🇦🇺 Cancer in Australia

The AIHW's Cancer data in Australia 2024, released on 15 August 2024, gives around 169,500 cases and around 52,700 deaths for 2024 and five-year relative survival of 71 percent for 2016-2020, up from 55 percent in 1991-1995. Incidence for 2021 to 2024 and mortality for 2023 and 2024 are projections; the latest actual incidence year is 2020, when 147,500 cancers were diagnosed against 148,800 in 2019, the first fall since 1996, coinciding with COVID-19 restrictions and a month's closure of BreastScreen Australia. The age-standardised incidence rate rose from 582 per 100,000 in 2000 to an estimated 624 in 2024 while mortality fell from 255 to an estimated 194, and the AIHW attributes around 86 percent of the rise in case numbers since 2000 to population growth and ageing. Cancer accounts for around 3 in 10 deaths. Incidence is rising in people in their thirties and forties, from 121 to an estimated 141 per 100,000 and from 280 to 323 respectively, driven in the thirties most by colorectal and thyroid cancer and in the forties by thyroid, breast, prostate, colorectal and kidney cancer, while mortality in both groups has fallen. The AIHW's 2025 edition, reported by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in October 2025, moved survival to 72 percent for 2017-2021 and estimated around 170,000 new cases for 2025; we could not read that edition directly (see the gaps below).

The AIHW puts melanoma incidence at 53 per 100,000 in 2000 and an estimated 70 per 100,000 in 2024, 86 in men and 56 in women, with 35 percent on the trunk, 26 percent on the upper limbs and 18 percent on the lower limbs; a quarter of women's melanomas are on the legs against 13 percent of men's. Incidence in people under 40 has been falling since the late 1990s, and the AIHW links that to the Slip Slop Slap sun-protection campaign of the early 1980s: people now under 40 were born after or around it. Age-standardised mortality peaked at 8.0 per 100,000 in 2013 and is estimated at 4.9 in 2024, with deaths falling from 1,625 to an estimated 1,340. Five-year relative survival for 2016-2020 was 94 percent, the highest recorded. Melanoma Institute Australia in Sydney is in the institution list below.

Lung cancer incidence was stable overall at 57 per 100,000 in 2000 and an estimated 56 in 2024, but that hides a fall from 84 to 61 in men and a rise from 36 to 52 in women. Five-year survival was 26 percent in 2016-2020, the lowest of the five commonest cancers, up from 9.7 percent in men and 12 percent in women in 1991-1995 to 21 and 31 percent. Colorectal cancer was the most diagnosed cancer at the turn of the century and is estimated fourth in 2024, at around 15,500 cases; its age-standardised incidence peaked at 86 per 100,000 in 2001 and is estimated at 57 in 2024, and mortality fell from 35 to an estimated 19 per 100,000. In people aged 40 to 49 incidence rose from 22 per 100,000 in 2005 to an estimated 30 in 2024, and an estimated 6.5 percent of colorectal cancers in 2024 are in people under 40, against 2.2 percent in 2000. Survival for colorectal cancer rose from 56 to 71 percent between 1991-1995 and 2016-2020.

The AIHW's technical notes state that all forms of cancer except basal and squamous cell carcinomas of the skin are notifiable diseases in each state and territory, with legislation in each jurisdiction requiring hospitals, pathology laboratories and other institutions to report every case to the jurisdiction's central cancer registry; an agreed subset of the registries' data goes to the AIHW annually and is compiled into the Australian Cancer Database, which starts in 1982. Deaths come through a separate route, from each state's Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and the National Coronial Information System, coded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and held in the National Mortality Database. The AIHW warns that registry records change as late information arrives, so a year's count can move between editions and may not match a state's own report; one edition explicitly did not estimate late registrations, so its latest year may understate incidence. Because full data take time to assemble, every headline figure for the current year is a projection, and the 2024 edition projected incidence from 2021 onwards. The AIHW also classifies cancers as rare (fewer than 6 cases per 100,000 a year), less common or common; rare and less common cancers together made up an estimated 24 percent of cases but 33 percent of cancer deaths in 2024.

