CELIA HAMMOND MP, MEMBER FOR CURTIN: Good morning everybody, I’m Celia Hammond, the Liberal member for Curtin and it is wonderful to be here this morning in Curtin in beautiful Western Australia and to welcome back the Prime Minister. I’m standing here with my colleagues, the Attorney General, Michaelia Cash, Special Minister for State Ben Morton, and of course, the wonderful Professor Peter Leedman, who is the Director and CEO of the Harry Perkins Institute. I’ll hand over to the Attorney-General.
SENATOR THE HON. MICHAELIA CASH, ATTORNEY-GENERAL AND MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, SENATOR FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Thank you very much Celia and ladies and gentleman. As I look around the room today, how honoured and privileged are we to be amongst so many people in Western Australia. We’ve just come from a room where we’ve heard a number of Western Australians take us through their personal journey when it comes to cancer. It is a very, very personal journey, as we know. I am someone who talks about my family’s journey with my little sister, Joanna Cash who in 2015, at the age of 33, grew her angel wings, she had a very rare form of cancer, alveolar soft part sarcoma. So my family, we know what it’s like to have that journey and not necessarily be able to get the treatment here in Western Australia. And that’s what Prime Minister, Celia, Ben Morton and I heard today from the people upstairs who shared their journey with this.
Without a doubt, we had excellent cancer care here in Western Australia and on behalf of my federal colleagues, I acknowledge everybody who works to make that journey for those going through cancer and their families as easy as possible. But as we also know we can do better here in Western Australia, and that is why to have our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, join Ben Morton, Celia Hammond, Professor Peter Leedman and everybody here today to make this incredibly transformative announcement for all Western Australians. A Comprehensive Cancer Centre right here in our home state. It is going to literally change the lives of so many people who are going through the journey and of course, so many of whom we know to come and go through that journey. What we heard today was despite the excellence in that care, the journey is just not an easy one. You could do an appointment in one side of Perth, you then have to go an appointment on another side of Perth, you get to juggle your life on a daily basis. That is all going to change with the building of the comprehensive Cancer Centre here in Perth.
On a personal note for me and Professor Leedman and Prime Minister, thank you for making this possible. Clinical trials and our own Comprehensive Cancer Centre. When my little sister was told she had a very rare form of cancer, alveolar soft part sarcoma, the conversation, as so many of you know, went along the line of, “Jo, unfortunately, there’s not a lot we can do for you, there’s no treatment here in Australia.” Jo spent much of her journey over 12 weeks getting on the plane and going to the United Kingdom. So many here today have explained their journey, getting on a plane and going to the eastern states. So to Professor Peter Leedman, thank you. Thank you to the Harry Perkins Centre for your vision. To Ben Morton in particular, who has his own personal story, thank you for working so comprehensively with us to get this over the line. And Prime Minister, on behalf of everybody here, thank you for your leadership. But more than that, for the announcement today, $375 million, it’s in the budget, ladies and gentlemen. Western Australia, thank you, Prime Minister, for giving us our first Comprehensive Cancer Centre, and welcome back to Perth.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you Michaelia, or MC as I like to call her, and to Celia and to Ben, my colleagues, I want to thank them for their strong and passionate leadership that has been so critical to where we are today. To you Peter, it’s been extraordinary to get to meet you today, and I think you would agree with me that the extraordinary group of Australians I’ve just had the privilege to meet with over the course of this morning and this afternoon has been tremendous.
The greatest privilege I have as Prime Minister, is I get to see Australians at their best and I always see Australians at their best often when the circumstances are (inaudible). Whether I’ve walked into a town that has been blown over by a terrible cyclone or one that has been washed away by a flood or burnt down by a fire or ravaged by a pandemic or even one of the many other disasters our nation has had to deal with.
