A stalwart of Australia’s diabetes advocacy community has been appointed an officer (AO) of the Order of Australia in this year’s Queen’s Birthday honours.

Retired Federal MP Judi Moylan, who is Diabetes Australia’s president, received the award for her work as a politician and her tireless commitment to women’s issues and the diabetes community.

Mrs Moylan became the first West Australian women to be elected as a Liberal Party MP to the House of Representatives in the seat of Pearce in 1993, a seat she held for 20 years through seven elections. She served for a time as Minister for Family Services and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women in the Howard Government.

In 2000, Mrs Moylan established the non-partisan Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group, chairing this group in Federal Parliament for 13 years. She was appointed Independent President and Chair of the Board of Diabetes Australia upon her retirement from Federal Parliament in 2013.

Speaking to the limbic from Canberra this week, where she was taking a short break from her still hectic schedule, she said had never envisaged she would end up where she was.

But she still remembers the moment she knew people with diabetes needed her on their side. Remembering where it all began will always be important.

She had been in parliament for about six years when a family came to see her in her Western Australian electorate office. One of their children had type 1 diabetes. His was of the brittle diabetes type so was very difficult to manage.

“On the advice of the specialists they had put him on an insulin pump and that was an improvement,” Mrs Moylan remembers. “But it was very costly, they were spending about $2500 a year on insulin pump consumables.”

Unlike testing strips and syringes that were subsidised through the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS), insulin pumps or consumables received no subsidies.

The family wanted Mrs Moylan to lobby the Prime Minister, the Health Minister and the Treasurer to change this. She went back to Canberra with a fire in her belly and started putting pressure on her fellow politicians. At first she didn’t succeed.

“I walked back to my office with my tail between my legs and then I thought, I’m not going to take no for an answer,” she said.

The fire in her belly became a raging inferno, and by 2004 the Government acquiesced. During her protracted campaign it also dawned on Mrs Moylan that there needed to be a bipartisan parliamentary committee dedicated to diabetes issues.

In 2000 she established the Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group. She chaired this group until her retirement from Parliament in 2013. The group still operates today and at the height of its membership it had 70 politicians from all walks of parliament, something Mrs Moylan is justifiably proud of.

“It was very important and we did try hard to work together,” she said. “I said from the beginning, this is such an important issue, we need to be singing from the same song sheet.”

Retirement from politics has not left the former real estate agent idle, and she is heavily involved with her Diabetes Australia work and other projects. But she still thinks about the little boy who came into her office all those years ago. The family has kept in touch and he is now a thriving university student.

“For me at the time it was a matter of equity, but I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined I would be doing what I am today,” she told the limbic.

Other noteworthy recipients of Queens’s Birthday Honours included Bev Dillon, of Victoria, who received a Medal of the Order of Australia for service to community health through diabetes research organisations. She is particularly known for her with the Australian Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and was instrumental in the establishment of the annual Jelly Belly campaign.

Leading Australian endocrinologist, Professor Joseph Proietto, also received a Queen’s birthday gong for significant service to medicine in the field of endocrinology, particularly obesity and diabetes research, and as a clinician, educator and mentor.

Professor Proietto formally retired from The University of Melbourne position as The Sir Edward Dunlop Medical Research Foundation, Professor of Medicine at the end of 2014, capping off a 36-year career in research and teaching in the field of diabetes and obesity. He still practises in Melbourne.

Professor Proietto established the first public obesity clinic in Victoria at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and is now Head of the Weight Control Clinic at Austin Health.  He is a senior specialist at the Austin Health Endocrinology Clinic.  He is a past President of the Australian and New Zealand Society Obesity Society (ANZOS).