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Thank you, Michelle, well both Michelle's really, thank you both for your remarks.
Michelle, for pulling us all here together - a range of different health groups who've come to show their support for the extraordinary work of this organisation, but also to the cause of men's health.
It's great to see MPs and senators from both major parties, obviously, but a range of others as well.
As Sam and Michelle's work together as co-conveners of Parliamentary Friends for Men's Health reminds us, there's quite a lot in this building that brings us together.
There's lots that divides us and challenges us to a debate, but there's lots in the health portfolio in particular that brings us together.
The work of Sam and Michelle in this area is really valuable. Thank you for the work that you do and for everyone for coming along here.
I just thought I'd say a few words about just how deeply rooted and stubborn the gap in men's health has been in this country for a very, very long time.
I had occasion some years ago to look at this over the course of our federation, and it's a pretty remarkable and often pretty sad story.
At the beginning of our federation, men actually lived longer than women.
There were more older men in Australia than there were older women.
Largely, because so many women lost their lives to childbirth.
One in 10 babies didn't make it to their first birthday.
Infectious disease was rife.
One in 10 Australians died from diarrhea - a pretty grim way to go.
Another one in 10 from tuberculosis.
But there was this revolution in life expectancy, not just in this country, but around the world, that in a very short period of time, through sanitation, through antibiotics, through a whole range of other extraordinary public health measures, added 25 or 30 years to average life expectancy in developed countries like Australia.
Women and children in particular benefited but adult men did not really at all.
Interestingly, a 50-year-old in 1870 compared to a 50-year-old in 1970 didn't live any longer.
A 60-year-old in 1970 lived no longer than a 60-year-old had in 1870.
Indeed, a 70-year-old in 1970 when I was born, actually lived a shorter life than a 70-year-old did 100 years earlier.
We all know the reasons for that.
My grandfather returned from World War Two, along with so many other members of the greatest generation, had beaten the Nazis, having beaten Imperial Japan, and then proceeded to smoke like chimneys, and drink like fish, and eat pretty poor foods.
Although they were thin because they hadn't yet discovered the joy of pasta they didn't really exercise much at all, and they died in their 60s, and most of us at my age had grandfathers who died in their 50s and their 60s.
They didn't benefit from this extraordinary revolution, all because of these preventable lifestyle factors.
From a position at the beginning of the century where there were about the same older men as there were older women that ratio plummeted over the course of the 20th century, so that by the 1980s and the 1990s for every 100 women in Australia over the age of 65 there were maybe 75 men.
Extraordinarily, for every 100 women over 85 there were just 40 men over the age of 85.
If you were an 86-year-old male looking for a date, Australia was the place to be.
Now, the 1970s did change that, the advancing cardiovascular treatment, coronary care, the reduction in smoking rates, improvements in diet, reduction in alcohol intake.
All of this hard work to shift a lifestyle that was so focused on these risky behaviours, has seen that gender gap, those older age and cohorts start to close, but as this report reminds us, it is still a challenge.
Maybe not the scale of challenge it was in the 50s and the 60s, but it is still a monumental challenge.
As Michelle points out, and this report points out so clearly, two in five Australian men still die before 75.
Given the extraordinary advance in life expectancy, there's no reason for that to happen.
They're largely preventable causes.
It shows just how much more we have to do to see men continue to enjoy and reap the dividends of a century of extraordinary public health advance.
As this report also points out, although those figures can be smeared across the Australian community, there are particular priority groups in the community that we know all too well are experiencing even further disadvantage.
A disadvantage that not only obviously robs them of years of enjoyment with their families and this remarkable community we live in.
But also reverberate, as Michelle said, right through their families and their communities and our economy.
There is so much more to do, but I take that sort of historical perspective just to remind us that this is not easy.
This is hard work that requires years and years of investment of money and time and energy and research that spans governments of both political persuasions, which is why it's so important to have members from both political parties represented here today.
And the work that Movember has been doing is extraordinary, not just here in Australia, but sweeping around the world.
It's been working at this for more than 20 years, delivered literally hundreds and hundreds of projects.
As Michelle says, it gives we Australian men the opportunity once a year to look like a 1970s cricket star, or an ageing porn star, depending on your choice of moustache, while contributing to a good movement.
It's really a remarkable movement that's doing such good work.
Thank you for your work, thank you for this report.
It is important to have the opportunity, from time to time, to take stock, to look at this evidence, to look at some really important human stories, and to reenergise our commitment to doing better in this space.
Thank you very much and I'm very pleased to launch this important report.