But each and every day, brave Australians fight cancer, and they do, they fight and they got to summon the courage each and every day to go out and do that. They have to comprehend the mass, as we were just learning, of information and various treatments and the decisions that have to be taken when all at the same time they’re thinking, my goodness, and they’re just simply trying to process the worst news they’ve ever had in all of their lives. And sitting next to them is often someone who is processing that same news because it’s someone they’ve lived their entire life with or some other family member or dear friend. And in the worst of circumstances, they’re dealing with it on their own. Now in this country, we have the finest surgeons, the finest doctors, the finest researchers. This is all true, and the quality of what is available in this country is phenomenal.
But that doesn’t do the job on its own because the opportunities to ensure that these brave Australians can get the best possible care and to have the best possible chance not just at surviving their cancer, but to living their life while they’re surviving it. And this is important. It’s not just about saving lives, it’s about the quality of life that you are able to have over the course of your treatment. It’s also about ensuring that all those incredibly clever minds that are taking forward the advances in medical science for the treatment of cancer, for the cure of cancer, and to help people understand how to deal with cancer to ensure they can all get on the same page. And today I also had the great thrill of meeting those amazing researchers who are fighting the fight for the future, to ensure that these treatments and these, and these cures can be found.
And so the Comprehensive Cancer Centre here in Western Australia, here in Perth, is about pulling all that together. It’s about pulling together the incredible clinicians and physicians and researchers and scientists and the students that are learning from them and will go on to do amazing things themselves. It’s about bringing together the entrepreneurs and the financiers and the, and the ecosystem that actually pulls all that together and the pharmacy companies, pharmaceutical companies and all the rest of it to ensure that all of this can happen. But most of all as I’ve learnt today, in particular, because when you’re looking at these investments, they’re the things, the practical elements of it. So you have the research is you have to practise, you have the clinicians, you, you have all of this and the business cycle all in one place and you create this amazing ecosystem that can achieve all of this. But the most important thing is the patient at the centre and that, those patients and their families, their loved ones, their carers, their support people, whether it’s their breast cancer nurses or all else, and I’ve learnt more of the great work that McGrath is doing here in WA, which I’m thrilled about, is their ability to come to one place to be able to move from one part of the centre to another and to be able to get the consistent care and support and the pathway that they need. So that’s what this is about. And it’s about ensuring that it’s here in Perth.
All along our east coast, these facilities do exist in Melbourne and in Sydney and I’ve visited them there too. And I’ve met Western Australians at those facilities and now they will be able to do it here with our commitment of some $375 million as the Attorney has said to make this a reality. Now, just over a week ago, and I was last here in Perth, I had the opportunity to speak to the Premier about this and inform him of the decision that we’d taken in our budget. And I thank Mark for the opportunity to discuss that with him and in confidence and, and they will, of course, go through their process but I welcome the supportive comments that the Premier has made today. I have no doubt he feels exactly as I do about this project and exactly as Michaelia and my colleagues do and I’m sure that Peter, you have shared your vision with him on more than one occasion, and he would be more than (inaudible) with the arguments as to why this should proceed.
And so this is a wonderful opportunity. We all wish that all of these facilities could have been here forever. But, you know, as members of governments, your responsibility is to take the decision of the government and to move forward and as you heard from Michaelia, and I want to acknowledge her, particularly in honouring her sister Joanna and Ben and his mum, that these, politicians we’re like the rest of you. We live similar lives whether we grow up in the suburbs or the bush or regional towns or inner cities or wherever. There’s not a member of Parliament I think, whether the federal or state level, whose life in some way hasn’t been touched by cancer and the treatment of it, the struggles that people go through. There’s not one of us who hasn’t been completely overwhelmed with pride to see the courage that those who have fought cancer have fought it. And so I think this is frankly the least we can do here in the West to ensure that Western Australians, whether they’re here in Perth or further afield across this wonderful state, can come here and get that care and support. In a country like Australia, we’re proud to be able to say we made a bar of it.
This is a very, this is a very prosperous state in Western Australia. It fuels so much of our economy and the reason you have a strong economy, the reason that you work hard to ensure we’re digging out of the ground, well we got to dig out, and to that in the most amazing way, to have amazing manufacturing businesses and services businesses, great tourism industries, all of these things Western Australia knows only too well. The point of all that, at the end of the day, this week’s Budget, I believe, will demonstrate once again the point of all of that work and all the most careful financial management that you can muster as a government is so you can do this. So you can guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on.
