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

I want to thank the member for Moncrieff, who comes to this place and who through her career has had a dozen years as a small business consultant not only leading her own business but assisting other small businesses to manage their businesses. In particular, one of the lessons that she learnt, taught and helped others with was the very simple proposition that you cannot spend more than you earn, because that will lead to consequences. That's equally true for nations as well as small businesses. We know this in particular in the area of health and medicines, because when that happened, following the previous government blowing all of its budgets, we saw in 2011 the then budget papers set out very, very clearly, 'Due to fiscal circumstances, the government will defer the listing of some new medicines until fiscal circumstances permit.'

Mr Bowen interjecting—

The consequence was that medicines for endometriosis, for IVF, for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, for asthma and for schizophrenia were deferred.

Mr Bowen interjecting—

See this speech in context