One Plus One: Anna Bligh

This week’s One Plus One features former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, talking with Jane Hutcheon, about the tough road to recovery, after being diagnosed with non hodgkin’s lymphoma last year.

Recent blood results show that she is now clear of the disease and she started a new job as CEO of YMCA NSW at the start of the year.

She says having cancer has changed her. “Having that confrontation with mortality and having to contemplate that maybe the treatment wouldn’t work… I didn’t feel at all ready for it. I still feel very young… my children are young and there’s unfinished business there. They haven’t given me grand-children yet!”

She discusses what it was like losing political power to Campbell Newman in 2012 and says in many ways it was a huge relief.

“It felt incredibly liberating because you don’t only lose the benefits, you also lose the burdens. I didn’t feel devastated at a personal level, I felt I had a legacy that I could feel proud of… It also meant that within days I could spend days with my boys, we were doing things like watching movies in the daytime, which we hadn’t done since they were very little, and that was actually fun.”

Friday at 8.30pm on ABC News 24.