Nickolas Varvaris (Barton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister outline what benefits the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will bring to Australia's health sector?

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barton for his question and note that close to him are many innovative Australian manufacturers of medicines that will make a difference to people's lives both now and into the future. Australia has a strong reputation for its world-leading technology, innovation, research, development and skills. We have enormous potential to export these across the Asia-Pacific. In an increasingly affluent South-East Asia, there are partnerships and opportunities that this TPP will unlock in a way that we never could have anticipated. We must recognise the work of the trade minister in, I think, a 48-hour marathon with no sleep in Atlanta. The Prime Minister and I were on late-night—their time—phone hook-ups talking about health issues, making sure that Australia gets and has got the best possible deal for our industries.

This agreement will do things. It will be good for jobs. It will eliminate remaining duties on Australian exports of medical instruments and devices to TPP parties, and this alone was worth in excess of a billion dollars in 2014. It will also eliminate all remaining duties on Australian pharmaceutical exports, which were valued at around $694 million in 2014. We have got commitments from all of the signatory parties that will allow our suppliers to bid for government contracts for pharmaceutical and medical equipment amongst the TPP parties. The rapid growth and affluence of South-East Asia presents real opportunities.

That is what the TPP will do. I want to reassure members and the community of what it will not do. It will not push up the cost of medicines. It will not lead to price increases for medicines on the PBS. As the trade minister said during negotiations, this is absolutely a red-line issue for us. It does not change Australia's existing five years of data protection for biologics or any other part of our health system. We know that with the emerging opportunities that come both for health and for manufacturing in biosimilars—the generic version of biologic medicines—it was absolutely important that we maintained five years of data protection in concert with our world-class patent system, which provides market protection for biologics that is second to none in the world.

This TPP builds on our government's commitment to improved access to medicines on the PBS, a system of which we are rightly proud and which is absolutely the gold standard. It is time for Labor to get over its natural suspicion of free trade agreements, its inability to understand the value that they add and its old-fashioned rhetoric, which is completely unhelpful.