𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐂 𝐌𝐍𝐃 𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋

After seven years, we did it.

New South Wales is about to become the first place in the world to set up a proper system for tracking Motor Neurone Disease, and I still can't quite believe I get to write those words. When I started this fight seven years ago, families across the Murray were burying loved ones from a cruel disease nobody could explain, in towns where the numbers were far too high to be a coincidence, and there was no way to even count what was happening, let alone understand it.

That ends now. This framework creates a statewide MND Register, so every diagnosis is formally recorded for the first time ever. It means researchers can finally see the patterns, ask the right questions, and chase down why this cruel disease takes hold where it does. You cannot solve a problem when you are not collecting the evidence, and for decades we have been flying blind.

I want to thank Professor Dominic Rowe AM, Australia's foremost MND specialist, who has stood beside this campaign every step of the way and confirmed that no jurisdiction anywhere on earth has done anything like it. A genuine world first, built right here in NSW.

And I think today of Neale Daniher, who has spent years turning his own diagnosis into a movement, freezing himself solid and raising millions so that one day a family might hear a different answer than the one his did. This is the kind of change he has been fighting for. Every dollar he raised, every Big Freeze, every person who refused to look away has helped carry us to a day like this. This honours all of it.

To every MND patient, every carer who has watched someone they love slip away, every advocate who kept pushing when it felt like nobody was listening, this is yours. We have never had hope like this before, and now we do.

Today is a major step forward in the global fight against MND, and I have never been prouder of what we can do when country people refuse to give up.