The health department's pages state that Medicare covers all medical expenses for a public patient in hospital. A private patient in a public hospital pays for accommodation, theatre and doctors' fees, with Medicare subsidising the doctors' fees; in a private hospital Medicare pays 75 percent of the schedule fee, insurers at least 25 percent, and anything above the schedule fee falls to the patient or the insurer. Outside hospital Medicare pays 100 percent of the schedule fee for a GP and 85 percent for a specialist; when a doctor bulk bills the patient pays nothing, otherwise the patient pays the difference. Three safety nets limit what accumulates in a calendar year for out-of-hospital MBS services: the Greatest Permissible Gap, $104.50 from 1 November 2025, which caps the gap on any item with a schedule fee of $697.00 or more (the department indexes it each 1 November, and we could not read the amount set from 1 November 2026); the Original Medicare Safety Net, which after $594.40 of gap expenses in 2026 lifts the rebate to 100 percent of the schedule fee; and the Extended Medicare Safety Net, which after $2,699.10 of out-of-pocket costs in 2026, or $861.20 for concession card holders and families receiving Family Tax Benefit Part A, covers up to 80 percent of further out-of-pocket costs, subject to caps on some items. None of the safety nets applies to services delivered in hospital.

The PBS site states that, following a reduction in the general co-payment, from 1 January 2026 a patient may pay up to $25.00 for most PBS medicines or $7.70 with a concession card, with the government paying the remaining cost apart from brand premiums and certain other allowable charges. The general co-payment will be indexed to the Consumer Price Index each January from 2027; the concessional co-payment stays at $7.70 until 2029 and is indexed from 2030. The pharmacist's optional $1.00 discount is being phased out from 2025: in 2026 it is nil for general patients and up to $0.60 for concessional patients. The Safety Net thresholds from 1 January 2026 are $1,748.20 for general patients and $277.20 for concession card holders, applied to the family unit. The scheme began in 1948 as free medicines for pensioners and a list of 139 life-saving and disease-preventing medicines free to everyone, is governed by the National Health Act 1953, and is open to every Australian resident with a Medicare card and to visitors from countries with a reciprocal agreement. Veterans with a DVA Gold or Orange Card get PBS and Repatriation PBS medicines at the concessional rate; a DVA White Card gives the concessional rate for the specific conditions it covers.

The PBS site describes the PBAC as an independent expert body of doctors, health professionals and others whose primary role is to recommend new medicines for listing; no new medicine can be listed unless the committee makes a positive recommendation, and it also advises on vaccines. In recommending a listing it takes into account the conditions for which the medicine is registered in Australia and its clinical effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness ('value for money') compared with other treatments. It meets three times a year, usually in March, July and November, and publishes agendas, outcomes and public summary documents. Two sub-committees support it, the Drug Utilisation Sub-Committee and the Economics Sub-Committee, with a working party. The Chair is Professor Robyn Ward, a medical oncologist and cancer researcher and former Chair of the Medical Services Advisory Committee, the body that supported the lung screening pathway. We found no published cost per quality-adjusted life year above which the PBAC will not recommend a medicine; its reasoning for each decision is in the public summary documents.

The Health Technology Assessment Policy and Methods Review was a commitment under the 2022-27 Strategic Agreement between the Commonwealth and Medicines Australia, overseen by the HTA Review Reference Committee. Its terms of reference cite the agreement's shared goals of reducing time to access for Australians and maintaining the attractiveness of Australia as a first-launch country. The first public consultation closed on 6 June 2023; expert papers were commissioned from Adelaide Health Technology Assessment, the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation at the University of Technology Sydney and the Centre of Research Excellence in Medicines Intelligence. The review concluded on 4 May 2024, the committee's final report went to the Minister on 31 May 2024, and the department released it in September 2024 with a summary and a full recommendations document. The PBAC and MSAC have given the government their initial advice on it, and an Implementation Advisory Group is developing a roadmap for sequencing the government's response.

