Thank you Bruce, and thank you Bruce, Karen, Rev. Bruce Banton, Professor Nico, Dr Bruce Robinson, John Murphy, my friend and parliamentary colleague from Canberra, representatives of local government, representatives from the state parliament and Matt Peacock, author of Killer Company.
I begin by acknowledging the First Australians on whose land we meet, and whose cultures we celebrate as the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
And we also remember today September 11, remember those who perished, we remember the tragedy of that day, the suffering still with their families, and resolve which must remain with all to continue the fight against the forces of global terrorism.
Thank Bruce and thank you Nico for the tremendous work your teams are doing to find a cure for the disease that took Bernie from us, and that has taken so many other husbands, brothers, dads and other loved ones from family members and friends.
I like what Bruce just said about shooting at the moon, sometimes shooting at the stars, but shooting for the moon because we've got to have in ourselves, in our heart and our minds, and the way in which we approach these things, the belief that we can get there. That's what it's all about.
I'm essentially a medical illiterate. I've only been on the receiving end of jabs and scalpels. I've never been on the administrative end. But can I say how much I admire the extraordinary collection of talent and ability we have in the medical research community in this country. I'm constantly stunned by the sheer brilliance of what we in this country are capable of in partnership with our colleagues from around the world.
And yes, let's aim for the moon, let's believe that we can get there, and why not make it Australian? And having a concentration of talents and abilities gathered together with a common purpose which causes us to look beyond the horizon is in part what it's all about.
Nico said that Bernie's last words to him were "We need to join forces." Those of us engaged in public policy research and intense engagement with the medical fraternity describe this as translational research, collaborative endeavour, in the case of cancer, integrated cancer care - all those things. What's it all mean? Whether you're a layman like Bernie, or someone who seriously knows what he's doing like Bruce, and the other Bruce is in communion with the divine on our collective behalves, it's all about working together with support from Government, support from the community, and harnessing the best talents and brains that we have here and across the world. To defeat this insidious disease should be our goal.
I wanted to be here today to launch this very special Foundation, one which salutes a truly great Australian.
Bernie was a man who took on one of the Goliaths of corporate Australia, and like a courageous modern day David, he won that fight.
Bernie epitomised the Australian belief in a fair go. He had the nation's respect for his integrity - he has the nation's respect for his integrity - our amazement remains for his tenacity, our reverence remains for his heroism, and we continue to be inspired by the fact that as this disease dealt with him so unfairly as it deals with so many others, his first instinct was always to have an eye out for others. Others who were suffering, others who he could help with research.
That's why the Bernie Banton Foundation so important, because it was one of his last projects that he discussed with Karen in his final months on earth.
Bernie wasn't content to have fought for justice for himself, and it wasn't enough for him that he'd fought in the years that followed for justice for other victims of asbestos, but he was determined to do more - establishing a Foundation that would do greater work still in the years after he had gone from us.
As many of you know and many of you will be aware, earlier this week another great Australian fighter, Greg Combet - now the Minister for Defence Personnel, Material and Science - launched the book Killer Company by Matt Peacock, a book that chronicles the abhorrent behaviour of James Hardie executives - the abhorrent behaviour of James Hardie executives.
But there are inspirational moments in the book as well, like the account of Bernie and Karen.
We learn how Karen is made of the very much the same stuff as Bernie. As Matt Peacock says, Karen was "superhuman in her stoicism", and with typical Banton energy and determination, she is now turning her energies to helping other families carrying the terrible burden of terrible asbestos-related diseases. And the Reverend Bruce Banton, Bernie's brother, will also be doubling that Banton family effort. With two Banton's against you, how could you possibly prevail?
Here's a man who has lost two of his brothers, Bernie and Ted, to asbestos; and with another brother, Albert, having developed asbestosis. It's good to know that Albert is still in good health, but we know it's a tough road ahead for every person and every family touched by asbestos-related diseases.
The poisoning of Australians by asbestos is a modern day industrial catastrophe. The toll of human suffering and loss from asbestos far exceeds any natural disaster in our nation's history, and its worst impact has fallen on working people and their families in suburbs and towns right across Australia.
