The ACT has the lowest incidence of lung cancer in the country but Canberrans suffer some of the highest rates of breast and prostate cancer.

Australian women took up cigarettes at a growing rate in the 1970s and 1980s while the smoking rate among men fell.

As a result, national lung cancer rates for women are predicted to grow 0.4 per cent every year.

The ACT averages nearly 32 cases of lung cancer per 100,000 residents, the lowest rate in the country.

The Northern Territory reported the highest rates of lung cancer with 53.6 cases for every 100,000 people, followed by Tasmania with 50 cases.

Cancer Council of Australia chief executive Professor Ian Olver said lung cancer had for the first time overtaken breast cancer as the largest killer of women.

''The distressing part about it is that whereas there is less you can do about preventing breast cancer, lung cancer is entirely preventable by controlling smoking,'' he said.

''So we're suggesting the Government have to step up its efforts in reducing smoking-related deaths, and that really means price control and social marketing or advertising campaigns.''

If women who had been smoking since the 1970s or 1980s quit now, their risk of getting lung cancer would gradually return to that of the non-smoking population, he said.

There were more than 100,000 new cases of cancer diagnosed in Australia in 2005. That number is expected to increase by more than 3000 extra cases every year to 2010.

The greatest growth is tipped for prostate cancer (939 extra cases every year), followed by skin cancer (392), colo-rectal cancer (319), breast cancer (314) and lung cancer (190).

Canberra women had the highest national rate of breast cancer with nearly 130 cases per 100,000 women, ahead of Tasmania and Western Australia. Men in the ACT suffer the second-highest rate of prostate cancer in the nation with 154 cases per 100,000 men, behind Tasmania.

Cervical cancer is expected to fall by 25 cases a year.

There were 56,158 new cases of cancer diagnosed for males in 2005.

Prostate cancer was the most common (16,349 cases), more than double the incidence of the second-most common cancer for men, colo-rectal cancer (7181). with AAP