The health department describes the Life Saving Drugs Program as paying for specific essential medicines to treat patients with ultra-rare and life-threatening diseases, with its own eligibility criteria, applications by treating physicians and annual reapplication; the outcome statements on its page in mid-2026 concerned medicines such as olipudase alfa for acid sphingomyelinase deficiency. New cancer medicines are listed through the PBS, which no new medicine can enter without a positive PBAC recommendation. For a cancer medicine that is registered but not subsidised, the practical routes are a clinical trial, a company access programme or private payment; we did not find an official national figure for how many Australians pay privately for unsubsidised cancer medicines.

The legislated timeframe for a new prescription medicine is 255 working days for evaluation and decision, after 40 working days to pass preliminary assessment. The priority review pathway has a target of 150 working days on the same evidence as a standard application, and is reserved for medicines for serious and life-threatening conditions that are a major advance. Provisional registration has the same 255-day legislated timeframe but rests on preliminary clinical data and a plan to collect confirmatory data; it lasts two years, can be extended twice to a maximum of six, and lapses if not converted to full registration. Australia is not part of the European system, but the TGA can rely on a comparable overseas regulator's assessment report: under COR-A, where nothing beyond the Australian label, Product Information and risk management plan needs evaluating, the timeframe is 120 working days; under COR-B, with some additional data, 175. The regulators whose reports it accepts include the European Medicines Agency, the FDA, Health Canada, Japan's PMDA, Singapore's HSA, Swissmedic and the UK's MHRA. The TGA is also a member of the Access Consortium with Canada, Singapore, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, formed in 2007 as ACSS and renamed when the MHRA joined in October 2020, and has been a partner in the FDA's Project Orbis for cancer medicines since May 2019.

The TGA Performance Report for July 2023 to June 2024 records, for new chemical entities, new biological entities and biosimilars (application type A), 37 approvals, 3 withdrawals and 2 rejections among completed applications, and approval times for the 36 standard-route approvals of a mean 199 and median 201 working days, range 126 to 254, against the legislated 255; extensions of indication took a median of 197. Four medicines were approved through priority review, one new entity and three extensions of indication, with a median of 133 working days against the 150-day target, down from eight in 2022-23. Six provisional determinations were granted from seven applications, against fifteen from fifteen the year before, and 13 provisional registrations were approved with a median of 180 working days. Seventeen orphan drug registrations were approved, with a median of 175.5 working days, and orphan designation brings a 100 percent waiver of TGA fees. Through Project Orbis the TGA had approved approximately 25 new medicines and 35 new indications by 30 September 2023, well over half of them through the priority or provisional pathway. These are working days, which exclude the time a company takes to answer the TGA's questions, so they are shorter than the calendar time from submission to approval. The 2024-25 report was published in 2026, but we could not open its statistical appendix (see the gaps below).

The Australian Government announced the National Lung Cancer Screening Program on 2 May 2023 and it launched on 1 July 2025. A pack-year is one pack of 20 cigarettes a day for a year. The pathway, based on Cancer Australia's enquiry and feasibility work and supported by MSAC, sends people with no findings a reminder in two years and brings those with findings back at 12, 6 or 3 months depending on risk, with high-risk findings referred to a respiratory physician linked to a lung cancer multidisciplinary team. The National Cancer Screening Register, expanded to cover lung screening by the National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Act 2024, sends reminders and results letters, and radiologists must report screening results to it within 30 days. The first of five mobile screening trucks run with Heart of Australia began visiting communities in the Kimberley and Pilbara in November 2025, with the trucks for the Northern Territory and Queensland scheduled from May and September 2026, and the department names equitable outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a key focus of the program. The department's page estimates the share of lung cancers found at stage 1 to rise from 16 percent without screening to 60 percent with it, and stage 4 to fall from 53 to 11 percent.

