Proton Therapy in South Australia

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:57): My question is to the Treasurer. Will there be any new money allocated to the proton therapy cancer treatment centre in this year's state budget?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (14:57): Well, you wait and see, I guess. We hand down the budget on the 5 June and not in advance of that. I think I have tried to be as detailed as I possibly can be to the house in response to the questions from the member for Schubert about where the project is up to and what the work program currently is and what challenges and complexities need to be navigated in order to ensure that we still have the capacity to have a proton therapy unit here in South Australia.

I would like to think that that's a possibility, but there are some things which are beyond anyone's control. If the building modifications, for example, are required to the extent that it impedes with or is too impactful on or deleterious to the structural integrity of the bunker facility that has been created, or it reduces the structural integrity of those very thick walls, which the member for Flinders helped me explain so well before, then that may make it unviable. That's not our indication to date, but we still have to resolve that first. Then, we would need to go through a process of reaching an agreement with the building owner for modifications to occur to their building and then going out to market, contracting with someone who is more capable of delivering than Proton International has been, getting it built, installed, commissioned and turned on with the funding support of the commonwealth.

So there is a pathway forward. We are not in the position of being confident enough to be able to progress with the procurement, let alone the installation, of a proton therapy unit, but I do think we are making some progress. As I said, I have met with those clinicians who are responsible not only for providing the clinical advice to the program but also for managing the MTOP program that the constituent the member for Schubert was referring to, Ms Tuckerman, has taken advantage of.

We don't have access to this important treatment in the country and we never have done since. The idea of this initiative was to, for the first time, introduce this service into Australia, but, for the benefit of our state, be the home of it. I still think that we have a better chance than other states and territories of being able to prosecute that opportunity here in South Australia, but we have to successfully navigate those challenges.

I have been in regular contact, as I said, with those clinicians to let them know how far progressed we are, what the work program is. We have extended their funding to keep their clinical efforts together and to keep the MTOP program going for, I think, another 18 months while we try to resolve this. Hopefully, at the end of that process we will have a positive resolution and we can move forward, but that is the work that is underway.