The Budget, of course, will confirm record investments in all of these things, as well as addressing our defence and security needs and addressing the very real cost of living pressures that we’re facing in the country right now because of things far away from here. But as all that goes on, I just want to say to those brave souls that are out there battling this right now. Keep up the fight. As a government we’re standing with you as best as we can and as best as we know how and the way we do that is funding this and making it a reality. Taking it from a dream to something that is very real for the people of Western Australia. So I’m going to ask Peter to come and explain a bit more about what’s involved here. And I don’t mind standing here all afternoon listening to him, it’s about Peter. This is a really exciting day and I want to congratulate you for the great work you’ve done and really leading the initiative to make this a reality. Thank you.
PROFESSOR PETER LEEDMAN AO, DIRECTOR, HARRY PERKINS INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH: Prime Minister, Attorney-General, Mr Morton, Ms Hammond and distinguished guests. This truly is a remarkable day for all Western Australians. It’s the start of a new era of cancer care in Western Australia, with the development of the Western Australian Comprehensive Cancer Centre. Today’s announcement of $375 million towards the establishment of the centre, is a massive investment and Prime Minister, a huge thank you to you and your government for backing this proposal. The announcement is both visionary and transformative, it’s visionary because the investment is going to be felt by all of us for generations to come. These facilities are here, they’re there, they’re sitting for everyone to partake. What a wonderful legacy, just think of it. What’s happening today is the incredible legacy for this particular, since, just as the Peter MacCallum in Melbourne is an icon and known by all as a centre of excellence, our goal for this centre, of course, is to attain the same world-class reputation, serving WA and the global community in forthcoming years. It will be transformative because patients and their families will literally have, and we heard already, one stop shop holistic care in a standalone centre – from diagnosis to treatment, from surgery to radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and complementary therapies such as massage, music, psychological well-being analysis – all happening under one roof. We don’t know what that’s like in Western Australia. We’ve got to go to Peter Mac or Chris O’Brien or overseas. It’s going to happen right here. This is a very different experience and that’s what we can deliver for the population and community of Western Australia, and I’m incredibly excited about that possibility for all of us.
To that point, and it’s been made already, but it’s really important because I’m a doctor in the public health system and have been for thirty years, and the quality of care that we provide is exceptional. It’s not about the quality of care. It’s actually the journey. And it’s the journey that patients and their families endure, which we believe we can do better. Patients and their families struggle with the challenge of fragmented and disconnected care, on top of dealing with their own cancer. And we’ve heard today from a number of very, people who’ve been very generous with their stories. It’s hard to navigate the complex pathways in cancer care on your own. Patients want help with this. They want a streamlined, integrated, well-lit, holistic approach with the full range of traditional and complementary therapies, all in one, simple centre.
In addition to these benefits, experience from [inaudible] cancer centres in Australia and around the world, such as the Peter Mac in Melbourne and Chris O’Brien in Sydney, outcomes improve. And that’s clearly another incredibly compelling reason for why we would want one of these centres in Western Australia. The centre will also help stem the brain drain, and we really know about that, Prime Minister. It is a big issue in Western Australia. We want to keep our best and brightest here, not being swept up and hoovered and transported to the eastern states. So I’m sorry, Prime Minister, we want to keep our best and brightest right here, and this is going to be a wonderful wonderful way of doing that.
PRIME MINISTER: Or come here, too.
PROFESSOR PETER LEEDMAN AO, DIRECTOR, HARRY PERKINS INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH: Yes, absolutely. So the centre will be established on a strong foundation of pioneering discovery research from the Harry Perkins Institute, and clinical trials emanating from Linear Clinical Research that will underpin the delivery of the highest quality clinical care. The centre will have the latest in genomic technologies and the genes that go with [inaudible]. It’ll focus on precision medicine and remaining competitive and right at the cutting edge of clinical therapeutics. We would expect some of these discoveries to be heard, and the Prime Minister had a chance to talk with Brendan Kennedy [inaudible] over there about the commercialisation of some of our very important discoveries, so we can get those discoveries into clinical care and to the bedside.
