Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great privilege and honour to speak at the table today, alongside my friends and colleagues the Minister for Aged Care and the member for Swan, the reason being that, together, they helped build and craft the case for a new Curtin University medical school and medical centre. I was privileged to be able to join the member for Swan there, and also to represent the Minister for Aged Care, when we met the incoming class of students. These new graduates will go through the system. They will be out and about in WA and they will be assisting patients right across Western Australia. That's practical action. That's an exemplar of what we're seeking to do with this health budget.

Overall, the health and aged care budget, outlined by the Treasurer on budget night, comprises $99 billion, $102 billion, $104 billion and $109 billion a year, each year, every year—record funding. But it's built across a very simple conceptual model of four pillars: support for our primary carers, our doctors, our nurses and those working with medicines; support for our hospitals; support for mental and preventative health; and support for medical research, alongside record funding in aged care.

In terms of Medicare, we see overall funding go from $25 billion to $26 billion to $27 billion to $29 billion. But, perhaps most significantly, new and additional services are being provided in areas such as cystic fibrosis screening, 3D mammography for women and renal dialysis in remote Indigenous Australian areas. We are seeing prostate cancer support for men. So there's practical action right across the country. And it's coupled with record investment in terms of our medicines. In particular, we were able to list new medicines, such as SPINRAZA for spinal muscular atrophy and $700 million for Kisqali for breast cancer. These are incredibly important developments. Long-term funding, included in that medicines funding, with a billion-dollar contingency, is replacing that which was stripped out in 2010 and which left a subsequent hole in the budget.

In hospitals, what we see is a $30 billion addition over the course of the next hospital funding agreement—each year, every year, a record right across every state and every territory. It's an incredible outcome. We've already secured agreements with six of the states and territories, so we will be able to deliver what nobody has ever done before. That will include a doubling of hospital funding from when Labor was last in government to the end of the course of this agreement.

What we also see is that we are making profound changes in private health insurance. It was a shame to see Labor join with the Greens to take steps today which may delay some of those changes. I'm hopeful that we'll still be able to achieve them on time. In particular, the prospect that discounts for young people could be delayed is something that I'd ask the ALP to quietly reflect on as they consider the next steps forward. There is the lowest change in private health premiums in 17 years—a considerable amount lower than every year under the ALP. But there is more to be done. At the end of the day, the hospital system will only work if it is strengthened by strong private health insurance, not weakened by an attack which would drive up out-of-pocket costs, drive down coverage and put at risk small health funds in states such as Tasmania.

What we also see is record funding, with an additional $338 million for mental health—a passion of every member of this parliament, I say with confidence—and the $1.3 billion National Health and Medical Industry Growth Plan. That will deliver almost $250 million for rare cancer and rare disease clinical trials; $240 million for frontier science; and, through the Medical Research Future Fund, $500 million for the National Genomics Health Futures Mission over the next decade, which will change and transform treatment, diagnosis and prospects for Australians.

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