need to highlight that, although we have great medical specialists, great radiologists, great oncologists, great allied health people and people who save people’s lives in the cancer space every day, I was thinking about someone who is close to my family and who has recently retired from the Canberra Hospital after 40-plus years as a radiation therapist, about the testament to the number of lives that that one person has saved and about people across the board who provide lifesaving services and services to people who may not have a great health outcome but have great health services in the ACT. But they can always be better.
I think that we cannot talk about cancer services and having clear pathways in the ACT without drawing attention to the radical decline in radiation therapy service timeliness in the past decade. We have seen, in the palliative and radical radiation interventions, a decline from close to 100 per cent timeliness for palliative patients and 98 per cent timeliness for radical patients in 2012 to the mid-50s in terms of timeliness.
This is one of the many things that I see, as the shadow minister for health, where there are not clear pathways and there is not clear and timely provision of service in the oncology space and in the cancer space. I have had feedback from cancer patients, some of whom are quite close to me, that it is very difficult to obtain timely radiation services at the Canberra Hospital at the moment, that there are problems with the equipment and that there are regular breakdowns.
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