Australians working in insulation factories, like Bernie, or in mines. Young men sweating it out in darkened shipping containers on the wharves, heaving bags that leeched asbestos. Aboriginal children in communities like those near Grafton, where a large mound of asbestos served as a sandpit for local schoolchildren in the late 1970s. Wives and mums shaking out the work clothes of their husbands or sons before throwing them in the washing machine. Queensland banana farmers thinking they had struck gold with the hessian asbestos bags so useful for protecting their fruit from birds and bats. Recycled asbestos bags were under our carpets, in driveways, and asbestos was sprayed across the nations' ceilings as a wonder fire retardant in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Over a period of several years, this deadly industrial poison seeped into the pores of our nation - in our homes, our factories, our offices, and finding its way into the lungs of tens of thousands of Australians, where it was latent for many years before its toxic effect became known.
The Bernie Banton Foundation estimates that in just over 10 years, some 40,000 Australians will have contracted asbestos-related cancer.
It's an astonishing toll - equivalent to 25 years of deaths on our roads.
And mesothelioma, which ultimately took Bernie's life, is one of the worst of diseases, for which as yet there's no solution.
It is not a nice disease, as Bruce has reminded us. There are, as Bernie testified, and as his face showed, many days of suffering, anguish and sheer agony as the body slowly shuts down.
Professor Bruce Robinson has said that because of the epidemic of cases of mesothelioma means that across the world, several million people will die as a result of asbestos exposure, as he indicated already today, the costs worldwide are estimated at over $300 billion This is, as I say, one of the great industrial catastrophes of modern time.
And Matt Peacock's book has shed considerable light on the story behind asbestos in Australia - a story that begins for Matt in 1977 when as a young ABC journalist he got an unlikely lead, all because a PR company for James Hardie Asbestos was suspiciously enthusiastic about getting an audio grab of a throwaway line in a 45-minute science program that asserted that the asbestos industry in Australia was no longer a problem.
That began Matt on a quest to reveal the great violation of the trust of Australians by executives of James Hardie and other senior figures in Australian public life. Matt depicts it as a story of gross neglect - he is absolutely right - disgraceful omissions of facts and an arrogant lack of concern for the welfare of Australian workers and their families.
I'm told the full account is jaw-dropping, a damning indictment of what happens when corporations put profits before people. Karen says it should be read by every Australian school child.
It is remarkable that the first recorded case of asbestosis was in 1900 and the first asbestos compensation claim in Australia was in 1939.
James Hardie's management was not ignorant of the risks. They kept files on their state of their employees' health, and thousands of x-rays of their lungs, yet they often kept that information secret.
Like Bernie's medical record - which showed that as early as 1973, when he was working at Hardie's insulation factory, according to specialist opinion, an x-ray showed an ominous thickening of the pleura which indicated "definite early signs" of asbestos disease. It was decades later that Bernie found out about that medical record, hidden by years of absolute deceit.
It leaves a lump in your throat to read the stories of the workers in that factory, most of whom have now succumbed to asbestos diseases.
Matt writes of how the workers at the Camellia insulation factory would work with asbestos dust up to four inches thick under their feet. To quote his book:
"The company had issued a free bottle of milk daily to each worker to ease the irritation it caused to their throats. Sheppard used to pack his bottle in the asbestos to keep it cold: occasionally the men would have 'snow fights' with the dust. Like Banton, Sheppard was adamant the company had said nothing to him about the danger of asbestos cancers."
By 2004, Bernie would tell Matt that only 9 out of his 137 former workmates were still alive, and while James Hardie has moved offshore and jettisoned its asbestos arm, the consequences of those years of exposure to asbestos are still emerging.
Children who helped their dads in the garden, or in a house renovation, are now adults and now contracting asbestos diseases. Kids like Anthony Cini, who was one of many children to fall victim to poisonous asbestos landfill.
Anthony grew up in Sydney's Pendle Hill, not far from the Camellia Plant where his father worked, where Bernie worked. Matt recounts, and I quote again.
"Part of a large Maltese family, he (Anthony) remembered helping his dad load up his truck with asbestos waste which they spread on a driveway around their house and on pathways through the market garden his parents established. 'My father, brothers, and I used shovels and rakes to level out the asbestos tailings on the ground', he told his lawyer. 'My brothers and I played with the asbestos ... we rolled up balls of asbestos dust and fibre and threw it at each other." (p.295)
Anthony contracted mesothelioma when he was 46. He too lost his battle against asbestos.
