Hansard debates

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (15:14:11) — Cancer will touch one in two Australians during their lifetimes, highlighting the need, urgency and value of breakthroughs. Cancer knows no boundaries, so neither can the quest to find cures. International collaboration is crucial in saving lives. This is why the US-Australia Cancer Moonshot matters. The initiative aims to accelerate advances vital to survival by making more therapies available to more patients while improving the ability to prevent cancers and detect them at an early stage.

The US-Australia Cancer Moonshot aims to fast-track innovative clinical trials. Doubling survival rates in the next decade was the aim of last week's cancer moonshot strategy meeting featuring leading Australian and American government officials, medical researchers and philanthropists at the US embassy in Canberra, where I represented the Victorian government.

Brain cancer has been defined as a priority because it kills more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer. Data sharing is crucial for discovery. The US and Victoria signed a memorandum of understanding to share patient histories, with full privacy protections, to advance research and discovery in July 2016 when Vice-President Joe Biden declared to the Premier his admiration for all we have done, while marking the opening of the $1 billion jewel in Australia's medical research crown, the Victorian Comprehensive
Cancer Centre.

This development came six months after I publicly called for Australia to offer to partner the US within days of President Barack Obama issuing his challenge that America should be the country to cure cancer, because driving international collaboration provides the best opportunity for life-saving breakthroughs.