Why is a breast worth more than a penis?

– Labor axes specialist prostate cancer nurses.

 

We are used to the Albanese government’s war on men — treating males like a species to be managed, and boys like suspects in training. A government that ignores seven men killing themselves every day. Family law reforms that treat fathers as the enemy. Consent laws which criminalise everyday sex. A domestic violence industry peddling the lie that violence only runs one way. A health system that keeps stripping money from men to swell women’s health budgets.

Look at the last four years: of all the money earmarked for men’s or women’s health, women got almost 98%. Men got scraps — under 2%. That’s analysis from the Australian Men’s Health Forum, the peak body for men’s health.

Then, last month, out of the blue, Albo and his handbag brigade delivered a real kick to the balls. They pulled the rug out from under a program that supports men when their bodies, and their sense of themselves as men, are most under threat.

They axed the Commonwealth funding for nurses supporting men with Australia’s most commonly diagnosed cancer — money painfully built up over years by the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA), which scraped together the resources to train the 96 nurses who support more than 300,000 Australian men living today after a prostate cancer diagnosis.

It’s taken years to even get this far. That’s maddening when you compare it to breast cancer — the most fashionable cancer cause in the country, with its own colour, its own cricket test, and a PR machine that has produced an embarrassment of riches.

Eight years ago, I was at the Pink Test — the cricket match every January that turns the Sydney Cricket Ground into a sea of pink, all in aid of breast cancer nurses. It’s a tribute to Jane McGrath, wife of cricket legend Glenn McGrath, who died of the disease in 2008.

 

At that time there were just 28 prostate cancer nurses working in this country — compared with more than 300 breast cancer nurses. That year alone, the government had already handed the McGrath Foundation $20 million. And in a single day at the cricket, the Pink Test raised another $1.3 million, enough to fund 119 more nurses. This disparity has only grown since.

I’m told the McGrath fat cat problem has been a regular fixture on the agenda at national cancer meetings — with this one trendy cause gobbling up an ever-bigger share of the cancer dollar, more money than it knows what to do with, while other cancer charities — brain, lung, prostate, etc — are left rattling the begging bowl.

So what does this brain-dead government do now? They strip away the entire pool of Commonwealth funding that kept specialist prostate cancer nurses in the field — and dress it up as a gift to men’s health. The government’s own press release was headlined “McGrath Foundation adds prostate cancer nurses.” Adds. Not one word about the fact that PCFA’s funding, and the decade of prostate tumour-specific expertise behind it, was being axed on the very same day. The charity that was already drowning in cash was just handed the keys to a hugely important part of men’s health — and was warmly thanked for accepting it.

Standing right there at the press conference, cheering it on, was Dan Repacholi — the government’s own Special Envoy for Men’s Health — calling it “good news for Australian men diagnosed with prostate cancer and their families.” He said he “couldn’t be happier.” The man whose job is to look out for men’s health probably doesn’t even know what a prostate is, let alone why it really matters to men’s happiness.

 

Contrast that with Llew O’Brien —National MP and the Opposition’s Special Envoy for Men and Boys. He’s Repacholi’s direct counterpart, and unlike Repacholi, he actually seems to grasp what’s at stake. Speaking in parliament on 7 September, O’Brien pointed out the almost unbelievable irony: September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. His verdict was blunt: “It’s simple: lose the nurse, lose the expertise and lose the service.”

And possibly lose the man. Men with prostate cancer are at a 70% increased risk of suicide— and for those whose cancer has spread, that risk more than doubles. Over half of those suicides happen within the first year of diagnosis.

So, what exactly will the McGrath nurses do for these men? Nobody can say — PCFA says the government hasn’t given them, or anyone else, complete operational details about individual positions, host-site arrangements, clinical governance, or how continuity of care will even be protected.

We do have one clue, though — and it isn’t reassuring. It’s happened before. In January 2025, the government folded lung and melanoma nursing into McGrath’s new “all cancer” model — the same playbook now to be used for prostate cancer. It hasn’t taken long for the cracks to show: Lung Foundation Australia has now spoken out, drawing a sharp line between what McGrath offers and what their own specialist nurses do. As Lung Foundation Board Chair Professor Lucy Morgan put it: “Unlike McGrath Foundation, Lung Foundation Australia works in respiratory and diagnostic medicine, supporting people at risk or newly diagnosed where the need is greatest. Our nurses are there from the moment lung cancer is suspected.” McGrath’s nurses, in other words, aren’t there for the moment that matters most — the diagnosis itself, when men are at their most frightened, and most at risk.