We envisage that Linear, which is a world-class facility and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Perkins, will provide. For those of you who may not know Linear, it is a jewel in the crown of this campus. It does more cancer early phase clinical trials than any other facility in Australia. Last year, Linear brought to 151 patients, cancer patients in Western Australia, a first in-human drug, first in the world right here in Perth, and that will expand in the new centre. That’s exciting for Linear and we are very enthusiastic about its future and what it holds.
Now, obviously, I can go on and talk about this for ages and ages and ages, but it’s just such a wonderful concept, I love it, and I live and breathe it. However, I can’t. But hopefully you will appreciate the vision and the vision is, we’re going to establish a centre that’s a paradigm shift from the currently available cancer [inaudible], a standalone independent cancer hospital and research centre on the one location right here, just behind us on QEII campus. It will be a sanctuary. It will be a safe place for patients and their families.
So before closing, I’d like to say a couple of thank yous, because we did not get to this morning and this incredible announcement without a lot of help. Prime Minister, once again, incredibly huge thank yous to you and your Government for making this a high priority and for making such a huge contribution to this development. Please join me again. The Attorney-General and to Minister Morton – many of you will not know the work that they have done behind the scenes to actually get this across the line. They believed in the initiative. They’ve supported it. They’ve raised its profile to national level. We, the Western Australian public, are forever, and I mean forever, grateful.
To all the people with lived experience of cancer who have been involved in the development of the centre so far, and all those that will be involved in the future, a huge thank you. A particular thank you to those stories that we heard this morning, or some of us heard this morning, from people around the table letting the Prime Minister know how urgent this is, the need here – fragmented, disconnected journey that people have.
To our two scientists – I’m looking at Brendan, I can’t see [inaudible], [inaudible] see [inaudible] – for thank you to both you and your teams for wowing the Prime Minister and the ministers with your science and giving them a look into what we do in [inaudible].
To the many cancer related groups, organisations and communities who are with us at the table planning this future, thank you. Your involvement is absolutely critical to the success of this initiative. And to the dream team, as I call it, who worked on this proposal over the last several months and years, maturing this concept into what we have today – Professor Moira Clay, Joey [inaudible], Mandy Robinson, who’s my EA, and I think she’ll probably demand a month off after today. She’s amazing. Lauren Kerr, James [inaudible] and [inaudible], and to my incredible Perkins Board, and John Barrington, who I can see, who’s our, who’s our Chair, who backed me and the team to develop this concept and to bring it into reality. A huge thank you to all of you. And of course, no thank yous would be appropriate and complete without mentioning my long suffering family, and especially my wife Sarah, over there in green, who has shared in this vision with me over the last several years.
Western Australians will long remember the 27th of March 2022 as a landmark day. That day is the day that the Western Australian Comprehensive Cancer Centre was born, and I think that’s an extraordinary achievement. It is an incredibly exciting project. I can’t wait to buckle up with the best team in town and drive it to completion so that we can make it available to all Western Australians as fast as humanly possible.
And with that, that concludes what I’m going to say. That concludes the more formal part of this morning’s proceedings. It’s a wonderful day. Stay on just a little bit more, I think we’re going to have some questions and answering various things. And to all of you for coming this morning, thank you very much.
PRIME MINISTER: Can I thank the media for being here this morning – you don’t, you don’t hear me say that very often, do you. Can I thank you for being here this morning. We’ve already had a press conference on other national matters earlier today. But if you’d like to ask some questions on these matters, particularly with Peter next to me, then feel free to.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you mentioned Mark McGowan before, discussing this amazing project with him. I was just wondering, how come he’s not there with you this morning speaking on it?