This is a sad chapter in our nation's story, and it is a terrible chapter in the nation's corporate history, and it should never be forgotten. Every corporate management course in this country, every MBA course, every corporate management course, every place where business professionals are trained should have this book as essential reading about your responsibility to workers.
As Greg Combet made it clear this week, the Australian Government believes that James Hardie has an obligation to asbestos victims and that it must honour the commitments it made to those victims.
The Australian Government recognises the terrible impact of asbestos-related disease on the lives of so many innocent and hard-working Australians. That is why we are establishing the new $2.5 million Centre of Research Excellence into Asbestos Related Disease from 2010.
We have also committed a further $2 million to support the Centre's coordination of research into asbestos-related diseases, funded through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). A $1 million Bernie Banton Asbestos Research Fellowship is also available through the NHMRC.
On 21 January this year I opened The Bernie Banton Centre, also known as the Asbestos Disease Research Institute. The Australian Government has committed $5 million towards the final fit-out costs of the Centre.
The work Nico is doing at the Centre is a major NSW focus for research into these diseases. Nico, it was good to speak to some of your researchers this morning as they sought, patiently, to explain to me what on earth they were doing. It has good prospects of doing quality research and is well supported in NSW, especially by the Dust Diseases Board of NSW.
Nico's team is working with the National Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases. This is an Australian co-operative initiative that embraces all States in the country, with the aim of bringing together the work in each state in order to achieve critical mass and try to cure mesothelioma.
We have some of the best brains in the nation now working together for a cure to mesothelioma, and as Bruce has reminded us, this best brains in the country represent some of the best brains in the world.
This research will benefit future generations here and abroad, but right now there are many families who are suffering, for whom those medical discoveries may come too late.
Like the families Matt mentions in his book, who call up the staff in the Perth-based Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia to say they've just been told they have mesothelioma, "the fatal disease with the unpronounceable name". Those families need immediate support, comfort and access to information and help.
Karen knows all about that. She has a well-grounded understanding of the rollercoaster of emotions - fears anguish, anger, turmoil and despair - which asbestos disease sufferers and their families experience.
She believes there's a desperate need for the support that the Foundation aims to provide: an organisation that reflects his struggle for justice and for hope; that helps those in urgent need whilst also keeping a high-profile focus on critical long-term solutions.
The Foundation will be working with existing asbestos disease support organisations, and its first aim is to raise $400,000. That effort is starting with a major dinner on Friday 27th of November. This marks the third anniversary of Bernie's death, or 'Bernie Banton Day' as Karen would call it - as perhaps we should all call it as well, because Bernie is a bloke who has inspired the nation and touched the nation's heart in a way that we see on only a few occasions in our lifetimes.
I share Karen's vision that out of this initiative we might have a flock of volunteers and professional helpers alike who will go into homes and help newly diagnosed asbestos disease sufferers. 'Bernie's Angels', as Karen calls them - people who can help families navigate the difficult path forward from diagnosis.
In the first year, Karen is aiming to help a minimum of 20 asbestos disease sufferers and their families, and many more in years that follow. Karen, we share your vision and we intend to support you all the way, and though it's not in my notes, and I have no authorisation to say it, we will be contributing to your foundation.
And while it's also not in my notes, I think I've agreed to go to that dinner as well - barring global catastrophe and I'm not offshore. So there's two departures from the script entirely, so my staff will scold me afterwards.
Today I want to urge Australians to support the Bernie Banton Foundation.
To go back to where Bruce left us before, to have ballast, a confidence and a hope and a mission that we can beat this thing, and with a team of researchers and a team of people out there, 'Bernie's Angels', doing the work on the way through. That should be our goal, because that's what Australia's all about.
I thank the team of caring, committed volunteers and individuals who have been touched by the suffering and loss caused by asbestos disease and who are ready to make this Foundation the success it deserves to be.
I know Bernie would be proud of you all. I know Bernie would be proud of you, Karen.
It gives me great pleasure to launch the Bernie Banton Foundation.