Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon in the House to support the substantive National Health Amendment (Enhancing the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) Bill 2021. I speak on this bill, as members in this chamber probably already know, with a background as the son of not one but two pharmacists. Both mum and dad were, and still are, pharmacists. They are proudly very active in the industry. For a number of years they ran a very successful small business—a pharmacy, as you can imagine—in the city of Brisbane, in the CBD, branching out to own a second pharmacy at one point.

When I was growing up, like all kids of small-business people, I spent my holidays, over Christmas and at other times during the year, working in the business. This gave me an incredible firsthand appreciation of just how vital the PBS is to our nation. Having access to affordable medicines makes our community stronger and improves the quality of life for Australians. It should never ever be taken for granted. It can be taken for granted—members on the other side of the chamber have shown that—but I'll get to that later. It should never be taken for granted.

I saw firsthand how important the PBS was for people from all walks of life, from those families walking into the pharmacy with their colds and flus, or their rashes that mum and dad would diagnose and then provide a product for, through to putting together Webster packs for elderly patients. Webster packs are for packaging all of their medicines—of which there can sometimes be quite a lot and involve some significant conflicts if you're not careful—into a pack where they can pop it out day by day and keep track of their medicines. It went all the way through to methadone patients who had significant addictions and struggles, often mental health struggles, who would attend the pharmacy to get their regular methadone to help kick that addiction.

No matter where you sit in the spectrum of life, you will need the PBS. You will need pharmacies, for that matter, and pharmacists, but you will need the PBS. That is why I am so passionate about ensuring that it is fit for purpose and that it is doing what it's designed to do, which is to assist Australians. I am proud to be part of a government that, since coming to government, has listed over 2,800 medicines worth $13.9 billion to the PBS. We hear time and time again from the health minister, particularly during question time, about how the drugs that are listed help individuals. He is very good at providing the stories of individual families who are affected by these medicines being listed: people suffering cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, spinal atrophy, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, severe asthma, severe osteoporosis, chronic migraines and many other conditions.

For people, particularly those who have a chronic condition, these new medicines can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. For people who have a chronic condition, if these medicines weren't listed on the PBS they would be out of reach on a regular basis from these Australians' acces But, because they are listed on the PBS, instead of costing thousands of dollars per treatment per month, or maybe per week, they're available for $6.60 for a concessional patient or $41.30 for general patients per script. Without the PBS, those Australians would have a lower quality of life, would have more suffering and, in many cases, we'd see lives cut far too short.

While there's no way to quantify the full impact that the PBS has across Australian society, we know that this is an investment worth making in Australians, many of whom have those chronic diseases that they need relief from. Of course, to be able to add so many medicines to the PBS you need a strong economy, and that's what the coalition government has been able to deliver. Prior to COVID, we were listing medicines on the PBS at a rate on average of one per day. That is an incredible achievement, because, as the previous Labor speaker said—and I'll give him credit for this—we are living in an age of incredible medical advancement. We have incredible opportunities that medicine and medical science is providing to us to advance the drugs that we have available and to tackle some of these more chronic diseases. But to be able to take up the opportunity of those new drugs when you have a drug company lobbying the government saying: 'We have this new drug. It's ready to go. There are this many Australians who would benefit from it, who are currently suffering from a disease and we can improve their quality of life, but, because of the IP and the research and the technology we've had to invest in it, it's going to cost them many thousands, tens of thousands, in some cases, hundreds of thousands,' you want your government to be there with the economic circumstances in place so that they can take up that investment as soon as it is possible so Australians don't have to wait. The economic legacy of this coalition government has been that we have been in a position to take it up. Where the PBS independent authority have recommended it, it then goes to a period of negotiation with drug companies and, once a price has been agreed on as part of that negotiation, we're in an economic position to list it.

When I spoke earlier about the fact that that can never be taken for granted, we know what happens when it is taken for granted, because, as much as the PBS is one of the great Australian achievements that we have in place to support a broad cross-section of Australians, it is a great myth of Australian politics that the PBS is somehow all enduring, that it's eternal and it can't be wilted away. Well, it can. It can wilt if you neglect it. And that's what we saw under the previous Labor government, where they literally had to issue budget papers to say that due to financial constraints—that they themselves had imposed with their reckless spending!—they were no longer able to list drugs on the PBS as they came up. The practical outcome of poor and reckless financial management is that you can't list these drugs when they come up and, at the end of the day, that means Australians with chronic diseases, people who need it, suffer. They suffer. I don't ever want to be in that position again as an Australian society and I know that, as a coalition government, we won't allow that to be in place. But Australians need to remember that the PBS is not something that, by signing up to these bills, Labor can claim is all enduring and have no worry about, because we've seen, when they have had their hands on the financial levers of this country, when they've had the opportunity to do more than just talk, as they do a lot in this chamber, when they have the opportunity to undertake the action to preserve the PBS, they haven't been able to do it because they've prioritised other spending.

