Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

The government do not support the amendments moved by the opposition—we definitely do not. The removal of provisions to transfer $1 billion from the Health and Hospitals Fund to the Medical Research Future Fund would have an adverse effect on the earnings of the fund. I am bewildered; I am surprised—I do not understand. I am getting a message all through the debate on this legislation that, for some reason, Labor are not broadly in support of medical research, because if they were they would not be moving amendments like this.

The Health and Hospitals Fund is largely uncommitted. It is not currently being used for a health purpose. The Health and Hospitals Fund was always intended to be a time limited fund which would eventually be exhausted; unlike the MRFF, which will exist in perpetuity. The MRFF allows the balance of these funds to be used for health purposes. It is not taking away the characterisation of these funds as being for health; it is far wider and more strategic than what the HHF allowed for.

It is interesting to hear from the member for Port Adelaide. I know he is representing the shadow minister and I appreciate that he is delivering the shadow minister's message, but let's not forget the origin of the Health and Hospitals Fund. This is not money that Labor had at its disposal, or that it created out of the goodness of its heart. This money derived from Peter Costello's Future Fund. It was an investment in perpetuity for the future. Labor took the earnings from the Future Fund and created a new fund called the Health and Hospitals Fund at a time when previous Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was trying a dramatic take-over of the hospital system.

There is no doubt that good projects have been funded, no doubt at all; and we do not back away from that. But the question for governments and the question for this parliament is: what is the most effective use of this money going into the future? The value that we place on medical research is not the value that Labor places on medical research. Remember they tried to take out $400 million from the budget for medical research in 2011, and then they were embarrassed into a backflip. There was a sneaky accounting trick—I think, in the last of their budgets—around another $110 million, proving categorically that they are no friend of medical research and that their measures in opposing our sensible legislation are not appreciated and not supported.

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