Mr HUNT (Flinders—Minister for Health and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service and Cabinet) (15:03): I want to thank the member for Ryan for his work and his passion in this area. I recently had the privilege of releasing with him in his electorate the latest round of the National Health and Medical Research Council grants, in which cancer featured as a major recipient. Every person in this chamber, whether as a member or as an individual, has been touched by cancer. We know that it's something which will affect in the order of 145,000 Australians with a diagnosis this year. Indeed, only during question time, I received a text from somebody very close to me about their diagnosis just today. We know that 50,000 people will lose that journey this year. One of the things, though, that is of most importance in Australia is that we have one of the finest systems in the world for helping to treat, care for and manage cancer. Two recent analyses in particular have identified this. The Economist Intelligence Unit recently, in their Index of Cancer Preparedness, ranked Australia No. 1 in the world across all of the 28 countries they analyse—those countries with advanced systems of treatment. Perhaps much more importantly than that, though, overnight we have seen in the journal The Lancet Oncology a new study from the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership analysing the survival rates of seven different types of cancer: oesophageal, stomach, colon, rectal, pancreatic, lung and ovarian. In terms of one-year survival rates, I am pleased to inform the House that Australia was ranked No. 1 in the world for all seven of those cancers. For five-year survival rates we were ranked No. 1 for five of those cancers and No. 2 for lung and ovarian cancer. That is a tribute to the work of our clinicians, our researchers, our hospital systems and people across different sides of this chamber over many years. In particular, it is the combination of a world-leading screening program; research, which includes $100 million for cancer that was announced in the recent NHMRC grants; and then, of course, our treatment under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. To give just one example: we recently listed Avastin for glioblastoma. Avastin is a medicine which will make a dramatic difference for many patients. It would otherwise have cost $31,000, and it will help about 890 patients. I met one of those patients, Hugh, at Cabrini hospital when this medicine was being listed. His life has been transformed by access to this medicine. So the system we have in Australia is, we believe, the best in the world. It's now backed up by the numbers, which show that we are saving lives and protecting lives.