Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to give a very considered and thoughtful speech on this issue of chemotherapy drugs. I will start by going back to 28 November 2012, when this issue was first raised. It was raised by the shadow minister for health in the House, but it is worth noting, when it comes to thoughtful consideration, that it was first raised by Independent Senator Nick Xenophon in the Senate.

So this went across party lines because there was real concern about the government's incompetent handling of this issue. It was not an issue that anyone wants to be raising but it was an issue that we felt compelled to raise. The motion was not hysterical. It was a very calm, considered motion that had been put through, calling on the government to negotiate with stakeholders—hardly alarming—to ensure the continued delivery of chemotherapy drugs without disruption to patients by resolving dispensing cost issues and avoiding further unintended consequences.

That last bit is one of the keys to this motion, because this is the government of unintended consequences. Everything that it does, it fails to have a proper process for. It fails to think what might be the scenarios that their actions might lead to. What we see time and time again is unintended consequence after unintended consequence. That is why we are here tonight to try and get the government to solve these unintended consequences. What is the greatest of those unintended consequences at the moment? It is the fact that we still do not have a long-term solution to this problem. This is not something that we have just raised. As I referred to at the very start, this was something raised on 28 November. Yet still we have speakers from the government here tonight unable to say what the solution will be. As a matter of fact, they have outsourced it. They have said, 'We don't know what to do. We don't know how to handle this issue. We can't deal with it. It is too complicated for us.' They are putting their hands up and saying, 'We're going to defer it till after the election.'

Now that might be a very simple solution for the government but it is not a simple solution for those cancer patients who need this chemotherapy issue resolved and they need it resolved now. They do not want to see it postponed into the future. They want to see the government say, 'We have the wherewithal to be able to deal with this issue. It is not hard. It is not complicated. We have a bureaucracy behind us. We can solve this issue.' If the government fails to act quickly, many of the most vulnerable patients may be forced into the public hospital system. In and of itself, you would think, okay, that is not great because we are going to put more pressure on the public health system. But what has the government done in the MYEFO? Not only are they pushing these patients into the public health system but they then cut funding to the public health system. In Victoria they cut $104 million.

An honourable member: That is a misrepresentation.

It is not a misrepresentation. You come up with a short-term solution to put patients into the public health system and then you cut funding to it. What type of incompetence is this? Where does the logic flow that you would put more pressure on your public health system and then cut funding to it—illogical? It is hard to fathom that we could get this type of incompetence, yet here we are tonight. All of us here on both sides would like to see this issue resolved. We have offered on this side to work with the government to help you to resolve it but we do not get any admitting: 'We can't do our job. Please could you come over and give us a hand and allow us to do it.' There is nothing along those lines. None of us want to be here tonight, but we once again call on the government to do what they should be doing: govern the country and fix this problem.

Honourable members: Hear! Hear!

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