The National Cervical Screening Program, introduced in 1991, moved in December 2017 from two-yearly cytology to primary HPV testing every five years, the change the Compass trial was designed to test; updated clinical guidelines took effect in April 2025. One dose of Gardasil 9 is funded under the National Immunisation Program for adolescents aged 12 to 13, mainly through school programmes in Year 7. Australia introduced national HPV vaccination in 2007 and included boys from 2013. The National Strategy for the Elimination of Cervical Cancer in Australia, developed with the Australian Centre for the Prevention of Cervical Cancer, extends the WHO's targets: 90 percent HPV vaccination for boys as well as girls, 70 percent five-yearly screening participation from 25 to 74 rather than twice in a lifetime, 95 percent treatment, and fewer than 4 cases per 100,000 women, with elimination by 2035. A 2019 Lancet Public Health model projected incidence below that threshold around 2028 (range 2021-35). The AIHW records cervical cancer mortality falling from 3.1 per 100,000 women in 2000 to an estimated 1.7 in 2024.

The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program's home test looks for invisible traces of blood in two small samples from two separate bowel motions, posted back free; a positive result means traces of blood were found, which can have causes other than cancer, and needs a visit to the doctor to investigate. From 1 July 2024 people aged 45 to 49 can join and screen free by requesting a kit online or by phone, and GPs can bulk-order kits to hand to eligible patients. The department states that more than 90 percent of bowel cancers can be treated successfully if found early. BreastScreen Australia is a joint programme of the Australian and state and territory governments; the AIHW notes that much of the rise in breast cancer incidence since 2000 came around 2013, when screening invitations were extended to women aged 70 to 74.

Zhou, Frazer and colleagues at the Lions Human Immunology Laboratory at the Princess Alexandra Hospital used a recombinant vaccinia virus to express the HPV16 capsid genes L1 and L2 together in epithelial cells and obtained 40-nanometre virus-like particles in the cell nucleus, which neither protein produced alone; they wrote that particles made this way could be a safe source of material for a vaccine. The licensed vaccines use particles made from L1 alone, a step to which several laboratories contributed, including Douglas Lowy and John Schiller's at the US National Cancer Institute, which reported in 1992 that L1 by itself assembles into highly immunogenic virus-like particles. Jian Zhou died in 1999, before the vaccine was licensed. The University of Queensland's Frazer Institute carries the name. Gardasil 9, the vaccine now given in Australian schools, is in the medicine list on this page as a descendant of that technology rather than an Australian product.

The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute describes venetoclax as based on its discovery in the late 1980s that BCL-2 helps leukaemia cells live, and the drug as developed through a research collaboration between AbbVie, Genentech and the Institute, with clinicians at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. The first-in-human study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016 with Andrew Roberts as first author and John Seymour as senior author, treated 116 people with relapsed CLL or small lymphocytic lymphoma: 79 percent responded, 20 percent had complete remission, and a weekly dose ramp-up removed clinical tumour lysis syndrome in the expansion cohort after it had occurred in 3 of 56 patients, one fatally, during dose escalation. Venetoclax with rituximab was listed on the PBS for previously treated CLL from 1 March 2019.

proPSMA randomised 302 men at ten Australian hospitals with biopsy-proven, high-risk prostate cancer to conventional imaging or PSMA PET-CT: accuracy was 92 percent against 65 percent, PSMA PET changed management more often (28 against 15 percent), had fewer equivocal results, and gave a lower radiation dose (8.4 against 19.2 mSv). TheraP randomised 200 men at 11 Australian centres with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, for whom cabazitaxel was the next standard treatment, to lutetium-177 PSMA-617 or cabazitaxel: PSA response by intention to treat was 66 against 37 percent, and grade 3 or 4 adverse events occurred in 33 against 53 percent of men treated. Australia also has a radiopharmaceutical industry, among them Telix, Clarity and the national nuclear organisation ANSTO, in the company list below.