It is absolutely crazy that a women’s charity is being asked to take over the nursing care of the organ that is most quintessentially male — the penis — and its proud owner. Prostate cancer treatments play havoc with penile functioning, and the erectile dysfunction and incontinence that so often follow are devastating to a man’s confidence, his sense of masculinity, his relationships — his very sense of himself as a man.

I spent years campaigning to get that message out: writing articles in newspapers, talking on radio and television, teaching doctors, urologists. Funnily enough I was about to speak at an international urology conference the day of the huge Christchurch earthquake in 2011 — we were forced to evacuate and the conference didn’t happen. There are also five chapters on erections in my 2010 book What Men Want, with painfully honest, confronting and sometimes hilarious stories from men detailing their struggles with erections after cancer treatment.

 

I even spoke at the National Press Club about these unlikely matters but failed to persuade them to promote the talk by my preferred title: “Why is a breast worth more than a penis?” That was too much for them, but I did manage to raise the issue of why treatments to help women recover from breast surgery, such as breast reconstruction, are covered by medical benefits while many of the expensive erection treatments go unfunded — a disparity which still applies.

In my speech I talked also about the need to lobby the new Labor government to take the needs of these men seriously. That means having empathic, informed people on hand from the moment of diagnosis — which is exactly what PCFA has been struggling to provide. (Incidentally, it’s also done vital work on the other side of the problem: overtreatment. With prostate cancer, the cure can genuinely be worse than the disease, and PCFA has helped push new clinical guidelines backing active surveillance for low-risk cases — monitoring rather than rushing men into surgery or radiation that can result in such long-lasting problems.)

The breast cancer story is different. Thanks to early detection, most women now move through diagnosis and treatment in a matter of months — surgery, sometimes chemo or radiation, and for many, that’s the acute phase behind them. But for the vast majority of men, prostate cancer treatment brings devastating, lasting consequences. A landmark population study found that twelve years after diagnosis, 87% of men still had erectile dysfunction or were sexually inactive — against 62% of men who’d never had the disease. Incontinence remained a problem for many: 20% of men still living with it, more than three times the rate of men who’d never had prostate cancer. Another major study found the same grim pattern holding at fifteen years out: up to 83% of men still living with erectile dysfunction, their sexual function never returning to what it was.

In 2026, PCFA has 131 trained, professional prostate cancer nurses in over 100 locations out in the field, delivering 150,000 consultations a year, supporting more than 22,000 new patients, as well as existing ones. They are embedded in urology and radiation oncology teams.

It is just extraordinary that the government has decided to demolish this unique and important nursing service — instead pouring $46.5 million over five years into McGrath’s “all cancer” nursing program to include prostate cancer nurses. PCFA claims continuing the existing program would actually cost about $1 million less per year.

Who knows what the “all cancer” program will actually mean for these men? Will its nurses be trained to deal with distressing, intimate issues such as the “shrinkage problem” — the loss of penile length that can occur after prostate cancer treatment? Using erection treatments to give the man regular erections soon after cancer treatment — within four weeks or even earlier — brings a regular supply of oxygen to the penis by increasing blood flow, which can prevent scarring and shrinkage and improve the odds of a full return to erectile function. It’s exactly the kind of fine-grained, prostate-specific expertise that took PCFA fifteen years to build — and there’s no sign yet that McGrath has any of it.

We still have embarrassed doctors, reluctant to talk about such issues, treating men who are equally uncomfortable raising them. That mutual squeamishness about sexual matters is doing untold damage to these men and their families — which is exactly why we need more properly trained prostate cancer nurses willing to just tell it as it is.

The PCFA is holding a Big Aussie Day of Action on Thursday 15 October 2026 — a national day to remember the men in our community who’ve died from prostate cancer, celebrate their lives, and call for the continuation of PCFA’s Prostate Cancer Specialist Nursing Service. A media event will be held at Parliament House in Canberra, and Australians everywhere are being urged to take part — at home, at work, with friends, or at local clubs.

What they’re asking for isn’t radical. Just that the Government reverse the Minister’s decision: renew direct Commonwealth funding for the service through PCFA from 1 July 2027, protect PCFA’s specialist nursing workforce and its Model of Care, and finally engage in genuine consultation with the patients, nurses, clinicians and health services who actually know what these men need. I urge you to support them – here’s a draft letter you can download to send to your MP.

It’s not too much to ask. This government couldn’t care less about men’s health, and it isn’t going to change. But we must stop this betrayal of prostate cancer patients and their families.