Eureka Prize winners announced

0:00Well, some of Australia's best and brightest minds in science, tech and engineering have been recognised at this year's Eureka Prizes, which were held last night. Associate Professor Jane Tiller is a genetic counsellor at Monash University, as well as a lawyer and a winner of the emerging leader in science, technology and engineering Eureka Prizes. Jane's been recognised for uniting the scientific community over the use of genetic testing results, which has led to a major legislative change in the insurance industry earlier this year. At Jane Tiller, I'm very pleased to say as my guest this morning, at Jane Welcome and congratulations. Thanks so much, Sally. It's great to be here. What does this Eureka Prizes mean to you? Well, it's always really wonderful to be at an awards night and get the gong and be able to stand up and have the exciting moment of a prized ceremony. But actually, what this reflects is a huge policy reform in the health and insurance sector

1:04that has been the culmination of a decade of work by me and many, many other people. And so what it really means is a recognition of the huge amount of work that went into this, the value of scientific advocacy and the ability to create change. So let's talk about this. You've been recognised for driving this legislative change, and it bans life insurers from discriminating against people due to genetic testing results. What was happening previously? So until this law was changed, it was legal for a life insurance company to ask an applicant for life insurance if they'd had genetic testing. And if someone has had a genetic test, that shows that they have maybe an increased risk of disease in the future. Life insurance companies have legally been able to say, we don't want to cover you, or we're going to double your premium because we can nothing into the future about what your risks might be. And because of that, we have to tell people about this risk.

2:04And many people choose not to have testing, even when it's something that could be life saving or something where they could prevent disease, the same you about this risk. Many people decide not to have the testing, and that was a real tragedy for preventive health. And also, obviously, manifestly, I'm sure seeing that people were very upset about. And Jane, you're sitting in an interesting position here. You're a genetics expert as well as a lawyer. How valuable is that being to be able to kind of walk on both sides of the street? I think that has actually been really integral to being able to achieve what we have done. Often when you are trying to do something like legislative reform and it sits across different portfolios and across different sectors, it's really hard to get experts who can understand both sides and understand multiple issues. And you often have to have people in the room who have perspectives from different areas. Being able to have my legal background have the, I guess, understanding of the legislative

3:06need for reform and also an understanding of the clinical and the research impacts really allowed me to come as sort of a multi-disciplinary package and be able to articulate what needed to be done in a way that is harder, I guess, for someone who doesn't have that background. What do you hope to use this award for? The bigger picture, really, and the goal that we are working towards is to try to enable access in the public health care system for people to preventive genetic information. And this is genetic testing that tells people about things like cancer risk, heart disease risk, and adults that can be prevented if people know that they have genetic risk. This is things like the brackaging that many people know about really high risk of cancer that can be prevented or treated early. And this was the biggest barrier, discrimination fears, and the biggest barrier in society to people wanting to have this kind of testing. And so getting this out of the way was really fantastic,

4:06but really the goal and the dream is to move towards this kind of equitable access across the population to this preventive genetic information. So we can start getting ahead of and preventing these diseases in people who are at very high risk. And just finally, this is an award for an emerging leader. What are the challenges for career progression in the science fields at the moment and what do you think has helped you to succeed so far? I feel like I won't be alone in saying this, but funding is a real challenge. Science funding has been a fraught issue for many years. It's very difficult to get funding for good research. And it's a very tenuous position when research money runs out. You have to be getting another piece of research money to continue work. And that is a challenge for all of us. And certainly for an emerging or early career researcher who doesn't have an established practice as yet, getting that funding and getting research continuously funded is a real challenge. And that's something I know that's being convinced significantly with the government,

5:10but that is something that we'll threaten the future of our good scientific research if we can't allow better and more consistent and substantial funding to the sector. Joan, congratulations again and thank you so much for your time this morning. Thank you so much.