This government is a consultative government. That's why I'm pleased to support the substantive bill, which is all about the new agreement that has been struck with Medicines Australia. It's a result of significant consultation with the medicines industry to ensure that sustainability of the PBS long-term. So, when we went into the negotiations as a government, we had two overarching goals. We wanted Australia to continue to gain access to those brand new breakthrough medicines as early as possible, as early as we can negotiate. The other goal that we have in mind that we've achieved with this agreement is to deliver a far more robust and uninterrupted supply of medicines needed and used by everyday Australians. There are a lot of things that the COVID-19 pandemic taught us, but in particular we learnt about the vulnerability of some of our supply chains, about how these unforeseen events can truly bring global supply chains to a halt. We can't afford that to occur when it comes to these medicines that are either life-saving or treating chronic diseases.

The industry agreements will achieve this by securing commitments from the medicine industry which will result in substantial savings that we can then go ahead and reinvest into the PBS to list more medicines. Through improved statutory price reductions, savings can be reinvested in the PBS to make it even more sustainable and to create more headroom for us to list new life-saving drugs. The reforms of this bill see better supply, reduced cost and greater access to new medicines. These reforms are critical to ensuring the continuity of access that is so important for the proper treatment and management particularly of chronic conditions.

Increasingly, global shortages are interrupting supplies of medicines. In 2019 and 2020, brands of over 500 PBS items were affected by medium to critical impact shortages, with brands supplied by manufacturers for $4 or less the most susceptible to global supply chains. This includes medicines for common health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes and medicines for mental health conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. These reforms, as agreed with the medicines industry as part of the agreement that forms the basis of the substantive bill, will ensure that manufacturers are better placed to compete for supply of these medicines in the global medicine market and hold greater reserve supplies of at least four to six months of stock in Australia to buffer the Australian market when interruptions occur. If a global pandemic occurs again, like we have seen with COVID-19, this agreement will help ensure that we have that immediate to medium-term stock in place so that we can deal with those supply chain issues. From 1 July 2023, additional stocks will be held for over 600 PBS items, including most brands that have an approved manufacturer price of $4 or less, because, again, these are the most common medicines used for chronic diseases that people can't afford to skip or they go back a number of steps in the treatment process. These reforms will be critical to ensuring the continuity of access.

The other important goal of the agreement is harvesting savings so that we can reinvest them in other PBS medicines. The new savings from improved statutory price reductions, which will be reinvested in the PBS, will ensure that the reinvestment will allow for some headroom—a five per cent price reduction at the five-year anniversary of a drug listed on the PBS; a five per cent reduction on the 10-year anniversary of a drug listed; and a 26.1 per cent price reduction at the 15-year anniversary of a drug listed on the PBS, which will increase to 30 per cent in 2027. These are significant reductions in the headroom of PBS medications that can be reinvested to ensure that our PBS remains sustainable going forward, as we have an ageing population who will draw more on those medicines already listed on the PBS, and that can be used to add new medicines. These reforms will generate net savings. To quantify, there will be net savings of approximately $1.9 billion over the terms of the agreement, which will be reinvested.

Medicines Australia and the Generic and Biosimilar Medicines Association have committed to this bill. There was a significant amount of consultation that went into the bill, and there is support for greater security and supply of medicines. We've also received support from the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, the Australian Medical Association, the National Pharmaceutical Services Association and the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia.

As I said earlier, together with the industry, as you can see from the broad support from across industry for this bill, we are going to continue to strengthen our health system. We are going to continue to make sure that pharmacists like my mum and dad have a more reliable supply of medicine so they can ensure that those who rely on medicine are not disappointed and so that those who rely on it for their treatment plan will always have a constant supply. We are going to make sure that we continue to list these drugs when they become available—because we have created the economic circumstances that allow us to do that through good and proper financial management—so that we hear fewer of these stories from sufferers of chronic disease. I am sure many MPs hear stories in their offices from families who are doing it incredibly tough, who can see the light at the end of the tunnel—they can see the drug that's going to drastically improve quality of life for a member of their family—but, because of the price, because of the IP that has had to be put into it and because of how new it is, it's just out of reach. It is with great pleasure that, as a member of the government, I can play a small role in helping to ensure that that gap is minimised and they can get access to a life-saving drug. Again, I pay tribute to the health minister, Greg Hunt, for all the work he has put into this legislation, as well as other stakeholders who have brought it to fruition.

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