PRIME MINISTER: Because the Premier and the Government here in Western Australia are yet to make their decision on this matter. And so they’re going through their processes. We gave them the courtesy of advising them the Federal Government has made their decision and informed him of that. And so they are still going through their processes as a Government, so once they’ve arrived at a decision on these matters [inaudible].
JOURNALIST: Do you believe this that any angst that Labor, Federal Labor colleagues doesn’t like him to be in presence with you on camera?
PRIME MINISTER: Honestly, those issues I could not care less about when we’re standing here announcing a comprehensive cancer centre. Politics can just take a backseat for a second, if that’s alright.
JOURNALIST: I guess given WA’s isolation, how important is it to have the centre here?
PRIME MINISTER: Oh look it’s [inaudible]. Look it’s massively important, and Peter has set out that very well. And as I said, I’ve met Western Australians at Peter Mac and and up there in Sydney as well. And so WA’s a vast state, vast state, and that’s difficult enough. And then to actually have to go to the other side of the country on occasion because of the nature of the cancer treatment [inaudible], well, that’s something we need to fix in Western Australia and we are fixing that. And I do believe that the Premier and I share a passion for this project and after being, you know, the GST, I think arrangements will very much enable them to, I think, come to the party very soon. I don’t think that will be a stretch for Mark. No, because I, look, I honestly believe I think there’s a strong commitment that at both the state and federal level, and once they’ve gone through their proper channels I think this will be realised. So, I think there’s, as you say, said, Peter, it’s been birthed here today. There are many other partners in the project, but it is something that we’re able to have this on both coasts – on the west coast and on the east coast.
And that’s, I think, one of the key things, I’ve got such a strong Western Australian team in my Cabinet and in my Government, and that has enabled these issues to become national priorities. And it’s been such a strong voice. I particularly, and Ben won’t mind me doing this, acknowledging Michaelia’s leadership on this. She leads our Western Australian team here in our, in our Cabinet, but also across our Government. And she has fought for this and she has argued for it. And it wasn’t a parochial argument for Western Australia. Like on the GST, it was an argument made in the national interest that we need these services and facilities on both sides of the country for all Australians, and so well done Michaelia. And no one understands the challenges Western Australians face better than my Western Australian team, which is large and significant and very vocal.
JOURNALIST: When it comes to health, what, can we expect more commitment from the Federal Government to help that many states, especially Western Australia, to deal with back loggings and deal with elective surgery issues?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, in, we have record levels of investment in public health in this country, particularly through the course of the pandemic. One of the first things we did was we offered to carry 50-50 the costs of pandemic-related health costs here in Western Australia. But at the same time, improvements in funding that we put in as a Government. We have seen our own funding of the public hospital system here increase by around just over 80 per cent or thereabouts, which is many times over what the increase has been. Now, I’m not looking to make a state federal point here on a day like today, because I believe there is a strong partnership on this, but we have been doing the heavy lifting on increasing our investment.
But I’ve got to say, on the GST deal, in all seriousness, I understand it was Treasury work here in WA itself – you may have seen those reports – that if that 2018 deal that I secured and put in place for Western Australia had not been done, well, those estimates – I can’t confirm them, they weren’t done by the Federal Government – that would have seen Western Australia down by over $4.4 [sic] billion, $4.4 [sic] billion, because of the way the GST and the way it used to be calculated until I changed it and legislated it meant that Western Australia was getting their fair share, and a fair share in the national interest. And that fair share means that when when Mark, sorry Premier McGowan, but when Premier McGowan comes to have a conversation with himself as Treasurer, as Premier, and then have that with the rest of the Cabinet, he’ll be able to look at projects like this with a confidence that he couldn’t before because WA wasn’t getting their fair share. And so that’s why I say the GST deal for Western Australia is a forever deal, and next year it’s worth $2.6 billion extra to the Western Australian coffers on average, and for the six years after that, and then into the future. And that means health care, police, law and order, education, schools, but in particular, centres like the one that we’ve announced our funding for here today and taking that initiative.
