Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Medicare) Share this | Hansard source

I want to now turn particularly to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the National Immunisation Program. New listings on the PBS and the NIP are always welcome. The minister quite rightly points out that the new listings in the budget will help prevent and treat disease, including refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma, spinal muscular atrophy and breast cancer. I have personally congratulated the minister on the listing of SPINRAZA. I know many people in this place have met with people from the SMA community, including me. It's a very tragic disease. I also note that the government's investments out of the Medical Research Future Fund in prospective parent testing, and I met with the Murdoch Children's Research Institute to talk to them about that policy initiative prior to the government doing so.

I want to particularly make three points in relation to the pharmaceutical benefits schedule. The first—and I've made this point before—is that PBS listing, since the Chifley government introduced the PBS, is the business of government. It is what governments do. The last Labor government spent over $6 billion to add around 800 new medicines and vaccines to the PBS and to the NIP, and the Life Saving Drugs Program. But we, of course, understood that the credit for these listings does not belong to the minister of the day. They should not be treated as his personal gift to the nation. Credit belongs to the medicine companies that develop these new treatments, the patients, clinicians and researchers that help build the evidence for them, and the independent committees that ensure that these new listings are cost effective and are effective.

My second point is, whether they admit it or not, the government are having the same problems that Labor did in government: new high-cost drugs that are coming onto the PBS are increasingly difficult to fund. That is the reality of what's happening. It's happening in every single developed country across the globe. The minister's very fond of talking about the seven drugs that were listed by the last Labor government. All of these drugs were, in fact, listed within a year. Perhaps the mistake Labor made is that we were honest about the struggle we were had to find the money for those drugs. We were honest and up-front about it. But the government has exactly the same problem, and it serves nobody at all that the government tries to pretend otherwise, because this is a problem of reform that successive governments are going to have to deal with.

Looking at the drugs listed in this budget alone, we've seen substantial delays from the government between PBAC recommendation and listing. They are substantial delays, and I want to use some of the examples. The government delayed the multiple sclerosis drug for seven months from PBAC recommendation to listing, the Hodgkinson lymphoma drug for nine months, the whooping cough vaccine for pregnant women by 16 months and the second whooping cough vaccine by two years. Those delays exist under this government, and for the minister to pretend otherwise is simply dishonest. These sorts of delays are problematic for everybody. What's the government's response? The Medicines Partnership of Australia points out that the budget continues the trend of PBS expenditure continuing to decline in real terms. That's what they said. We understand the minister or his office got very angry about a press release the partnership put out clearly saying that these are the facts and asked that a second press release be issued. I think that's, frankly, pretty appalling. If you're not able to take criticism from the sector for decisions that you've taken, I don't know what that says about you. This sort of intimidation seems to be a bit typical of this government, but that's how it is.

The third point I particularly want to make is the PBS has been, and should always be, defined by a rigorous focus on clinical and cost effectiveness. Successive governments and oppositions have accepted the advice of independent experts on whether medicines should be listed and whether they are eligible for so-called special pricing arrangements. For the first time ever, this minister has rejected the PBAC's advice and granted a special deal. At Senate estimates last month, the minister's own officials described that decision as 'highly unusual'. We must not allow this minister or this government to politicise the PBS in this way. It is a very dangerous path to go down.

Frankly, for ministers who ignore or cherrypick PBAC advice, the recommendations of the independent committee risk chipping away at the trust in the drug-listing system that has served us so well. So I ask the minister: will you come clean about why you rejected the advice of PBAC on this drug? Is it, as was reported, because you wanted the manufacturer's support for a trial of new payment arrangements announced in the 2018 budget? How can the minister boast about listing all drugs when we've seen delays of up to two years from PBAC recommendations under the minister? (Time expired)

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