The source of this article is The Sunday Mail: http://tinyurl.com/6ygb6

A family's heartbreak
DARYL PASSMORE
15aug04

QUEENSLAND federal MP Teresa Gambaro joined the Government's big guns last month when Prime Minister John Howard promoted her to the ministry.

But when the Member for Petrie was sworn in as Parliamentary Secretary to Defence Minister Robert Hill, one proud person was missing from the ceremony. 

The reason for her dad Dominic's absence is at the heart of a very personal battle, and one which until now she has kept private. She goes public now only to raise awareness of and generate funding for research into Parkinson's disease. 

Soon she will announce plans for a foundation to raise money for research into a cure. 

"It's a terrible disease," says Ms Gambaro, wiping away tears. "It's so frustrating and heartbreaking to see a member of your family, someone you love, suffering like this. But, of course, it's not just my dad, but many people who are suffering from this disease." 

Parkinson's Australia estimates between 80,000 and 100,000 people have the condition, making it our second most common degenerative neurological disease. 

But the exact number is not known as no study has ever been undertaken and that is one of the goals of Ms Gambaro's campaign. 

The Gambaro family is the latest high-profile group to join the push for funding for support and research into the disease. 

Democrats founder Don Chipp revealed in March that he has had the debilitating disease for three years. He has slightly slurred speech and some problems walking but says he is luckier than many patients. 

He joined Ms Gambaro early this month at her family's famous seafood restaurant on Brisbane's Caxton St to co-host a forum for medical practitioners to learn more about Parkinson's. 

"It can be very hard for doctors to diagnose," says Ms Gambaro. "We want to raise the level of knowledge to make it easier for them." 

Parkinson's is an incurable disease caused by a depletion of dopamine – a chemical transmitter in the brain – which affects the body's ability to control movement. 

Some sufferers experience the tremors, rhythmic shaking in the extremities or the face, which have come to be associated with Parkinson's. 

Other symptoms are rigidity in the muscles; slowness in moving; walking with a stoop or shuffle; speech difficulties; and a loss of balance. 

Ms Gambaro said her father was diagnosed eight years ago and the condition was now quite advanced. "He has shaking episodes. He's having trouble swallowing and he can't sleep at night because everything seizes up." 

The nature of the disease meant that things changed from day to day. 

Ms Gambaro said falls were common, causing broken bones. 

The fear of falling and concern that people would mistake their speech problems and stumbling as signs of drunkenness meant many Parkinson's sufferers were reluctant to go out much. 

"Dad doesn't want to go out and so he isolates himself at home. The TV is probably his link to the outside world so that goes constantly." 

Ms Gambaro said her mother Rosetta was "an amazing, terrific person" who cared for Dominic selflessly and constantly. 

"Dad has always been a very energetic person. I remember him climbing palm trees at the age of 72. He's 83 now and I think he'd still be doing it but for this disease. 

"He's a very proud man. It's been a very difficult thing to see this happen." 

Dominic is half of the brothers team who made the Gambaro name an institution in the food industry. 

While Michael developed the landmark Gambaro restaurant at Petrie Tce, Dominic – known as Don to the family – was building up the seafood wholesale and retail empire in New Farm. 

Along the way, there have been delicatessens, cafes and corner shops and, most recently, an oyster bar. 

Today, Michael's sons John, Don and Frankie are responsible for much of the day-to-day running of the business. 

Michael and Dominic's father, Giovanni, began the Italian-Australian family saga. In 1938, he left Calabria in Italy where he and his wife, also named Teresa, ran a tobacconist shop, and set off for Australia in search of a better life for them and six children. He got a job as a cook at the BelleVue hotel in Brisbane's George St. 

Soon it was wartime and along with thousands of other Italian migrants, he was rounded up and sent to an internment camp in South Australia, where he spent four years as a civilian prisoner of war. "He wasn't treated cruelly but internment is internment," says Ms Gambaro. "It was an ugly period in our history." 

Dominic, as the eldest son, came to Australia to join his father in 1947 and they leased land on the Atherton Tableland to grow maize and other crops. 

They were joined by Rosetta and Michael in 1950. Three years later, they returned to Brisbane to run the little fish and chip shop at Petrie Tce that would form the foundation of their business success. 

