Serafina Salucci was just seven when she helped her dad build a garage in their Sydney backyard using the common building material of bonded asbestos sheeting.
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But in 2007, at the age of 37, a persistent cough sent her to the doctors where a scan of her lung confirmed the deadly cancer mesothelioma.
Given her lack of exposure to any other form of asbestos, the most likely explanation is a tiny fibre entered her young lung during the backyard renovation, where it lay dormant for 30 years.
But Ms Salucci considers herself one of the lucky ones. The average time between diagnosis of mesothelioma and death is just two years. She has survived nine. And she has watched her four children – the youngest was three when she was diagnosed - reach milestones she never thought possible.
With one lung removed, too many surgeries to list, and bouts of chemotherapy and radiation therapy behind her, Ms Salucci lives as full a life as she can between her six-monthly scans.
And on Monday, she did something she never thought she would do – come to Federal Parliament to plead for funding for the national effort against Australia's asbestos legacy.
Ms Salucci was joined by asbestos advocates, legal and union representatives from across Australia – all of whom have banded together to call on the Turnbull Government to approve $3 million in funding for the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency.
The money was budgeted to go to the agency after 2013 when it was established with bipartisan support. But it was returned to Treasury when the agency did not spend it within an allocated time.
According to Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia president Barry Robson, who is also a member of the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Advisory Council, the agency is now significantly underfunded and does not have the budget to implement the National Strategic Plan, signed off by all state and territory governments last year.
Mr Robson said it was a case of bureaucracy gone mad.
He said some of the reasons the money was not spent in time, included staffing issues due to a hiring freeze under Tony Abbott. Then the agency had to help coordinate a national response to the National Broadband roll-out when telecommunications technicians found themselves working in asbestos lined cable pits.
Agency head Peter Tighe helped bring Canberra's Mr Fluffy asbestos crisis to a head when he intervened in 2014 to call for all homes to be demolished on public safety grounds despite ACT Government protestations at the time that homes were safe.
Last month Employment Minister Michaelia Cash called for review of the agency's funding.
A spokesman for Senator Cash said: "The Government has not cut the funding of the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency. The agency's funding has been maintained at the level set by the former Labor government.
"The Labor Government provided the funding on the basis that the setup costs would reduce after the early years and the agency would then focus on its coordination role, working with the states and territories to implement ASEA's National Strategic Plan."
Budget rules across all government agencies do not allow agencies to keep underspends from one year and reallocate them to subsequent years.
But Mr Robson said the politics of the situation could put public safety at risk.
Some of the projects that are currently on hold include a mobile phone app assisting homeowners identify asbestos, a program to remove asbestos in indigenous communities, a pilot project to develop safety certificates that identify asbestos in the home ahead of sales or renovation work, and improved coordination with Border Force to stop illegal importation of products containing asbestos.
