WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:55): My question is again to the Minister for Health. Will the minister advise how many cases of breast cancer have been diagnosed amongst the female workforce at the Women's and Children's Hospital over the past five years, and has the government commenced any investigation into the high incidence of breast cancer reported at this site? The ABC headquarters in Queensland—as many members would know—was closed after a breast cancer cluster was identified comprising 16 women with an incidence 11 times greater than in the general community.

The opposition has been informed by a member of the nursing staff that there has been a very high incidence of breast cancer amongst the workforce at the Women's and Children's Hospital and, further, that a number of these women are quite young and premenopausal. Last year, as the minister may be aware, the Women's and Children's Hospital issued a report identifying a high risk to patients and the workforce as a result of the state of the buildings at the hospital.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:56): Of all the questions the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has asked me that is the most despicable. To take a couple of facts and put them together in such a way as to insinuate that the buildings of the hospital are responsible for breast cancer is outrageous, dishonest, despicable and absolutely designed to try to get political attention to a lost cause—her lost cause. I do not know how many people at the Women's and Children's Hospital have contracted breast cancer; it has not been brought to my attention. It is terrible when any woman gets breast cancer. I am advised that one woman in eight is likely to get breast cancer in our community.

No doubt in any group of women a number of them will have breast cancer, but to draw the conclusion that the deputy leader is drawing, to make the inference that she is making that it is somehow associated with the buildings at the Women's and Children's Hospital, is absolutely baseless.

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: You can yell as much as you like. You are wrong, you are dishonest, you are a disgrace.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Hartley.