DYNAMIC randomised 455 patients 2:1 to management guided by circulating tumour DNA at 4 or 7 weeks after surgery, with chemotherapy only if positive, or to standard clinicopathological decisions. Adjuvant chemotherapy was used in 15 percent of the ctDNA-guided group against 28 percent, and two-year recurrence-free survival was 93.5 against 92.4 percent, meeting the non-inferiority margin. It was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council and registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry. DYNAMIC-III, run with the Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group, extends the approach to stage III disease.

The groups in this corpus include ANZGOG for gynaecological cancers, whose OUTBACK trial found no survival benefit from chemotherapy after chemoradiation for cervical cancer; the Australasian Leukaemia and Lymphoma Group, running independent blood cancer trials since 1973 with more than 600 clinicians, scientists and staff; the Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group, partner on DYNAMIC-III; ANZUP for urogenital cancers, behind ENZAMET, TheraP and proPSMA; Breast Cancer Trials, a partner in SOFT and TEXT, APHINITY and OlympiA; and TROG Cancer Research for radiotherapy, which ran CHISEL comparing stereotactic radiotherapy with standard radiotherapy in early lung cancer, and RAVES with ANZUP. Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne describes itself as Australia's largest cancer research centre with more than 700 laboratory and clinical researchers. Australian trials are registered on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry as well as, or instead of, ClinicalTrials.gov, so counts taken only from ClinicalTrials.gov undercount them.

Cancer Council Australia describes the Optimal Care Pathways as a framework for consistent, safe, high-quality and evidence-based care covering every step from prevention and early detection to recovery, living with a chronic disease or end-of-life care, so that all people diagnosed receive the best care irrespective of where they live or are treated. Each comes as a full pathway, a Quick Reference Guide for clinicians and a Guide to Best Cancer Care for patients (formerly What to Expect). Cancer Council Victoria, supported by the Victorian Government, refreshed 15 of them into second editions; the Leukaemia Foundation developed pathways for six blood cancers; there is a pathway for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with cancer, and one for people with disability is in development. Proposals for new pathways go to Cancer Australia, the national cancer control agency established in 2006, which also wrote the ten-year Australian Cancer Plan.

The AIHW's site sits behind a browser check, so its 2025 edition of Cancer data in Australia, and any 2026 edition, could not be read; the registry table above is from the 2024 edition, read from an Internet Archive copy, and the 2025 figures quoted in the text (survival 72 percent for 2017-2021, around 170,000 cases for 2025) come from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' report of that release, not from the AIHW itself. The TGA's Performance Report for 2024-25 is published, but its PDF could not be retrieved, so the approval statistics are for 2023-24. Screening participation rates, the National Cancer Screening Register's reports on cervical self-collection uptake and the AIHW's screening monitoring reports were not read. The text of the Australian Cancer Plan is published as a web application we could not extract, so its objectives and launch date are not quoted. We found no official figure for the time from TGA registration to PBS listing for cancer medicines, no published PBAC cost-effectiveness threshold, and no national count of patients paying privately for unsubsidised medicines. The number of national cooperative cancer trial groups that Cancer Australia funds could not be confirmed. Each state and territory registry publishes its own reports, which this page does not summarise.

Organisations: the Medical Services Advisory Committee, the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund, the National Cancer Screening Register, each state and territory cancer registry, the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre alliance, the Australasian Lung Cancer Trials Group (sponsor of DREAM3R), the Cooperative Trials Group for Neuro-Oncology, the Australian and New Zealand Children's Haematology/Oncology Group, the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, the Leukaemia Foundation, Rare Cancers Australia and the University of Sydney and University of Melbourne as institutions. Trials and evidence: the main Compass trial results when published, the ASCOLT aspirin trial, Breast Cancer Trials' EXPERT and the venetoclax phase 1 study as a trial record (NCT01328626). Collections: the Australian Cancer Database and the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry as registry records alongside ClinicalTrials.gov.