Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (11:41): I thank the member for Forde very much for moving this motion and for the other speakers who spoke so eloquently about it. Robert was a lovely little boy. He was four years of age—really cute, a soft, gentle little kid. I was the oncology registrar at the children's hospital when Robert came in to our clinic, and I saw him. Unfortunately, he had acute myeloid leukaemia and had just relapsed. It was pretty obvious he had relapsed—he had a big liver and spleen, and bruising all over him. But he was still so nice and well-behaved, from a lovely family. They came from Campbelltown, which is in my electorate of Macarthur. A bone marrow transplant was experimental in those days—in our oncology unit there had been five previous attempts at bone marrow transplant and they'd all died. With relapsed AML the prognosis was very poor, with virtually 100 per cent mortality, so it was decided to put Robert through this experimental technique of a bone marrow transplant. He survived, and he was the first surviving bone marrow transplant patient in the Camperdown Children's Hospital at that stage. He went back to live in Campbelltown , and I ultimately got to represent him as the representative for Macarthur. That was in 1981—well over 40 years ago—and we have lagged behind ever since with our bone marrow registry. There are roughly 270 children in Australia who are diagnosed with some form of blood cancer every year—most commonly with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, or ALL, a significant number with AML and other types, and occasionally with lymphoma. The issue is that with our current system of bone marrow donation there are only about 150,000 people on the register. We have a very diverse population now. If we include the adults with bone cancer, eight in 10 people requiring bone marrow transplantation in Australia require a donation from overseas because our registry isn't big enough. We must increase the numbers. It is really long past time for us to have a national register to be able to provide bone marrow transplants from Australian donors for all who need it. Cheek swabs are a very effective and economical way of bringing additional donors to the registry, and we must include them. This is the type of technology that's used, for example, by the police force for DNA mapping of crime scenes et cetera. They've been using it now for many years, and we should have this as part of our registry. A major obstacle, yet again, in our healthcare system is our federated system. This has created a number of obstructions to— Mr Katter: Hear, hear! Dr FREELANDER: I'm pleased the member for Kennedy agrees with me! There are a number of obstructions to the development of a proper national bone marrow registry with large enough numbers because of our federated system. It is vital that our states and territories get together with our federal government—I know the health minister is very keen to do that, as he is with our organ donation system—to get a proper registry of bone marrow donors. I welcome the announcement by the minister for health that discussions with health ministers from around the country are about to begin to discuss how we can best cut through this jurisdictional and bureaucratic red tape and clear the way for donor recruitment. I congratulate all the members of parliament who were involved in getting this done, and I thank all the members for doing this. It's been far too long—1981 was a long time ago, and I'm an old bloke now. For years we've been trying to get this together and we haven't done it—really, it's because of judicial and bureaucratic nonsense. That's all it is. We must proceed. We need to reverse the statistics. We need to have the vast majority of our donors coming from Australia to our Australian patients. I look forward to working with the minister for health and all the members of parliament to make sure this happens rapidly, because it's long past time. We should be doing this. Thank you.