2016 Joint Annual Scientific Meeting of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and the Australia & New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group

It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the Joint Annual Scientific Meeting of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and the Australian & New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group.

As Governor of the State of Queensland, I extend a particularly warm welcome to attendees and presenters who have travelled here from interstate and overseas. 

I trust that you will take some time to explore the beauty of our wondrous Gold Coast. Our beaches are particularly enticing – which explains, but I am sure you will agree does not excuse, Queensland’s status as the skin cancer capital of the world!

Helping to beat cancer, and promoting the work of our inspirational professionals in this space, has been somewhat of a personal quest for me.

I am privileged to be the Patron of one of our State’s leading research institutions, QIMR Berghofer, and Cancer Council Queensland – whose national affiliate body, Cancer Council Australia, is aligned with the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia.

I see the hosting of conferences such as this as very much a confirmation of our State’s reputation for excellence in medical research, and of the high standing of our exceptionally dedicated clinicians, and the able administrators who support them.

However, I am also cognisant that their professional standing is very much underpinned by collaboration, with peers and institutions not just here in Australia, but all over the world.

Some of you have been around long enough to recall that in 2001, as Chief Justice, I officially opened the Annual Scientific Meeting in our State capital, Brisbane – more of you still, I suspect, will have been around long enough but have nonetheless forgotten, for which I forgive you!

The theme of that 2001 Meeting was “From Global To Local”, analysing the implications for the health care industry of globalisation.

Looking now at the modern cancer care sector – with its emphasis rightly on partnerships and integration between public and private facilities and educational institutions, not just intra-country, but internationally – the Society was particularly prescient in choosing that theme.

The importance of collaboration is also reflected in this year’s conference theme – Partners for Progress in Breast Cancer Research and Care – with the Society once again co-hosting their annual meeting with the Australia & New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group.

The bringing together of such a distinguished group of clinicians and researchers working in medical and radiation oncology, surgery, nursing, pharmacy, and allied health, with a particularly interest in breast cancer, is to be applauded.

Breast cancer remains the most common cancer in women in Australia, and the second most common cancer to cause death in women, after lung cancer.

The work you all do is therefore manifestly beneficial not just for cancer sufferers and their loved ones, but for the maintenance of the cohesiveness of our society more generally.

I congratulate the two professional bodies for providing their members with opportunities for ongoing education, including through this conference, whose organisers and supporters I also acknowledge.

To all attendees and presenters, I enthusiastically applaud your initiative in participating in the conference, and for recognising the critical importance of continuing professional education, for your benefit, thereby the benefit of us all.   

It is now my immense pleasure to officially open the 2016 Joint Annual Scientific Meeting of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and the Australia & New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group. May you all have a wonderful and productive three days here on the Gold Coast.