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

I want to thank the member for Higgins, who comes here after a distinguished career in paediatrics. Only today, she was helping lead, in a bipartisan way, the parliamentary polio support group.

One of the things she would have seen in her work was the extraordinary success of our paediatric trauma teams. One particular case involves a young man, Connor. Connor had an accident, falling off the rocks in the Byron Bay area, and he had a shattered skull. This boy was lucky in that he had a trauma team that made a brilliant decision to leave part of his skull uncapped so as to allow the swelling to occur and then the recovery. Then he was also lucky in that he had a paediatric surgeon who was able to incorporate the latest technology. It's new, 3D-printed polymer technology—a precision implant that was placed on his skull. It has melded with the sinew in the bone and he's making a remarkable recovery.

That technology came from the Australian firm Anatomics. I was privileged to visit Anatomics's new 3D polymer printing centre in Bentleigh last week. It comes about as a result of the Medical Research Future Fund $5 billion allocation that we made in the budget this year and in particular a $900,000 grant under the BioMedTech Horizons program. It will double the number of jobs that this firm has—from 40 to 80—but, most importantly, it will lead to better treatment for patients here in Australia and abroad.

We are seeing that same pattern with the extraordinary investment by CSL, one of Australia's great firms. Their blood fractionation plant in Broadmeadows is currently undergoing a dramatic transformation. There is $200 million going into the construction of an extraordinary new blood fractionation facility. This will lead to over 350 jobs at the height of construction—230 jobs for construction workers alone and 84 jobs on the management team and for project engineers—and ongoing jobs and a massive increase in their capacity to produce these products. These products support patients with haemophilia and support patients with immune deficiency. Significantly, this comes about and is only possible because the government has a strong economic and budget position that has allowed the long-term agreement of $3.3 million for the supply of blood products in Australia. The combination of the economy, the long-term certainty and the investment has led to not only job creation but, above all else, action that will help save lives and protect lives.

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