The story goes that Dominic was walking along the street one day and came across the owners fighting and they offered him the chance to buy it. 

The family has never looked back. Gambaro Restaurant, an imposing brick building across the road from the original shop, is one of the longest-established in Brisbane. Dominic, who obtained his builder's licence, built the restaurant as well as some of Brisbane's earliest riverside apartments in New Farm. As well as the wholesaling business, there is a seafood processing plant and the family firm exports to Asia and the United States. 

But Teresa Gambaro bristles at the idea anyone might think of her as some kind of prawn princess who enjoyed a privileged upbringing and easy road into politics. 

While the family enjoys the comforts of commercial success these days, it is the result of years of hard work which still continues. 

"My parents didn't have a lot of money," she said. "It was very tight back then." 

Her childhood memories are of everyone – grandparents, parents, uncle Michael and auntie Josie and her siblings and cousins – peeling potatoes and working in the shops and restaurant. 

"I used to work behind the counter and remember wishing I was out playing with the other kids." 

Even now she's a federal minister, she will have to go and help in the seafood shop during at peak times, including the Christmas Eve rush. 

to witness suffer this' 

"When I was first elected to parliament, my mother told me, 'Politician or not, you will sell fish with the rest of the family on our busiest day.' 

"It's funny to watch people do a double-take because they don't expect to see MPs getting their hands dirty. And I can still lift up a crate of prawns." 

When a marriage break-up left her alone with two children aged under two, she says she was determined to carve out her own identity and not rely on the family. 

"I had a baby and no one wanted to give me a job. They weren't very enlightened times. 

"I know how soul-destroying it is to get rejection after rejection." 

Her first job was with Thrifty car hire. Later roles included tutoring in QUT's school of marketing and international business, working for the Drake recruitment agency and running a marketing firm. 

Ms Gambaro says growing up in the family business taught her "you can't do anything without hard work". 

And spending much of her formative years in her parents' corner shops and supermarket in New Farm taught her the value of community and of people helping each other out. 

It was a "a colourful place" in the 1960s and 70s – a low-income suburb with a high proportion of migrants. "It taught me about human nature and the diversity of life." 

She also learned that people don't forget kindness. 

"Several years ago I saw my mother hugging Jack Thompson the actor in our takeaway. 

"I didn't know she'd ever met him so I was a bit surprised. She told me that when he was a struggling actor he used to come into our corner store and Mum used to give him credit and he was always grateful to her. 

"It's amazing the number of people there are like that who have never forgotten my mother." 

A businessman once approached her and related that his father had a fruit and vegetable store in New Farm at the same time as her parents and that when they were starting out and couldn't yet afford a large truck, Dominic used to put their extra produce on his vehicle for them. 

"Can you imagine many people today transporting their competitors' goods for them?" she laughs. 

Ms Gambaro is very proud of her heritage and the fact she is the first woman from an Italian background to serve in Federal Parliament. 

As well as a love of food, she has inherited some of the national passion and is known as a committed and, sometimes outspoken, advocate for her electorate which stretches from Stafford on Brisbane's northside through to the Redcliffe peninsula and Deception Bay. 

She was one of the strongest opponents within the Liberal Party to recent plans by Health Minister Tony Abbott to extend the right of parents to access their children's medical records up to the age of 16. The Bill was dropped. 

"I had serious concerns about that," says Ms Gambaro, 45, whose children Rachelle and Benjamin are teenagers. 

"I know how vulnerable teenagers are and they cannot always talk to their parents and they have to be able to go along to a doctor and talk to them in privacy. 

"To say not all parents are good parents would be an understatement. It can be very difficult for a young person in that situation." 

Ms Gambaro says John Howard respects people who have strong views and express them. 

"The Prime Minister and I have had differences of opinion. I've gone to talk to the PM a number of times and he has always been very respectful of my views. I hope he would have seen that as a sign of strength." 

One area where she insists there is no disagreement with the Prime Minister is over Iraq. 

Before Australia committed troops, Ms Gambaro was part of a parliamentary group opposed to war. 

"When the facts were put to me by the Prime Minister, I did not need any more convincing," she says. 

"Wherever possible we should avoid conflict but where we are needed, we should not turn our backs. Where there is a compelling reason and lives are being lost, we need to respond." 

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